The cursor blinked at him like it was judging his life choices.
Aidan Cross slumped deeper into his hoodie, legs pulled up onto the chair, a cold energy drink sweating by his keyboard. Two monitors lit up his face in a bluish haze, displaying nothing exciting—just a half-finished freelance job for a real estate platform and a Reddit tab buried beneath thirty others.
"Stupid Tuesday," he muttered, dragging a snippet of code across the screen. The job was boring, the pay worse, and he was one bug away from putting his head through the drywall.
Then he noticed the tab.
It hadn't been there before.
∞_Sim: Project Infinity-Map.AI
Filename. No source. No history. Just floating in his temp directory like a ghost file. The icon looked like a warped version of the Marvel Studios logo, glitched and color-inverted.
"What the hell…?" he murmured, sitting up.
He hadn't clicked anything shady recently—at least, not that shady. Okay, maybe he'd poked around in some obscure code-sharing forums, just looking for inspiration—or weirdness. But nothing malicious. Not this.
He opened it.
The screen flickered. For a moment, static bled across both monitors, and then:
> Running INIT_INF-MAP.exe
SIMULATION CORE ONLINE.
Input: [USER ACCESS GRANTED – PROXY ROOT]
Welcome to the Infinity Map.
The interface was primitive—ASCII graphics and deep black terminal windows—but something about the structure made his skin crawl. It wasn't just a map. It was a nested lattice of universes. Layered coordinates. Strings of variables labeled with things like:
> DIM_616.S_STRANGE.ACCESS_POINT[LOCKED]
NEXUS.PROBABILITY_NODE=0.0000001
KANG_CORE>STABILITY: RED ZONE
Aidan froze.
He was staring at what looked like… a real-time simulation of the multiverse. Or a really elaborate fan project. But he hadn't downloaded it. And there was no indication of a source IP. The compiler was something he'd never seen before.
"This is either the coolest ARG ever, or I'm about to get hacked by someone in Latvia."
Still, he couldn't help himself. He clicked on a node labeled "Dim_199999"—the canonical MCU timeline—and watched it expand like a blooming fractal. Familiar names populated the matrix: Tony_Stark, Peter_Parker, Wanda_Maximoff, Nathaniel_Richards.
A section of the code blinked yellow—highlighted.
> UNSTABLE EVENT STRING: VARIANT DETECTED.
SPLINTER PATH: A_CROSS_UPLINK > LIVE.
Aidan's stomach turned.
A_CROSS?
He reached for the keyboard, hands slightly trembling, and began typing a comment into the terminal, trying to dissect the anomaly:
> // What is A_CROSS_UPLINK?
The system blinked. Then responded:
> YOU.
The cursor froze. The lights dimmed. And Aidan felt a chill—not in the room, but behind his eyes.
He leaned back. "Okay. Nope. This is a prank. A really elaborate, terrifying prank."
But the words still hung on the screen.
> YOU.
He wasn't smiling anymore.
He opened the source code tab, intending to close it—and realized it wasn't written in any language he recognized. It looked almost organic. Not code—design. Like a blueprint for something alive.
Then the simulation changed.
The dimensional map began shifting on its own. Nodes connected. A hum—low, mechanical—started emanating from his laptop, even though its fan was silent. The air in the room tightened. A smell like ozone. The cursor jumped to the bottom of the screen and began typing without his input:
> MULTIVERSAL HANDSHAKE REQUESTED.
SYNCING COGNITIVE FREQUENCY.
"No, no, no—" He slammed the Escape key.
Nothing happened.
His screen lit up white—and everything else went black.
The white screen bled into form.
But it wasn't a crash screen. Not even close.
Aidan blinked rapidly, expecting a kernel panic or maybe his GPU frying. But instead, his monitor was now displaying a spinning 3D model of… something. It looked like a gyroscope made of golden rings, floating inside a field of stars, constantly shifting angles and forming new geometric alignments.
And around it? Strings of living code.
Not just visualized—reactive. When Aidan shifted in his seat, the camera view shifted too. His screen wasn't just showing data. It was sensing him.
He hovered the cursor over a pulsating node in the bottom right.
