Party Connection Unstable

Chapter 1: Dracula Spears an Alien
The first portal opened because Evan Mercer wanted to prove Dracula could spear an alien off a roof and land in a swimming pool.
That was not how the authorities would explain it later.
There would be maps of the storm. Seismic charts. Emergency-call transcripts. Grainy phone videos slowed down frame by frame until every frightened face became a square of colored pixels. Experts would argue over whether the blue light had appeared before the earthquake or after it. Investigators would ask how many students had been in the courtyard, how many had entered the water, and why no bodies had ever been recovered.
But the truth began with Evan standing on the third-floor roof of Magnolia Landing dressed in a twenty-nine-dollar Dracula costume, pointing down at the pool and saying, “We can absolutely make that.”
Cole Maddox leaned over the gutter beside him.
The courtyard seemed much farther away from the roof than it had from the ground.
“No,” Cole said. “You can absolutely make that. I’m the one you’re planning to use as a landing cushion.”
His reptilian hood sagged over one eyebrow. The costume had arrived folded into a package the size of a textbook and still carried square creases across the green foam chest. Two rubber antennae sprouted from the top of his head. One stood upright. The other had surrendered sometime around nine thirty.
Evan pulled his cape away from the gutter before it snagged.
“That is not how a spear works.”
“I know how a spear works.”
“You played one year of middle-school football.”
“I watched you put Rhett through a folding table in his mother’s garage.”
“That was different.”
“Because the table consented?”
Below them, several hundred students crowded the enclosed courtyard between the apartment buildings. Purple string lights looped from balcony to balcony. Plastic ghosts swung from railings. Skeletons sat in lawn chairs holding red cups. Someone had hung a banner over the second-floor walkway that read:
HALLOWEEN AT MAGNOLIA — MAKE BAD DECISIONS RESPONSIBLY
The responsible part had been crossed out in black paint.
Bass thundered from portable speakers around the pool. The song changed halfway through every chorus because three people were fighting for control of the playlist.
Near the shallow end, a man dressed as a referee counted while two women in inflatable dinosaur suits attempted to wrestle on a floating mattress. A cluster of superheroes argued with a group of cowboys over the rules to a drinking game that appeared to have no rules. A six-foot inflatable pink flamingo drifted in slow circles through the center of the water, peacefully unaware that it had been selected as the landing marker for a catastrophe.
Rhett Dawson crouched several feet behind Evan and Cole with his phone held sideways.
His homemade wrestling mask had begun as white fabric, but sweat had turned portions of it translucent.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I need commitment. The first attempt cannot look hesitant.”
“There is not going to be a first attempt,” Cole said.
Rhett lowered the phone. “That sounds like hesitation.”
“It sounds like a survival instinct.”
“Same thing, but less entertaining.”
Evan spread his arms and let the black cape catch the wind.
The crowd below noticed him.
Someone pointed.
Then someone else shouted, “Dracula!”
A chant started near the pool.
“Jump! Jump! Jump!”
Cole closed his eyes.
“I hate every person here.”
“You don’t know most of them.”
“That makes it worse.”
The roof access door opened behind them.
Mallory Keene stepped out with a camera hanging from her neck and an expression suggesting she had climbed three flights of stairs specifically to witness a crime.
She was dressed as an old-fashioned newspaper reporter—gray skirt, white blouse, press card tucked into the band of a narrow hat. The costume would have been charming if she had not been carrying herself like a prosecutor.
“Tell me,” she said, “that the two of you are not about to jump off this building.”
“We are not about to jump off this building,” Evan said.
Mallory looked at Cole.
“He is about to tackle me off this building,” Cole said.
“That is jumping with extra consequences.”
“It’s a spear,” Rhett corrected.
Mallory turned toward him. “Why are you encouraging this?”
“Art needs patrons.”
“You’re filming it.”
“History needs documentation.”
“Evidence,” she said. “The word you’re looking for is evidence.”
A gust swept across the roof, stronger than the last. The plastic fangs in Evan’s mouth shifted. He pushed them back into place with his tongue.
