The coil in the lab sang one note too high, and the air folded like wet paper. When it snapped flat again, Mara felt wrong. Her phone said 9:42. Her sister Ines, three feet away, looked up slowly, like a video still loading. Mara waved. Ines waved back two minutes later. Their clocks matched, but the sisters did not. Mara was ahead now, and she could feel herself sliding further forward.

Mara grabbed a notebook and wrote, 'Don't touch the coil again.' She held it up. Two minutes later, Ines read it, nodded, and stepped back from the machine. It worked. They could talk, just slowly. Mara decided they would fix this together, one written message at a time.

Ines wrote back on her own pad: 'The lab logs every power spike. Check the computer.' Mara pulled up the file. There it was, the exact moment the coil sang too high. A reverse setting was listed, grayed out, marked 'requires two synced operators.' They couldn't sync. That was the whole problem.