She looked at her hands. They were empty.
She blinked, and the menu shimmered: Return to Reality? [YES] / [NO]. darkroomvr
Her finger passed through the air. And somewhere, in the darkroom of her own skull, she heard the soft, wet click of a shutter closing. She looked at her hands
The lobby was a perfect replica of her real apartment—same scuff on the baseboard, same crooked IKEA lamp. But here, the window showed a city that had never existed. Spires of black glass. A sky the color of a healing bruise. And the silence. That was the worst part. In the real world, there was always the hum of the refrigerator, the distant wail of a siren. Here, the only sound was the soft, wet click of her own heartbeat. [YES] / [NO]
She laughed. Just a glitch. A $1,500 glitch. She’d call support. She’d—
She tore off the headset.
The headset’s rubber seal felt like a second skin now. Sarah had been in the DarkroomVR lobby for eleven hours—or so the wall clock said. The clock was wrong. It had been wrong since she first logged in.