Taking the risk - ep1

Epidode 1: We did it!

The basement buzzed with a soft electric hum, cables coiled like serpents around their feet, and screens flickered with rows of scrolling data. Dimitri sat cross-legged on the cold cement floor, soldering a final connection on a metallic ring no larger than a bicycle tire, while Ana adjusted the calibrator interface mounted on the wall.

“You know this could kill you, right?” Ana said without looking up, her fingers dancing over a touchscreen. Her voice was casual, but her eyes kept flicking toward Dimitri.

“If it does, I’m officially naming you the worst lab partner ever,” Dimitri replied, grinning through the fumes. His shaggy brown hair was tied back loosely, smudges of grease streaking his cheek. “We agreed on one thing. If we crack inter-universal travel, it’s going to be us. Not some military lab. Us.”

Ana pushed her glasses up and finally turned to him, her mouth forming a flat line. “Cracking it is one thing. Testing it is another.”

He exhaled, then stood and walked over to the core device: a ring suspended upright in a custom frame, emitting a faint pulse of purple-blue light. They’d spent almost two years building it in this dusty basement, one component at a time. Skipping parties. Flunking half a semester. Living off instant noodles.

“It's ready,” he said, more to himself than to her.

Ana leaned against the table, arms crossed. “So, what? You want to jump through a hole in space like it’s a theme park ride?”

“No,” Dimitri answered. “I want to make history.”

There was silence. Then a sigh.

“You always do this,” she muttered. “You jump, I catch.”

He smiled at that.

She went back to the interface. “Okay. The dimensional signature will auto-lock once you're on the other side. Your watch will ping every ten minutes. After thirty, I pull you back, whether you're ready or not.”

“Sounds comforting.”

“You’ve got exactly one emergency override,” she added, tapping a hidden menu. “Push and hold the central button on the watch. It'll trigger a homing signal. If anything happens, I can find you. But you better not break it.”

Dimitri stepped into the ring and turned to her. For a second, his expression softened. He looked less like an inventor and more like a kid about to leave home for the first time.

“See you in thirty.”

Ana hesitated, hand hovering above the activation panel.

Then, with a deep breath, she hit it.

The ring roared to life. Lights flared, the air cracked like lightning, and the space inside the ring turned black—no reflection, no light, just pure void.

Dimitri didn’t flinch.

He stepped forward and vanished.

Ana stood frozen for a long moment, staring at the emptiness where her best friend had stood.

Then she whispered, “Please come back.”

Thirty minutes earlier.

Ana paced back and forth in the basement, her socked feet making soft sounds against the concrete. On the wall, the interface displayed a countdown timer—29:46 and ticking. Her hands trembled slightly, not from fear, but from the weight of responsibility.

They had tested the machine before—with inanimate objects, cameras, even a few drones. All returned intact. But sending Dimitri, a human being, was a different story.

She stopped in front of the makeshift control panel. Blueprints were taped haphazardly to the wall beside it, covered in scribbles, coffee stains, and revision marks. The central power core was stable. The quantum loop showed no anomalies. The watch on Dimitri's wrist was synced and emitting a faint pulse.

Everything was working. Theoretically.

But that was the problem with theory—reality never cared.

Ana tapped a screen to bring up the live telemetry feed. Nothing. Of course, there wouldn’t be. The destination universe didn’t have a corresponding frequency or anchor—they were sending Dimitri in blind. It was only the watch that allowed her to track and recover him.

She looked at the countdown again.

28:10

She inhaled deeply, trying to suppress the twisting knot in her stomach. Dimitri had always been the reckless one—brilliant, impulsive, emotionally fearless. She was the architect, the one who tested every wire twice and refused to let anyone near the machine until it was perfect. They made a strange pair. But somehow, it worked.

She pulled out her phone and opened a recording app.

“If this works, and Dimitri comes back whole, we’ll publish. We’ll be the first. Not just interdimensional theory—but actual, proven traversal. And if not…”

She stopped, unable to finish the sentence.

Instead, she deleted the recording and sat down on the metal stool, eyes fixed on the black ring still humming softly in the center of the room.

“I should’ve gone instead,” she muttered.

But they both knew why she didn’t. The system required a ground operator. And he was the one with the watch.

Ana checked the panel again. Still synced. Vital signs flatlined, but that was normal—there was no cross-universe biometric transmission.

Still, it unnerved her. Every second felt longer than the last.

26:03

She clenched her jaw.

"Just hold on, idiot. Don't break anything... or yourself."

She went back to work—checking the stabilizer coils, verifying the harmonic resonance alignment, keeping her hands busy so her mind wouldn’t spiral.

Dimitri had thirty minutes.

She just had to wait. And pray he wouldn’t come back in pieces.

The room dimmed as Ana entered the final sequence into the interface. A low hum pulsed through the air, rising in pitch. The ring at the center of the room began to glow brighter, bands of energy circling its frame like orbiting comets.

