For you, it's been just under a month since you blew up Headspace. For Real Ellery, and indeed all the absorbed employees, it's been over half a year— which goes a ways toward explaining why the bloom's come off the rose, and how Ellery is able to, very casually, melt and reform you elsewhere. Your blood is sampled by a team of silent, stone-faced employees— you side-eye Ellery, the only one obviously conscious. "Are they...?"

"They're fine. Hey, guys. Hey, Angelo. Hey, Shirley. Wes. Look alive. You're freaking her out."

Angelo, Shirley, and Wes snap to it, are all abuzz and apologetic, introduce themselves, whatever— you didn't actually care, you just didn't know if they were dead. They're not, says Ellery (even as, your attention off them, the three grow silent again): they're just, you know, up there. In Headspace. Nice scales, by the way.

Your sleeve got rolled up. Thanks, you say. Aren't we all in...?

You aren't, and Ellery isn't, except when he, by way of demonstration, rolls his eyes up into his skull— rather than the clean separation of Us's dream-world, the hive-mind here is more fluid and more voluntary. Dip in for eerie efficiency, dip out for privacy, or at least perceived privacy. It makes sense when he says it, mostly, except that every employee you passed by this trip was scary and vacant.

"Yeah. Well... the more they all get used to it..." Ellery, back to you, is swirling your blood in a swirly machine. "...the more it's the default. It's pretty fun up there. Low stress."

"Shouldn't you be busy, um, destressing?" Even when you first showed up, he didn't have to snap out of anything.

"Can't. I mean, I can tap in, but I'm never a 'we.' You know. Same deal with the trances and all that. Management's project: successful." He sounds bitter. "You know your blood sparkles, by the way?"

You spring from your seat. "It what?"

It sparkles: Ellery shows you an unswirled vial, which looks like blood with glitter in, and a swirled one, which shows distinct layers of blood (red bit, white bit, yellow bit) and glitter (clear bit). "...That's not normal?"

"It's ridiculous. That stuff—" He taps the glitter with his tweezers. "—is chit. Fucking chit in your blood, Charlotte. My best guess is, you're loaded with so much Law, it's literally crystalizing. My other best guess is your fucking Manager's responsible. Do I have that right?"

"He has a name," you say. "And he says— well, yeah. He says I'm super-duper real. Realer than real. Which I don't think is a normal thing you can be, but I'm going to be God, so—"

"You're fucking extrareal?"

"...Yes? Wait, like glass?"

"Yes, like glass. Maybe. That's... I'd like to double-check that one, because seriously, what the fuck. Shirley, could you—"

(3/4?)