Page 45 of Stardusted

“You’re set on not going to the hospital?” the EMT asked when I rubbed at my forehead.

I nodded wordlessly, and she sighed.

“Well, if you’re refusing medical care, do you want us to call someone for you?” Her radio crackled. She reached for the dial and turned it down before continuing. “You’re not showing physical signs of a concussion, but it’s still best we check you out thoroughly.”

I shook my head, raising my eyes to hers. Even the dim lighting down here felt too bright. “No. I’m fine, really. What…so therewasan explosion?”

The officer lingering nearby stepped closer, raising his voice over the distant drone of the fire alarm. “Far as we can tell, something in the clean lab went up. Sprinklers kicked in and suppressed the fire, but the whole floor took some damage. The lab and storage room got hit hardest.”

I looked up at him from where I half-sprawled on the dusty linoleum. He couldn’t have been much older than me. His sandy hair was buzzed close to his scalp, and his name tag readBrown.

He adjusted his belt and flipped open a small notebook, licking his thumb to turn a page. “Professor here says your name’s Raven Barrister,” he said, glancing down at me for confirmation. I nodded. “Anthropology student, right?” Another nod. “Okay. So what’s the last thing you remember, Raven? Did you see anyone else down there? What were you doing in the lab? Professor says it’s usually off-limits.”

“I was…looking for him,” I mumbled.

And I hadn’t seen anyone else. Except the guards. Except thatthing.

None of thismade any sense.

“I didn’t see an explosion,” I added, softer.

No, I’d seen something impossible.

A sentient robot. Its garbled voice. Wreckage and sparks and light.

But no one else was mentioning that.

“Aren’t there cameras in the lab?” I asked, lifting my gaze to Officer Brown.

He hesitated, exchanged a look with Professor Stern, then shrugged. “There was an electrical malfunction. None of the cameras recorded anything.”

Of course they didn’t. The panic that had just barely receded clawed back up my throat.

The guards were okay. Their injuries had been blamed on the explosion.They’d corroborated it.

But I’d seen them stuffed in the bathroom. Alive. Unconscious. An explosion clearly hadn’t deposited them all in there.

And why had they been hidden away?

If that robot-thing had been the culprit, why not just finish the job? They’d gone full demolition mode on the rest of the floor. Why spare the guards?

Why spareme?

None of it made sense.

My gaze drifted past the officer, down the ruined hallway. Debris littered the floor: collapsed bulletin boards, shredded papers, ceiling fragments. Chunks of scorched plaster were smeared with soot, and it hit me?—

That was soot.Black and fine and coating the hallway walls. I was wearing it.

My stomach bottomed out.

That could be from an actual explosion. Maybe Ihadbeen knocked out. Maybe everything I remembered was some twisted trauma response.

Maybe I’d lost my mind.

My pulse fluttered sickeningly fast. The whole nightmare, sparkling stones, ancient glyphs, robotic monsters…maybe it was all something my brain had made up to make sense of whatever hadreallyhappened.

Far down the hall, emergency strobes still flashed, flooding the space with cold white bursts. I stared straight into them, and for a second, I sawanotherlight. One that had pulsedinsideme. That soul-deep resonance.