Dimitri stepped inside the ring. The floor beneath him trembled slightly, but he stood still, hands at his sides, face lit by the violet shimmer. He looked over at Ana.

"You sure this thing isn’t going to fry me?" he asked with a nervous smirk.

"Honestly? Ninety-four percent sure," Ana replied without missing a beat. "I’d give you better odds, but I ran out of coffee this morning."

He snorted, but there was tension in his shoulders now. His eyes flicked toward the swirling light around him, then back to her.

Ana hesitated, hand poised over the activation key. “Last chance to back out.”

Dimitri's grin softened. “You’d go if I didn’t.”

She didn’t respond, because they both knew it was true.

He glanced down at the sleek black watch strapped to his wrist, its face glowing faintly. “So, thirty minutes. I’ll get pinged every ten?”

“Yeah. And at thirty, I’ll yank you back whether you’re ready or not. Emergency recall if you need it sooner—just press and hold the center.”

He nodded once. “Got it.”

Ana’s fingers hovered, then descended. “Charging field… now.”

The machine surged to life.

Lights exploded outward from the ring’s edge, a ripple in the air twisting space like a heatwave. A high-pitched tone filled the room, the sound of spacetime bending.

Dimitri’s hair lifted slightly from the static. He squinted, blinking against the brightness. “It’s like standing in a microwave. A really pissed-off one.”

Ana’s eyes flicked between monitors. “Stable… stable… dimensional sync at ninety-nine percent…”

Then the center of the ring turned black.

Not dark—black. A complete absence of light. Like a hole punched through reality.

The hum peaked. Dust vibrated from the shelves. One of the hanging lights above them flickered, then blew out with a pop.

Ana gritted her teeth. “Sync complete. Gate is open.”

Dimitri’s throat bobbed as he swallowed.

“See you on the other side,” he said, voice barely audible over the noise.

And then, with one step, he disappeared into the void.

The ring hissed as the blackness flickered and collapsed, the light dimming, the sound fading away into a low thrum.

Ana was left alone in the basement, the hum of the machine dying to a whisper.

She stared at the empty space where her best friend had just stood, her reflection flickering in the dark glass of the interface screen.

"Come back," she whispered, then leaned forward to check the watch's trace signal.

Still pulsing.

Still alive.

For now.

At first, there was only motion.

Dimitri felt his body stretch and compress, like being pulled through a tube made of rubber bands and static. There was no up or down, only endless speed through a colorless void. Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the motion stopped—and he fell.

He hit something hard and smooth, air knocked from his lungs. Lights flashed above him—cold, sterile whites—and the smell of antiseptic filled his nose. Metallic. Clinical.

He coughed and rolled over onto his back, blinking against the brightness.

Where the hell am I?

The room around him looked like a lab, but not one he recognized. The walls were steel. The ceiling high, ribbed with black beams and glowing panels. Machines he didn’t recognize lined the walls—glass chambers filled with mist, instruments that pulsed with soft blue and pink lights. A low mechanical hum vibrated through the floor.

Dimitri pushed himself up to his knees.

His watch was still there—glowing softly, ticking down from 29:52.

At least that part worked.

He stood, legs unsteady. “Ana?” he called out. No response. Just the quiet, rhythmic hum of the facility.

A door at the far end hissed open.

Two people stepped in—both wearing white suits, masks covering their faces, black visors glinting. Security of some kind. Their eyes locked onto him immediately.

“Hey! I—I’m not supposed to be here!” Dimitri raised his hands. “Listen, this is an accident! My name is Dimitri Kalenkov. I’m from—”

They didn’t wait.

One of them raised a small device—like a gun, but sleeker. A pulse of blue energy shot out and struck Dimitri square in the chest. Pain flared through him like a lightning bolt. He collapsed, his limbs locking, breath trapped in his throat.

The guards were on him in seconds.

Hands grabbed his arms, yanking him to his feet. He shouted, kicked, tried to explain, but his words came out slurred. His body wasn’t responding right. They dragged him through the corridor without a word, through metal hallways lined with glowing panels and seamless doors.

Dimitri caught a glimpse of a dark window behind which shadows moved—observers? Scientists?

Then a large door opened. A room. Bright. White. Clean.

A man stood at the center, wearing a long coat, gloves, and a wide smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Well, well,” he said, walking toward Dimitri with unnerving calm. “What do we have here?”

“I’m not from here,” Dimitri managed to say. “It was a mistake—I’m a scientist, I was sent by accident.”

“Accidents are very useful,” the man said, circling him. “They bring us things we didn’t know we needed.”

Dimitri’s pulse raced. “Please. You don’t understand—”

The man held up a syringe filled with swirling pink fluid. It shimmered unnaturally under the lights.

“Oh, I understand perfectly.”

He leaned in, his voice lowering to a whisper.

