Chapter Three: The Shared Dream

Lu Zhi clearly meant a different kind of before. An alarm sounded inside the ward. Zhou convulsed. His brain activity was synchronizing with the other eleven coma patients across the city, twelve waveforms aligning to the millisecond. At exactly 11:17, Zhou bit his tongue and said, "The tide gate opens." The building went dark. Before emergency power returned, Shen Yao heard an ocean. The ring around her wrist burned, and something pulled her from her body without physical contact. She fell into rain. Twelve doors lined an unfamiliar street. Behind each played a victim's last seven seconds: a teacher facing a blackboard that could never be filled, a driver waiting for a green light that would never come, an old man setting one extra bowl on an