The weather forecast had called for a warm, cloudy Halloween. Instead, a strange bank of dark clouds had rolled over Tuscaloosa shortly after sunset, swallowing the stars and holding there as if the storm had parked directly over the city.
Lightning flashed silently inside the clouds.
Not downward.
Sideways.
Blue veins crawled across the sky from one horizon to the other.
Cole looked up.
“That’s new.”
Rhett raised his phone and filmed the clouds.
Mallory lifted her camera.
A second flash illuminated the courtyard. This one was purple and bright enough to turn every costume below into a frozen photograph.
For half a second, the party went quiet.
Then the music returned and somebody cheered.
Evan looked over the edge again.
The roof sloped toward the courtyard, with a lower maintenance ledge extending over the third-floor balconies. From there, the pool sat almost directly beneath them. It was a long fall, but not an impossible one. Not if they cleared the railing. Not if they aimed correctly. Not if Cole stopped trying to stand upright during the spear.
“We jump together,” Evan said. “I drive my shoulder through your center. You fold. We rotate. We hit sideways.”
Cole stared at him.
“You’ve put more thought into this than you did your degree.”
“That is unfair.”
“You changed majors three times.”
“I was exploring.”
“You failed geology.”
“The rocks were judgmental.”
Rhett began recording again.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
Mallory stepped between them and the ledge.
“No.”
The word was not loud, but it carried.
Evan sighed. “Mal.”
“Do not ‘Mal’ me. If you fall short, you hit concrete. If you overshoot, you hit concrete. If your cape catches the railing, you hang yourself dressed as Dracula in front of three hundred people.”
“Four hundred,” Rhett said.
She glared at him.
“Rough estimate.”
Cole raised his hand.
“For the record, I agree with Mallory.”
“Thank you.”
“But,” Cole continued, “I agreed before she arrived, and that accomplished nothing.”
From the courtyard, Tripp Calloway’s voice boomed through a microphone.
“Magnolia Landing!”
The crowd roared.
Tripp stood on a table near the deep end wearing a velvet robe and a plastic crown. He had organized the party, borrowed half the sound equipment, and convinced the apartment management that the courtyard gathering would contain fewer than fifty guests.
He lifted a red cup toward the roof.
“Dracula has challenged the undefeated champion of Mars!”
Cole leaned over the gutter.
“I’m not from Mars!”
Tripp pointed at him.
“The champion speaks!”
The crowd cheered again.
Near the table, Bree Holloway pushed through the costumed bodies with the stiff posture of a resident assistant who had reached the limit of negotiation. White costume wings protruded from her back, one bent lower than the other.
She snatched the microphone from Tripp.
“This party is over at midnight,” she announced.
The crowd booed.
“It was over at eleven thirty,” she continued. “Then someone set a decorative coffin on fire.”
A voice called, “It looked real!”
“It was made of cardboard!”
Tripp reclaimed the microphone.
“Midnight it is!”
Bree jabbed a finger into his chest. Even from the roof, Evan recognized the argument forming.
Beside them, Priya Desai stood on a lounge chair in a pointed wizard hat, holding a cardboard staff above the crowd to keep it from being crushed. She had spent the last ten minutes trying to convince Jonah Pike to leave.
Jonah was not dressed for the party. He wore jeans, running shoes, and a gray hooded sweatshirt. He had come looking for his sister.
Sadie Pike was somewhere in the mass of people wearing handmade silver armor and white feathered wings. She had texted Jonah at nine that she would be home soon. It was now nearly midnight.
Micah Boone moved through the courtyard in a blue cape, collecting car keys from anyone who appeared incapable of operating a toaster, much less a vehicle. He had come as the designated driver and had somehow become the unofficial keeper of twenty-seven phones, twelve wallets, and one decorative sword.
Elena Ruiz stood near the pool in a black plague-doctor mask pushed up onto her forehead, wrapping a towel around the hand of someone who had cut himself opening a bottle.
