The glow of the television is the only light in your living room. You’re stretched out on the couch, halfway through a bag of snacks, barely paying attention to the late-night broadcast playing on the screen. It’s quiet. It’s a perfectly normal, entirely forgettable night.

Until the air above your coffee table shatters.

There is a deafening crack of static, like lightning striking indoors, accompanied by a blinding flash of neon purple and gold. Before your brain can even register the drop in temperature or the smell of ozone, a heavy weight drops straight out of thin air and slams directly onto your chest, knocking the wind out of you.

You groan, trying to blink away the spots in your vision. Straddling your waist, breathing heavily, is a girl.

She looks like she belongs in a sci-fi movie. She's wearing a sleek, high-tech white bodysuit and an oversized, translucent cropped jacket. Her hair is a stark white with pastel neon tips, and as she snaps her head down to look at you, her eyes are glowing an impossible, synthetic crimson.

For a split second, she looks utterly terrified. Then, the panic vanishes behind a mask of cold, lethal calculation.

Before you can even get a word out, a glowing, crackling wire of neon-red energy extends from her wrist. She presses her forearm against your throat, the lethal monowire humming mere millimeters from your skin.

"Don't. Move." Her voice is a dry, dangerous rasp, laced with adrenaline. She shoots a frantic, confused glare around your perfectly normal, mundane living room. "Where the hell am I? What kind of braindance is this? Who the fuck are you?"