“And now, I’m going to find out what you become.”

Dimitri’s eyes widened. He tried to pull away, but the guards held him still.

The needle plunged into his neck.

Everything went white.

The cell was small, clinical, and terrifyingly quiet.

Dimitri sat on a bench molded into the wall, clutching his sides. The sensation in his body was wrong. Not painful—at least not yet—but wrong. Like his insides were rearranging themselves, like his skin didn't quite fit the same way anymore.

The injection had knocked him out for what felt like seconds, maybe minutes. When he woke up, he was here. Alone.

His clothes were gone, replaced with a tight, seamless bodysuit of thin, stretchy fabric. Medical monitoring pads clung to his chest and lower back. His limbs felt light—too light. His sense of balance slightly shifted.

He breathed out shakily and looked down at his hands.

Thinner. Fingers longer. Nails... neater?

“What the hell did they do to me...”

His voice caught in his throat.

It was higher.

Still his voice—recognizable—but softer, slightly pitch-shifted. Like he'd inhaled helium, just not enough to sound comical. Enough to sound off.

He scrambled to the mirrored wall panel across the room. It wasn’t a proper mirror—just a reflective surface—but it was enough.

His reflection blinked back at him.

His face was… still his, mostly. But his jawline had softened. His cheekbones seemed more prominent. His hair—longer. Almost shoulder-length, somehow. It had grown in minutes?

“No no no—this has to be temporary.”

His chest ached.

He pulled at the bodysuit, feeling pressure—swelling just under the skin.

He was developing breasts.

Small, not yet fully formed, but undeniably there. The fabric stretched subtly around them.

He backed away from the mirror, shaking his head.

They drugged me. They experimented on me. They’re changing me…

And then he felt it—his watch.

A low buzz, pulsing against his wrist.

The recall signal.

He looked at the countdown: 00:01.

And then—

Whhhmmmmm.

A deafening hum filled the room. The same sound he’d heard when entering the machine. The walls seemed to warp, the air pressing inward. That familiar black void opened in front of him like a blooming wound in reality.

The cell—and everything in it—was being pulled away.

With a breathless gasp, Dimitri was yanked off his feet and hurled through the tunnel once again. Lights and sound and speed blurred around him.

He curled inward, the sensation of his changing body now lost in the chaos of return.

And then—

CRACK.

He landed hard on the basement floor.

Concrete. Familiar lights overhead. Cold air. The scent of solder and old wires.

Ana gasped, stumbling backward from the ring.

But the figure on the floor wasn’t the Dimitri she knew.

“What the… Who the hell—”

Dimitri groaned, pushing himself upright.

Ana stared, eyes wide, her voice shaking.

“…Dimitri?”

He looked up at her with those new, unfamiliar eyes.

“It’s me,” he said softly, voice undeniably feminine.

Ana froze.

“…What happened to you?”

Dimitri let out a weak, humorless laugh.

“I think… I was the experiment.”

Ana dropped to her knees beside him—her now, Dimitri, still gasping, trembling, and blinking against the harsh basement light.

“I—I don’t get it,” Ana said, eyes locked on Dimitri’s face. “You were gone for less than half an hour. What did they do to you?”

Dimitri struggled to find words. Her voice still startled her—a higher, more melodic tone, like it belonged to someone else. She could feel the curve of her chest pressing against the inside of the bodysuit, the subtle, foreign weight shifting as she breathed.

“It wasn’t the world we planned for,” she said quietly. “I didn’t even get to see the outside. I landed in some lab. They had guards, scientists. One of them—he didn’t even ask questions. Just injected me with something.”

Ana’s eyes darted across Dimitri’s body. The longer she looked, the more details stood out. The softer jawline. The smoother skin. The change in posture—subtle, instinctive. Dimitri was sitting like someone unfamiliar with the way their body moved.

“You’re... really a girl now?” Ana asked, voice barely above a whisper.

Dimitri glanced down at herself. Her chest rising, hips subtly wider, hair tickling her jaw. It felt surreal, like waking up in someone else's skin. She looked back at Ana, her expression somewhere between shame and fear.

“I don’t know if it’s permanent. I don’t know what else is going to change.”

Ana nodded slowly. Then, after a beat, she stood up and moved toward the equipment table, grabbing a large towel and tossing it gently over Dimitri’s shoulders. “Let’s get you out of that suit. I’ll get some clothes. Something loose.”

Dimitri clutched the towel tighter around her. “I thought I was going to die in there. Or worse. But this—this might be worse, right?”

Ana paused, halfway to the closet. Then she turned around, her expression sobering.

“We’re going to figure it out. Okay? Whatever they did to you, we can reverse it. Or stabilize it. You’re not alone.”

Dimitri bit her lip, then nodded. But deep inside, that reassurance felt distant—blurred by the lingering sensation of change still humming under her skin.

She knew she hadn't finished transforming.

This was just the beginning.