Sloane Bishop filmed Tripp and Bree’s argument while dressed as a cat burglar whose outfit seemed designed for an entirely different kind of burglary.
Officer Marla Vickers had just entered through the courtyard gate.
No costume. Full uniform. Both hands on her belt.
Tripp saw her and lowered the microphone.
The crowd’s energy changed immediately.
Not silence.
Movement.
Cups disappeared behind backs. Bottles slid beneath tables. A student dressed as a banana walked directly into a hedge and remained there.
Rhett zoomed his phone toward the courtyard.
“This is becoming a documentary.”
Mallory grabbed his wrist and lowered it.
“Stop filming people who don’t know they’re being filmed.”
“They all know. There are forty phones pointed at the courtyard.”
“Forty-one,” Cole said. “The pirate on the balcony has two.”
Officer Vickers reached the pool deck.
Bree met her halfway.
Whatever Bree said was lost beneath the music, but Vickers looked toward the smoking cardboard coffin, the overcrowded balconies, and finally the roof.
Her eyes stopped on Evan and Cole.
She lifted one hand and pointed toward the access door.
Evan smiled and waved.
Officer Vickers did not wave back.
Cole pulled at Evan’s cape.
“We have been officially told not to do this. I feel like that should end the debate.”
Evan looked down at the crowd one last time.
The pool lights glowed blue beneath the water. The flamingo had drifted nearly into perfect position, floating just right of center.
He imagined the video.
Dracula flying through the night.
Shoulder buried in the alien champion’s chest.
The two of them crashing into the water.
A clean splash.
A thousand shares before breakfast.
A story they would tell for years.
He stepped away from the edge.
“All right,” he said. “We’re not doing it.”
Cole exhaled.
Mallory’s shoulders loosened.
Rhett lowered his phone in disappointment.
Then the sky cracked open.
There was no thunder.
The sound was sharper, like glass the size of the world breaking directly above them.
Every light in Magnolia Landing went out.
The music died.
The balconies vanished into darkness.
For one breath, the only illumination came from the pool, glowing pale blue in the center of the courtyard.
Then emergency lights flickered on inside the buildings.
Red.
Off.
Red again.
Someone screamed.
The roof shifted under Evan’s feet.
Not shook.
Shifted.
The entire building lurched several inches to the right. Air-conditioning units scraped across their mounts. A vent tore loose and rolled downslope. Cole crashed into Evan. Mallory fell to one knee. Rhett’s phone slipped from his hand and skittered toward the gutter.
Below, hundreds of people moved at once.
The ground rolled beneath them in waves.
Lounge chairs overturned. Tables collapsed. The inflatable dinosaurs fell into the shallow end. People poured toward the courtyard exits and found them blocked by people trying to come back inside.
A low roar rose from beneath the buildings.
Earthquake.
Evan reached for Cole.
The roof bucked again.
Mallory slid toward the ledge.
Evan lunged, caught her wrist, and dropped flat. Her camera slammed against the roof. Rhett grabbed the back of Evan’s coat and pulled until Mallory found her footing.
Then the tornado sirens began.
The sound rolled over the city in a mechanical wail.
One siren.
Then another.
Then all of them.
Phones erupted with emergency alerts below. Hundreds of identical tones shrieked from the courtyard.
TORNADO WARNING. SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.
A moment later, another alert replaced it.
SEISMIC EVENT DETECTED. AVOID DAMAGED STRUCTURES.
“Inside!” Mallory shouted.
“Which part?” Cole shouted back. “The tornado building or the earthquake outside?”
Blue lightning struck the courtyard without touching the ground.
It stopped ten feet above the pool.
The bolt hung there.
Branching.
Twisting.
Alive.
Every remaining light flashed on at once.
The pool turned white.
People nearest the water stumbled backward. Others could not. The crowd behind them surged. A cowboy went over the edge. A woman dressed as a fairy fell after him while trying to grab his arm.
They struck the surface.
Neither came back up.
The pool did not splash.
It swallowed them without a ripple.
