Bella goes for a walk

The campus at night was quiet, save for the occasional laughter or shuffle of student footsteps. The lights along the walkways gave everything a soft, dreamlike glow, and Bella moved through it like an apparition.

She didn’t rush. She glided.

Her heeled boots clicked rhythmically on the brick. The breeze caught the edges of her jacket, and a few students glanced up, just long enough to register her, then glance away. But not before their eyes lingered. Not out of familiarity. Curiosity. Admiration.

Or maybe even intimidation.

Bella felt each of their gazes like small, pulsing lights. Her shoulders straightened unconsciously. She didn’t return the looks, but she felt them, absorbed them, categorized them. Jon would have been unnerved by this kind of attention. Bella catalogued it.

She passed two undergrads leaning on a campus bench, both sipping coffee from paper cups and whispering. One nudged the other when they noticed her. Bella didn’t react outwardly, but inside, something shimmered. They didn’t see a scientist out of place. They saw a woman who owns this moment.

Still, something gnawed at her as she neared the entrance to the main administration building. Her ID wouldn’t work. Her office was technically Jon Kekyll’s. Her credentials, her academic presence, her university email, all of that belonged to someone who no longer physically existed.

Her reflection in the dark glass of the doors stared back at her. Calm. Fashionable. Entirely outside the system she once helped build.

“I’m not Jon Kekyll anymore,” she murmured to the glass. “Not to them.”

And strangely, the realization didn’t sting. It felt like oxygen.

She drifted across the quad, watching the clusters of students congregating outside dorms and late-night cafés. Jeans and sweats, earbuds and laptops, energy drinks and banter.

Bella watched them like someone gazing into a memory they weren’t sure belonged to them. Then she saw her.

A sophomore, probably. Auburn-dyed bob. Big glasses. Leather backpack. Talking animatedly to a friend about a lit theory class. Her look was effortless. Smart. Slightly chaotic. It struck Bella as magnetic.

I could do that, she thought suddenly. I wouldn’t just blend in, I’d thrive. I’d know how to be her. Not mimic… inhabit.

It wasn’t just curiosity anymore. It was craving.

What if she enrolled in classes? What if she tried being young again, on paper and in spirit?

Bella’s breath quickened, her mind sparking with configurations. An entire life could be shaped and stepped into. Not a disguise. Not a costume. A true second path.

But before she could drift too far into daydream, reality interrupted.

A passing grad student bumped her shoulder lightly and muttered, “Sorry, ma’am.”

Bella froze.

Ma’am.

She didn’t hate it. She just… clocked it. Filed it.

The night was done. For now.

She circled back around through the back entrance of the building, weaving through faculty doors she still had memorized how to unlock, even if her face no longer matched the ID badge in her coat pocket. A few seconds of digital manipulation on the door scanner, and she was inside.

Back in the basement. Back in the lab.

The RAC pulsed faintly in the gloom, waiting. Patient. Expectant.

She stood before it and slowly peeled off her sunglasses, staring into the blank monitor screen. Her reflection hovered like a secret waiting to be spoken aloud.

“You want to see how far this can go?” she said softly.

Bella sat down, crossed her legs, and cracked her knuckles one by one. The device warmed to life under her touch.

And Bella smiled again, wider this time. And she began typing.