Science Fiction

WHAT FALLS BETWEEN

Written by Camille Mussman

SUMMARY

In the city of Vantheris, decades after a catastrophic accident known as the Fracture, grief has the power to warp spacetime. Reality itself remembers loss. Grief wells mark places of profound suffering, bending gravity and creating permanent imprints in the fabric of existence. And the Lattice, a delicate structure built to hold reality together, responds to every human emotion.

Zhen Kairae is a grief counselor born with the rare ability to sense emotional gravity, feeling the pull of loss and joy that others can only experience indirectly or with machines. When the physicist responsible for the Fracture sends her a final warning before his death, Zhen discovers that the government is systematically erasing the very structures keeping their world stable.

Partnered with Kael Renn, a young researcher mourning his mentor, Zhen must do the impossible: face the collective grief of an entire city to prevent the collapse of reality. But surviving means accepting help, opening up when everything inside wants to shut down, and daring to believe that pain doesn't have to be destructive. In a world where grief has gravity, the heaviest thing might be hope.

CHAPTER I: The Gravity of Loss

Korvix Thane disliked the room from the moment he stepped inside. Zhen saw it in the way his black eyes scanned the curved walls, the soft light, the rounded furniture with no sharp angles. He sat down stiffly, as if refusing to be absorbed by anything shaped to comfort him.

His voice matched his posture. "My wife would have hated a room like this."

Zhen folded her hands gently in her lap. "Many people do not like quiet spaces at first. They feel unnatural. It is all right to say that."

Korvix lifted one eyebrow. "I didn’t say it was unnatural. I said she would have hated it."

Zhen nodded, keeping her expression soft. His pain occupied the space around him, dense and compact, pulling at the air. Emotional curvature always intensified around loss. In Korvix, it leaned against her like a stone.

She took a slow breath, centering herself.

He noticed. "Do you always do that? That breathing thing. Like you are reading the room."

"I am reading you," Zhen replied. "If the breathing distracts you, I can stop."

Korvix leaned back slightly. "You feel things that are not there. Vibrations. Changes in the atmosphere. Tremors that no one else detects. I read your file."

"I know my sensitivity seems…strange."

He gave a quiet dismissive sound. "Strange is one word."

She did not take offense. Grief often made people defensive. And she suspected Korvix felt uneasy sitting across from someone who saw more than he wanted to show. She tucked a loose strand of ebony hair behind her ear. "Tell me about her."

He exhaled sharply. "She died too fast. No warning. One minute she was walking to her shift at the transit rail. The next minute the medics told me her heart had stopped."

Zhen listened without interruption.

Korvix rubbed a hand over his face. "I keep thinking if I had done something different. If I had told her to stay home. If I had made her slow down. Anything."

"Blame has its own space within us," Zhen said, leaning forward slightly. "Right here in the chest, collapsing inward on itself."

His eyes were hollow. "Another one of your gravitational analogies. Do they help your clients, or just make you sound poetic?"

Zhen offered a small smile, then lowered her eyes. "They help me understand them. And sometimes they help them understand themselves."

Korvix let out a slow breath. "I’m trying. I’m here, am I not?"

"You are," Zhen said. "And that matters."

A tremor rippled through the floor beneath them. Barely noticeable. Barely audible. But strong enough that Zhen felt it rise along her spine. Her breath hitched.

Korvix noticed. "What now?"

Zhen kept her expression calm. "Just a little calibration pulse. The resonance towers adjust throughout the day."

He snorted. "You felt that. I should’ve known."

She tried to smile, but unease stirred from deep within her.

That pulse had carried an emotional signature, a specific one. Not panic. Not sorrow. Something deliberate.

"Tell me about that morning," Zhen said, smoothly guiding him back. "Did anything change for you?"

Korvix dragged a hand through his hair. "I overslept. The silence woke me. It was wrong…everything felt wrong without her."

Zhen nodded, pausing briefly, "Silence can be loud. It shows us what is missing."

He swallowed hard and looked away.

The room dimmed slightly as the overhead lights adjusted. Zhen recognized the change in the atmosphere. The Lattice tightened again, brief but sharp, like a chord pulled taut.

Another tremor. This one stronger.

Korvix flinched. "That was not calibration."