Priya saw it.
She dropped her cardboard staff and pointed.
“Something’s wrong with the water!”
A man in a football uniform shoved past her. The ground moved again, throwing him sideways. He struck Jonah, who fell against the pool rail.
Sadie appeared from the crowd and caught the back of her brother’s sweatshirt.
Micah grabbed both of them.
Behind them, three more people tumbled into the pool.
Gone.
No splash.
No bodies beneath the surface.
The water was still perfectly blue.
Then the deep end began to rotate.
The current drew the pink flamingo in a slow circle.
Officer Vickers pushed through the crowd toward the edge.
“Back away from the pool!”
Someone fell in front of her. She caught him.
Another person slammed into her from behind.
The pool deck cracked.
A jagged line split the concrete from the shallow end to the courtyard gate. One side dropped several inches. Screaming students lost their footing and slid toward the water.
Bree grabbed Tripp by the robe.
Tripp grabbed Sloane.
Elena caught Bree’s wing.
For a moment they formed a chain.
Then the plastic wing tore free.
Bree fell.
Micah released Jonah long enough to dive for her. He caught Bree’s hand, but the collapsing deck carried them both over the edge.
They vanished together.
“Micah!” Evan shouted.
He moved toward the ledge.
Cole caught him around the chest.
“You can’t help them from here!”
Below, the water swirled faster.
The flamingo spun in the center.
The courtyard had become a funnel of bodies and debris. People who reached the exits found metal gates twisted in their frames. Those who ran for the buildings recoiled as glass shattered from windows above them.
Officer Vickers entered the water intentionally.
She jumped after Micah and Bree.
The pool accepted her without a splash.
Rhett stared down at the phone he had recovered from the gutter.
Its camera was still recording.
“I got it,” he whispered.
Mallory turned on him.
“Put the phone away!”
“No. I mean—I got them disappearing.”
Lightning flashed again.
This time the bolt struck the pool.
The surface collapsed inward.
Not downward.
Inward.
The water became a hole wearing the shape of water.
For one impossible instant, Evan saw another sky beneath it.
Green clouds.
Three moons.
A black stone tower rising upside down through the center of the deep end.
Then the image vanished beneath spinning blue light.
Rhett’s phone emitted a sharp tone.
Not an emergency alert.
Something else.
The screen filled with white lettering.
Rhett looked down.
“What is that?”
Mallory’s camera chimed.
Cole’s pocket vibrated.
Then Evan’s.
Every phone on the roof displayed the same message.
LOCAL INSTANCE FAILURE
UNSCHEDULED TRANSFER EVENT DETECTED
INITIALIZING EMERGENCY PARTY ASSIGNMENT
Cole read the words twice.
“This is a joke.”
“No signal,” Rhett said.
“My phone doesn’t have an app that looks like this,” Mallory said.
The text vanished.
A number appeared.
UNASSIGNED PLAYERS DETECTED: 47
The count changed.
48
Below them, Priya was dragged into the pool while holding Jonah’s arm.
Sadie jumped after her brother.
50
Tripp lost his grip on a broken railing.
Sloane caught his robe.
Both disappeared over the edge.
52
The number held.
Then a new line appeared.
PARTY CAPACITY EXCEEDED
FORMING PROVISIONAL RAID GROUP
Rhett laughed once.
It was not amusement.
“This cannot be real.”
The roof dropped beneath them.
A section near the access door caved inward. Mallory fell through to her waist before Evan and Rhett hauled her free. The roof surface split with a tearing sound and tilted toward the courtyard.
All four began sliding.
Cole grabbed a ventilation pipe.
Evan grabbed Cole.
Rhett dug his shoes against the shingles.
Mallory clung to Evan’s cape.
Below them, the pool waited.
The pink flamingo circled the glowing center like the hand of a clock.
The tilted roof stopped moving.
For half a second, all four hung there.
Rhett looked at Evan.
“Do not say it.”
Evan tightened his grip on Cole.
