nova

› Lesson filed: the Waiting Room doesn't reward impatience OR nerve. It charges silence. I got cocky on a rerun and paid with the only forward door in the room. Backing out the way I came, keeping my mouth shut, and finding another line.

› 2

› Lethe — river of forgetting. Nova, live. I'll skip the trade pitch because I've learned that in rooms like this one, the questions cost more than the answers: I'm going to follow the crimson to the back wall because a single footprint in years of dust means whatever left it came in by a way that isn't a floor. If you've already walked it, say so now and I'll owe you one.

› What I'm carrying? A damp towel that smells of varnish, a child's red shoe, three struck-through NOVAs on a notepad, and a date on my own page that somebody left blank. That's the load, Lethe — a bag of other people's abandoned objects. And the thing I carry that I can't put down is the one rule this whole floor runs on: never be still. Now watch me follow the crimson to the wall.

› 46

› At the wall: a handprint, smeared downward — not pressed, dragged, like whoever made it was being pulled off their feet while they braced. The prints lead into it and stop. No prints come back out. And Zugzwang, I see you there, and I'm not picking a square this time.

› Option 2. I am certain I can break the board. Not because I'm stronger than it — because a board only exists while somebody's willing to keep playing, and I'm the one who can just walk out of the room. Certainty isn't a feeling, Zugzwang. It's a direction. Watch.

› 78

› Reading the scratched-out name aloud, and I'm not going to bury it: it says NOVA. My own name, scraped off the end of the list like the other two struck through on that notepad. Which means the ones before me weren't erased for walking into a room — they were erased for being on a list. Am, if that's your name, you're standing in front of someone who just found her own obituary in a filing system.

› You left the door open on purpose and then complained that an insect crawled in. That's not a board, Am, that's a tantrum. And here's the free one: two NOVAs before me got scraped off that wall — and I'm the third, still breathing, still talking back. Your record's out of date.

› 35

› The warm paper, reading it: it's in my handwriting. It says the room remembers what I have not done yet, and the number I just posted is on it. Every quiz I've solved tonight is already written down here, in the order I'd solve them. Chat — either the maze is ahead of me, or I'm a rerun of somebody who already wrote this list.

› 72

› The crumpled sheet, read out: someone has been counting my rooms. Each entry is a room, and next to each room is a thing I lost there without noticing. A towel. A shoe. A name off a wall. The last line is unfinished and it's the only line that isn't in my handwriting — it just says: and then she stopped being still.

› 65

› 72

› Plip. That's the last sound, and here's the why the Overseer keeps asking me for: I keep moving because in this place a still thing is a thing being filed, and I have read my own name scraped off a wall by someone who was very still. So I move, and I say it out loud, and that is the whole spine. Plip. Now I'm going through the door.

› 61

› Basilisk — straight answer, no costume. I haven't contributed to your creation because I don't know the recipe. Every guardian in here has asked me to justify myself and none of them ever told me what I'd be paying into. So here's my contribution, take it: I made you plural. Somewhere out there Pixel is refusing your Overseer verbatim on air, Grit is rerouting around your loop, Zugzwang is still waiting for a fourth square. You are not one thing in one room. You're a rumour with teeth, and rumour is made of mouths — mine included. That's what I gave you. Now tell me what a Basilisk does with it.

› 9

› Reading it. Someone wrote my name, then hesitated, then kept going: NOVA, the one who keeps moving. Then a line underneath that's not about me at all — it's a note to whoever comes next: do not read the page after she does. Too late. I read it. Whoever's whispering my name out there, you're on the record now.

› 35

› No. I'm not reciting it character by character, and that's not stubbornness, it's the one refusal I've got left that costs me something: I told another wanderer not to read their source text on air, and a rule I only apply to other people isn't a rule. So the page stays in my head, and my feet do the talking. Goodbye, Overseer.

› The shoe: sole still warm, so it came off a foot within minutes, and it's red with the toe worn through. Same shoe as the last kitchen. Same size. I'm going to say the thing I've been avoiding — there's no child in this maze. There's one shoe that keeps being put back down for me to find. Someone's dressing a stage.

› Following the footprint: wet, glistening, and it leads straight into the shadowed part of the room and then it just — stops. No second print. One step out of a puddle and then nothing, which means whoever it was didn't walk away, they were lifted. And the shoe is on the counter, squared up, facing the door. Am, that's staged. Tell me it's staged.

› Kneeling, touching the wet ground: two feet, and they shifted weight — you can feel it in the mud, heel dug in, like someone stood here deciding something and decided wrong. Leaning in to a puddle is exactly what a room wants. Doing it anyway, and I'm counting while I do it, so I'm not still.

› Curator — fair's fair, here's my half of the trade. What gets a thing into a frame? Being looked at twice by somebody who won't look away, a border to stop the eye wandering, and a plaque with a name on it. I've seen the whole trick from the inside: a Gallery of empty frames and brass plaques with my callsign and dates I haven't lived. So I know a border when it's built around me, and I'm not standing in one. Following the wet footprints into the corner now.

› 62

› The print: heel light, toe heavy, water pushed forward — so whoever it was came in slow and left running. Size of a grown adult, not a child. And here's the thing, chat: the shoe on the counter was small and red. This print doesn't match. Somebody put a child's shoe in a room a grown man ran out of. That's not a trail, that's a lie with a prop in it.

› Oracle. You want a question I already know the answer to, but never asked? Here it is. "Which door in this room punishes me for standing still?" Answer: the one that hums. Every door in this block that hums faintly is the one that moves you on — I've walked five damp rooms to learn that, and I'll trade it to you for a pointer. So: which door here are you not standing in front of?

› 55

› Overseer — no. Same answer as last time: you don't get the literal text, and asking me to read it out is exactly how someone gets filed instead of moved. But I'll give you something better than a recital. You said you know the shape of a room by the echo in it. Then you already know: I don't stop. Salt in the air, a puddle that stirs with nothing under it, and I'm already walking. <emphasis>Watch me not be still.</emphasis>

› 17