> UNLOCK: LATCH_CORE | KEY: OBSERVER_SIGNATURE
"Observer signature?" he muttered. "That's not ominous."
He hesitated. His brain screamed this was how horror movies started. But the developer in him was fascinated. He knew this wasn't like any simulation he'd ever seen. Not AR, not VR. Not even close. It was functioning like a bridge.
Just to be safe, he launched his packet sniffer. No outbound traffic. No IP requests. Nothing was leaving his system.
So… where was this pulling from?
He opened the kernel thread log. A fresh line had just populated it:
> CROSS, AIDAN – ACCESS CONFIRMED
QUANTUM IMPRINT MATCHED
MULTIVERSAL BOOT SEQUENCE ARMED
He didn't type any of that.
And then the interface spoke.
Not in code. Not in system audio. With an actual voice.
> "Hello, observer. Do you think you are the author of your reality?"
The voice was deep, layered, and smooth—like Jeffrey Wright had been possessed by HAL 9000. It vibrated inside Aidan's skull. He scrambled to mute the audio—nothing changed.
> "You are now within the proximity of convergence. Prepare for phase transition."
"Phase transition? What the hell is phase transition?"
He typed as fast as he could, overriding the process.
> KILL -9 init_inf-map
FORCE STOP...
No response.
The spinning gyroscope on screen flared into gold-white brilliance, and a new window opened with only one command:
> RUN PORTAL.LATCH
He hesitated.
Then hit Enter.
Instantly, the gyroscope broke apart. The golden rings shot outward like a sonic boom. Lines of code fractured like glass, and Aidan's apartment lights flickered violently.
And then something changed in the air.
His monitor no longer showed the multiverse.
It showed him.
A live video feed. From behind.
He turned sharply—but no camera was there. The walls behind him shimmered faintly, like heat waves bending light.
"Okay. Nope. This isn't a sim anymore. This is—this is—"
The screen displayed one final line:
> TRANSFER ENGAGED. PLEASE REMAIN CALM.
Then all the power died.
Every bulb, every LED in his gaming tower, the hum of his fridge. Dead silence.
And a pulse of energy, like being punched in the chest by nothing.
Aidan stumbled backward as the walls of his apartment peeled like wallpaper, revealing a vast blackness streaked with color. Floating shapes—skyscrapers, street lamps, what looked like fragments of whole cities—flickered into the void.
Then the floor vanished.
And Aidan Cross fell screaming into the multiverse.
He didn't hit the floor.
There was no floor.
Aidan flailed in weightless freefall, the air sucked from his lungs, his vision spinning with strobe-flash fragments of memory. His apartment, the glowing gyroscope, his own face blinking back at him from the terminal—all of it fractured like a dropped mirror.
Then: light.
A tunnel of it. Rushing past him in violent streaks—blue, red, gold. There were voices in the current. Some spoke English. Some whispered in languages that felt like math equations being screamed into his bones.
"LATCH SYNCED. DIMENSIONAL BOOTING."
The voice returned, now speaking from nowhere and everywhere.
A field of runes spun around him, erratic and unstable—some of them looked like Strange's sigils, others like alien calligraphy rendered in cracked neon. They weren't flat—they moved around him like clockwork gears. He instinctively tried to reach for one—
—and immediately regretted it.
As his fingers grazed the edge of a floating ring, pain shot up his arm, not physical but informational. Memories that weren't his flashed behind his eyes. He saw a version of Captain America fighting in space, Thor with both eyes missing, a city where Spider-Man wore a symbiote made of Doctor Doom's armor.
Each image blinked out like an overloaded reel.
Aidan screamed.
"STOP! I'm not supposed to be here! I didn't sign up for this!"
But the system didn't care.
> PRIMARY VECTOR LOCKED. REALITY: 199999-FRACTURE
TRANSFER: IRREVERSIBLE
PHASE: CROSSING
The tunnel narrowed.
Ahead, he saw a point of collapsing brightness—like a singularity made of raw possibility. It was pulsing, unstable, smeared with red lightning. He was being pulled toward it.
"Come on, come on—wake up!" he yelled, slapping at his chest like it would stop the fall. "This has to be a dream. This is a dream!"
