The molecular structures in David’s organic chemistry textbook had started to blur together. He blinked hard, trying to focus on the carbon chain structures that he needed to memorize for his midterm exam. His small desk lamp cast a weak circle of light across his spread-out notes, barely reaching the edges of his cramped desk in John Jay Hall.

An empty coffee cup teetered dangerously close to the edge, and three different colored highlighters rested in the crevasse of two different textbooks. His phone buzzed with another message from his study group’s chat, and he saw Lindsey’s name pop up. He unlocked his phone with Face ID and quickly checked the message, but she was just asking if anyone had solved the final practice problem.

David ignored it.

Pressure had been building during his midterm exams, and he needed to do everything possible to maintain his scholarship.

“Dude, how can you still be studying?” Matt’s voice came from the other side of their shared room as he entered. David glanced at him and saw he was carrying his laptop by loosely holding one of the corners by the track pad, the expensive computer bounced in his grip with each step. Matt flopped onto his bed and lounged back with the laptop resting on his stomach. “My brain stopped working like an hour ago.”

David glanced at his watch and was surprised to see it was already past midnight.

“Some of us actually have to pass our classes,” he said while rubbing his eyes. There wasn’t any actual heat in his words. David had to study things repeatedly before they stuck, whereas Matt was smart enough to coast through his business classes with minimal effort.

The vending machine down the hall called out to David as he thought about getting another dose of caffeine to continue studying. He knew it wasn’t a good idea, as his hands already felt jittery.

Sitting back in his chair, David stretched and gave a loud groan. He took in the white walls of the small dorm room and the lingering smell of microwave ramen that Matt had heated up for dinner.

As he straightened, his gaze drifted to the small frame on his desk. It was a family photo from his older brother’s high school graduation. Marcus stood tall and proud, already looking like their father in his bearing. Dad’s long-time military friend was also in the photo, with an arm slung over Marcus’s other shoulder. David had found the man intimidating every time he came by the house, with tattoos covering both of his arms completely. Marcus had all but hero worshipped the man who acted like a favorite uncle.

David quickly turned the frame face down, before the memories could resurface again. He’d been back and forth on just packing the picture away in the previous few days. That last text from his father had sent shivers down his spine and he’d had a break down in the middle of the lecture he was in.

Why did you have to be so damn noble, Marc?

David forced his attention back to his textbook and pressed his thumb against the watch’s worn leather band. He just needed to get through the current chapter. Then he could go to bed.

“Oh shit,” Matt said suddenly, sitting up straight. “You gotta see this.”

“Not now, Matt. I need to-”

“No, seriously. Isn’t this near your hometown?”

Something in Matt’s tone made David look up. The other boy turned the laptop around so that the screen could face David as he sat up. There was a harsh blue light coming from a video on the screen. The website wasn’t one that David recognized, but he immediately spotted something familiar in the background. Mount Rainier loomed in the background of the footage. The large mountain seemed to be visible from almost anywhere on the western coast of his home state.

The shaky cell phone footage showed what looked like downtown Tacoma, but David's attention was drawn to something else. A tear hung in the air, its edges glowing with an eerie blue light. The video showed people being carried out by what looked like military personnel, their movements urgent and practiced as they carried stretchers between them.

"It was posted on Nexus Hub like ten minutes ago," Matt said, already scrolling through the comments section. "But watch, it'll probably get taken down soon. They do that with the good videos."

"Nexus Hub?"

"Yeah, it's like Reddit but for weird stuff. People have been posting about the portals and calling them Rifts. Apparently, they have been popping up for the last week or two." Matt click through to another page. "They've been showing up all over the country."

A knock came at the door. Lindsey and Kevin from their study group stood in the doorway, both carrying textbooks and looking as exhausted as David felt.

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"We got tired of the library," Lindsey said. "Mind if we join?"

Kevin gave David that same careful look they had all been giving him since he told them about Marcus. But, neither of the two mentioned it directly at this point; they’d learned quickly that David preferred to bury himself in his studies rather than talk about it.

Before David could answer, Matt was already waving them over. "You guys gotta see this."

Kevin pushed his glasses up as he watched the footage. "Look at those people that there carrying out. Are their wounds being healed? The cellular regeneration rate would have to be-"

"Oh my God, stop," Lindsey cut him off. "You've been watching too much Marvel again." She leaned closer to look at the footage again. "Though I have to admit, this does look pretty real. But you know how good special effects are getting these days. My roommate showed me this app that can make super convincing fake videos with just a thirty second clip of someone talking."

"Maybe," Matt said, "but would that explain why they keep getting deleted so fast?"

