The glitching woke me an hour before my internal Link alarm, but if I didn't get moving, I'd be late. Sometimes I could fight the creeping dullness of the Link, but I didn't have any time to waste this morning. I focused, carefully relaxing each of my facial muscles into perfect, expressionless stillness, betraying nothing of the turmoil inside. I was lucky it happened while I was alone here in my quarters, where I was safe.
Panic gripped my chest as I drowned in the Link's rising tide, but I concealed it behind my perfectly still mask. I inhaled deeply and tried to hold on to the smell of my small concrete quarters-antiseptic and dust-but they, too, were lost by my next breath.
In a blink, the small bit of color in my room seeped away to a monotone gray. One by one, each of my senses dimmed, replacing my connection to the physical world with the connection to the Link. Auditory inputs clicked back online too, a slight hum in the background. The retina display flickered into view and scrolled a chatter of data at the edges of my field of vision. I shoved my drawings into the hidden slit I'd made in the back of my mattress, then grabbed the metal bed frame to steady myself as my brain suddenly jolted back into connection with the Link.
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