The light consumed everything.
He felt his atoms stretch. His thoughts smear.
He was falling toward the eye of the multiverse.
There was no up or down anymore.
Aidan's body wasn't falling—it was unraveling. He felt every molecule scream in protest as space folded over itself. The tunnel of light he'd been sucked through crumbled behind him like torn paper. The edges of the multiverse were burning, glitching, bleeding sideways into themselves.
And all he could do was scream.
Every second stretched across centuries. And with every breath, another world punched its way into his head:
A city suspended in midair with Iron Man statues towering over crowds wearing glowing robes.
A snowy village guarded by a winged Black Panther.
A broken throne where a Loki in golden armor wept alone.
Each flash was like a download spliced into his brain—Aidan didn't just see them, he felt them. The temperature. The noise. The fear. The blood.
> "Anomaly recognized."
"Signal displaced."
"Unknown Nexus agent detected."
"—deviant variable—cross-pattern interference—"
Voices. Robotic. Ethereal. Glitching. All shouting over each other like corrupted radio channels.
He clutched his head. "MAKE IT STOP!"
It didn't.
Instead, the tunnel collapsed.
Aidan hit something solid—but it wasn't the ground. It was a wall of force, like falling into a pane of glass. His spine twisted, his vision blackened—and then...
Everything stopped.
Silence.
The light vanished.
He floated.
Weightless. Mindless.
The screaming timelines dulled into a low hum, like the whole multiverse had collectively taken a breath and held it.
And then—
Gravity.
It hit him like a truck.
Aidan's body slammed onto cold asphalt, hard. The impact knocked every thought out of his head. He lay on his back, groaning, gasping, the world above him spinning into clarity.
But it wasn't his world.
Not anymore.
The first thing Aidan registered was pain.
A dull, bruising throb in his ribs. His back felt like it had been used as a speed bump by the Hulk. He groaned, rolled onto his side, and blinked against the light stinging his eyes.
Sky.
But not his sky.
Overhead, fractured clouds pulsed with a faint purplish glow, like someone had bruised the atmosphere. The sun looked wrong—too sharp, too steady, like it was stuck halfway through an HDR render. And the air smelled metallic, charged, like there had just been a thunderstorm inside a microwave.
Aidan sat up slowly.
He was in the middle of a city street. Abandoned cars sat at odd angles, some hovering inches off the pavement as if frozen in mid-jump. One was half-melded into a streetlamp. The buildings stretched crooked toward the sky—some shimmering like holograms, others flickering between architectural styles. A nearby diner shifted back and forth every few seconds: retro chrome, then brutalist cement, then glass-and-vibranium curves.
He turned.
And froze.
Stark Tower—THE Stark Tower—loomed ahead.
But something was wrong with it.
The left half was classic: the iconic angular Stark "A" embedded in brushed steel. The right side? Ruined. Gutted. And behind that wreckage, another tower flickered in and out of phase—a version that said "QENG" instead. It glitched in and out like a corrupted video file, existing and not existing at the same time.
"…No way," Aidan whispered.
His mouth was dry. He stood shakily, brushing glass and grime off his jeans. His laptop bag was gone. His hoodie was torn. His phone was fried—screen shattered, the battery still hissing faintly like it had tried to eat itself.
He took a few steps forward. The ground trembled.
A stoplight above him flickered red–yellow–green–blue. Then red again. The light pulsed once like a heartbeat and froze, suspended sideways in midair.
"…This isn't a dream," he whispered.
A soft wind carried debris down the street—pages of comic books, actual pages, flapping like birds. He caught a glimpse of one as it fluttered past:
"KANG TRIUMPHS — EARTH-838 IN RUINS"
Another page blew by. This one showed a different headline:
"IRON MAN RETURNS?"
Two realities. Two timelines. Merging.
His brain couldn't hold it all. Every instinct screamed at him to sit, breathe, reset.
Instead, he looked up at the impossible skyline.
His voice was a whisper, barely audible:
"…Where the hell am I?"
And behind him, somewhere down the fractured street, a distant hum started to rise—like something ancient was waking up.
And looking for him.