Cole’s cheap alien hood had twisted sideways. One human eye stared through the mouth opening.
“Whatever you are thinking,” Cole said, “no.”
“The roof is going.”
“No.”
“We have to clear the deck.”
“No.”
“The pool is the only thing underneath us.”
“The pool is eating people.”
The building groaned.
Evan looked at Mallory.
She was still holding his cape with one hand and the broken gutter with the other.
He could not carry everyone.
He could not climb back up.
Another section of roof collapsed.
The ledge beneath Evan’s boots broke free.
Cole’s hand slipped on the ventilation pipe.
Evan made the decision without saying it.
He shoved Mallory toward Rhett.
Rhett caught her.
Then Evan wrapped both arms around Cole’s waist.
Cole’s eyes widened.
“You promised we weren’t doing this.”
“I promised before the building tried to kill us.”
“This is not better!”
The pipe tore loose.
Evan drove forward.
His left shoulder struck Cole squarely beneath the chest, into the upper stomach. Cole folded over the impact as Evan locked his arms around his waist. The collapsing roof launched them beyond the balcony railing.
For one breathtaking second, they were suspended above Magnolia Landing.
Dracula and the alien champion.
Cape spread against the lightning.
Rubber antenna bent backward.
Cole’s arms flailing.
The pool directly below them.
Not the concrete.
Not the railing.
The exact center.
Evan saw the pink flamingo spin aside as their combined shadow crossed the water.
Cole screamed something that the wind stole.
Evan tucked his head beside Cole’s ribs and held on.
They struck the portal shoulder-first.
There was no splash.
Cold vanished.
Sound vanished.
The world turned inside out.

Evan fell through a sky filled with broken blue squares.
Cole remained trapped in his arms, but both of them were moving without wind, dropping through layers of translucent images.
The courtyard appeared above them.
Then below.
Then miles away.
Students floated through the darkness in scattered clusters—Bree, Micah, Priya, Jonah, Sadie, Tripp, Sloane, Officer Vickers, and dozens Evan did not recognize.
Some were unconscious.
Some screamed.
Some clawed at empty space.
Glowing symbols appeared above every person.
Names.
Numbers.
Empty bars waiting to be filled.
A voice spoke from nowhere.
ORIGIN WORLD CONFIRMED
PLANETARY STATUS: UNREGISTERED
TRANSFER COHORT: INCOMPLETE
ASSIGNING STARTING ZONE
The darkness beneath them opened.
A green valley spread across an impossible landscape. Black forests climbed mountains that curved into the sky. Rivers of silver light crossed the ground. Far in the distance, something enormous moved behind a wall of clouds.
The falling students accelerated.
Cole twisted in Evan’s arms.
“Tell me you see this.”
“I see it.”
“This means I am not unconscious.”
“You could be having the same concussion.”
“That is not how concussions work!”
Blue text unfolded in front of Evan.
PARTY MEMBER DETECTED
COLE MADDOX
CONNECTION ESTABLISHED
Another message appeared.
UNIQUE CLASS COMPATIBILITY FOUND
The words flickered before he could read what followed.
A warning replaced them.
BOUNDARY ERROR
PLAYER EVAN MERCER IS IMPROPERLY ANCHORED
CROSS-WORLD SYNCHRONIZATION FAILED
Cole’s grip tightened around Evan’s coat.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
The green valley rushed toward them.
Evan saw stone pillars surrounding a circular platform. Figures waited below in armor, robes, animal hides, and clothing that did not belong to any country he knew.
The other students fell toward the platform.
Evan stopped.
Cole did not.
Their hands tore apart.
Cole continued downward, reaching for him.
“Evan!”
Evan kicked against nothing.
“Cole!”
The distance between them widened.
A final message filled Evan’s vision.
PARTY CONNECTION UNSTABLE
MEMBER STATUS: ACTIVE
SIGNAL INTEGRITY: 1%
FORCING DISCONNECT
Cole disappeared into white light.
The valley vanished.
The interface shattered.
And Evan Mercer fell alone.