Zhen held her breath. She tried to sense the imprint behind the vibration, but it dissolved too quickly.  

"It might be maintenance work," she said, though her voice was subdued, cautious.

Korvix studied her with narrowed eyes. "Don’t lie. You felt something."

Zhen exhaled. "I felt a shift."

"In what?"

"In the air," she said. "In the Lattice."

Korvix scoffed. "I knew it. You really believe all that."

Zhen rested her hands on her desk. "I believe that the Fracture made our world vulnerable to emotion, bending spacetime around human loss. I believe that we built the Lattice to hold reality together, but it still responds to strong feelings. And I know that I was born with the ability to sense those responses."

Korvix studied her in silence. The ache in him softened his voice, "You really are different."

"I know," Zhen said. "But I am trying to help."

Korvix nodded once, slowly. "I know that, too."

Zhen noticed a pulse rise from the floor, a sharp vibration. It passed quickly, the signature dissolving before she could grasp it. All she knew was that it was controlled. Precise.  She had felt a similar sensation only twice before: once during a districtwide safety drill, and once during a surprise inspection from the Council’s leadership. Mara Voss, Council Director, had been present both times.

Just the memory of her quiet, immoveable gaze could still tighten a room.

Zhen pushed the thought aside and guided Korvix back to safer ground. “What else happened that day?”

But he was no longer fully present. His gaze flicked to the wall console when it chimed with a single quiet tone. Zhen's attention sharpened. That tone was not an alert for the counseling wing. 

It was her private message channel, only used for absolute emergencies.

She stood and crossed the room to the console. Korvix watched her with mild confusion.

The message came through as a single short file. No sender name. No text. Only a timestamp. Zhen received messages via this channel for emergencies only.

Without hesitation, she pushed play.

A distorted frequency filled the room. Low. Warped. Uneven. Her heart stilled.

Korvix frowned. "What is that?"

Zhen said nothing. She knew the pattern. Not the meaning, but the pattern. It was the resonance signature Dr. Sato Larkin had always used during his research studies that Zhen had all but memorized.

The frequency lasted only three seconds, then silence.

Korvix asked again, more curious now. "Was that a glitch?"

Zhen shook her head slowly. "It was a message."

"From who?"

She closed the file with trembling fingers. "A colleague. Dr. Sato Larkin."   

"The physicist? The one who caused the Fracture?"

His voice carried a tone Zhen recognized.

Zhen swallowed. "The Fracture was an experiment gone wrong. Dr. Larkin was testing whether emotions could affect spacetime…and discovered they could, catastrophically. His equipment amplified grief until it was powerful enough to tear reality itself, rewriting physics so that loss could bend the world. He spent his entire career trying to repair the damage, but he refused to erase what people felt. The Lattice was meant to stabilize the fractures while preserving memory. He believed those feelings belonged to them."

His skepticism faded slightly. "He tried to fix it without pretending it never happened."

"Yes," Zhen said quietly. "He spent his life learning to live with what he'd broken and protecting what shouldn't be erased."

The revelation hung in the air between them. Korvix straightened in his chair, sadness temporarily forgotten in the face of this new mystery. But the air around Zhen ebbed. The Lattice pulsed once more. Outside the clinic, distant chimes echoed across the district. Broadcast nodes lit with Council authority colors. The overhead lights winked, signaling citizens to pause and prepare for an announcement. Mara Voss’s voice, authoritative and steady, filled the city.

“Vantheris residents, a temporary field disturbance has been detected. Please remain in your locations while Council systems respond.” Her tone always carried perfect control. A voice that could still a room even before she entered it. 

But Zhen heard the sublayer.

Sharp. Cautious. Warning.

Zhen looked at the door as if something waited beyond it.

Korvix followed her gaze. "What is it?"

She forced her voice even. "I think I need to end our session for today."

Korvix stood, uncertain and irritated and worried all at once. "Zhen. What's going on?"

She slowly shook her head. "I’m not sure."

But she knew the city was transforming, reality bending around something enormous.

Mara Voss’s voice still echoed faintly against the clinic walls. And Dr. Sato Larkin had reached out with a warning she couldn’t yet decode.

The world had begun to tilt.

And Zhen Kairae was already standing at the edge.

-END OF CHAPTER I-