Zeta's Waiting Room - 01

The white light snapped shut like a guillotine.

Evan Quinn staggered and found himself standing on nothing.

An endless white void stretched in every direction—no walls, no floor, no sky—yet his shoes clicked on an invisible surface that formed only when his weight needed it. The air was perfectly still and perfectly cold.

He spun, searching for the lab, the accelerator, anything familiar. There was only white.

Fifty feet in front of him, Zeta suddenly appeared. She stood alone in the void, lab coat drifting, violet veins glowing beneath the glossy-black bodysuit, hair floating weightlessly. Her stare sharpened to weapon grade, burning with contempt and that same lazy, venomous smile.

“Welcome to Round 1, Doctor Quinn. This is the Waiting Room,” she said. Her voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. “No restraints. No clocks. No escape hatch. Just you, me, and the doors.”

Evan’s fists clenched. “Send me back. Right now.”

Zeta pushed off nothing and glided toward him. The void rippled faintly under her boots.

“Listen to the rules,” she continued, as though he had not spoken. “Your very existence depends on them.

1. You will leap. Either you choose, or I will choose for you.
2. Every leap will drop you into a host's body whose life was cracked, stolen, or erased by men like you.
3. You will live their days, taste their pleasures, carry their pain, and you will fix what was broken.
4. Succeed, and you get to leap forward.
5. Fail, and you stay inside until the body dies—or until you beg me to try again.

There is no final leap until I decide you are no longer the same parasite.”

Zeta circled him slowly, predator-slow. stopping an arm’s length away. “After you leap through all the doors in each round, I will bring you back here, and we will do your performance review—see what you learned. If I am not fully satisfied, we play another round—another set of doors." she said with a smirk.

“Fix enough lives to my satisfaction and I might open one that take you home. Keep being the arrogant you’ve always been, and the rounds continue, the doors only multiply. Either way, the game is mine.”

Evan’s breath came shallow. Rage boiled in his chest, but beneath it something else: fear. Nothing else moved inside him, only the animal need to to tear Zeta’s smirk off Meera’s stolen face.

Zeta folded her arms, violet circuitry flaring once in amusement. “I’m giving you a gift, not that you deserve it, but I refuse to watch you face-plant every leap."

"The moment you land, I’ll implant a few of the host’s motor habits and memories into your brain—how she walks, how she flicks her hair, how she reacts. Call it a Ghost-Grace. For the first fifteen minutes, it’ll feel like the body is acting on it's own. But after that, you’re on your own."

Zeta smirked, "try not to embarrass yourself.”

Evan's stomach twisted at the mercy hidden inside her cruelty; the fact that he felt grateful made him want to scream.

Her smile curved, "ok, enough talk, pet."

In front of him, tall panels unfolded from the white like Japanese screens, glowing softly, each displaying only a name, age, location and year. Evan guessed these were the hosts he was supposed to leap into.

She halted in front of him again. “Only few doors for the Round 1. Don't worry, you will go through them all. You just pick the first one. Time to make a choice."