"Could be copyright stuff," Lindsey suggested with a shrug. "Or maybe people just taking down their own posts after they go viral."

"I'm just saying-"

"Guys," Matt interrupted, "it's gone. The post just got deleted."

David barely heard their discussion as Matt pulled up other threads. His thoughts kept drifting back to his father, alone in their old family house less than an hour from where the Tacoma video had been taken. They hadn't talked much since the last argument about David choosing premed over enlisting, only exchanging the occasional text.

He reached for his phone but hesitated. He knew his dad's contact info was just a few taps away, but what would he even say?

Hey, Dad, sorry, some weird stuff is happening near home. I'm just checking you're safe?

Other than his dad’s weirdly random text a few days before, they hadn’t talked in more than a month. David picked up his phone and looked at their texts, feeling a bit of guilt bubble up in his stomach as he realized that the last few messages had been a few quick thank-you texts for his monthly allowance.

He locked the device and placed it face down on the desk, knowing that his father was probably asleep anyway. That, or he was watching one of his late-night History Channel documentaries.

"There's another one," Matt said, pulling up a new video. "This one's from Portland."

David turned back to his organic chemistry notes. He was determined to focus on electron configurations instead of likely digitally edited portal videos. The midterm was tomorrow, and he couldn't afford to waste time on… whatever was going on.

Try as he might, the molecular diagrams just couldn’t pull his attention back from the glowing blue lights. After reading the same paragraph three times without absorbing a single word, he found himself opening his laptop.

"What did you say that website was?"

Matt grinned as if he won a victory, "Nexus Hub. Here, I'll send you the link."

Soon, all four of them were huddled over their devices, scrolling through different threads on the website. Though not many of the posts were being deleted, each of them saw it happen at least once in the short span that they were monitoring the website. Reports of similar tears called Rifts were popping up everywhere. There were some in Buenos Aires, London, Mumbai, even one rather close to them just outside Philadelphia.

"How have we not heard about any of this?" David asked, glancing at Matt. "This is happening all over the place."

"That's the weird thing," Matt said. "Local news is apparently running some small stories here and there. Sometimes they end up on Nexus Hub, but sometimes they disappear, just like these. But yeah, it doesn't seem like any of the big networks will touch this stuff."

There was a pause, and then Matt spoke up again. “Like, look at this thread I screenshotted the other day,” he said. “Someone posted about National Guard vehicles moving through Michigan yesterday. Said they were setting up some kind of containment zone. The post got taken down pretty quickly, but there’s been similar stuff from other states, too.

“My cousin’s in the Guard,” Kevin added. “She mentioned getting called up for some emergency training last week. Didn’t say much else about it, though.”

David’s stomach clenched as he remembered his dads cryptic text the day before Marcus died. He had mentioned something about things being weird on Marcus’s deployment.

Did these Rifts had something to do with Marcus’s death?

“You saw some of this a few days ago?” David asked, a bit frustrated that he hadn’t seen anything about this before.

“I’ve been looking at these for a week or so now,” Matt said oblivious to David’s inner turmoil. He pulled up a folder on his phone of screenshotted pages. “At first, I thought it was just weird internet stuff, but there’s definitely something going on. They started appearing all at once, and yeah, I know it sounds crazy- but I think the government is burying this for some reason.”

“You’ve been sitting on this for a week?” Kevin asked with mock offense.

Matt shrugged, “Would you have believed me if I’d just told you about it? Being able to show you more now because it’s getting posted so much more makes it a lot easier to convince you.”

David rubbed his tired eyes. "I just don't understand why they'd hide something this big. If these things are dangerous..." He trailed off, unable to finish the thought.

If they'd just been more open about whatever this was, maybe Marcus...

"Maybe they're trying to prevent panic?" Lindsey suggested gently, catching the shift in David's mood.

"Look at this one," Kevin said, turning his phone. "Someone got footage of a military blockade in New York last week where they wouldn’t let anyone through to see what was happening. They say that they've posted it three times, and it keeps getting removed. The video quality is terrible, but you can see that same blue glow off of some of the buildings in the background."

Matt scrolled through his own feed. "There's some people claiming weird stuff happens to people who enter these things. But it's really hard to tell what's real. Half of these posts read like a bad superhero fan fiction."

David found himself searching for more reports from Washington state but kept getting distracted by new posts that would occasionally appear from around the world. Articles would appear and the rare video or photo proof would be attached in a user post.

His organic chemistry textbook lay forgotten beside him as the night stretched toward morning. Outside their dorm window, the campus grew quieter, but David kept scrolling. He had a strange feeling settling in his stomach. It was almost like he was watching the world change, one deleted post at a time.

What's really happening out there?