Officer Hall's mood had not exactly improved from the conversation with the informant. The man had behaved particularly dismissive and just shrugged over the entire thing. He had indeed heard of the new drugs, but knew nothing about it. He hadn't got any of it himself and according to him it would be impossible to find the source. Nobody knew exactly who it came from and where it came from. All he knew was that it had gained more interest and it could be resold for a hefty price, because it quickly became popular and there wasn't much of it.

Actually, he just wanted to go home as soon as possible and he wasn't quite paying as much attention to his surroundings as he should've when he suddenly saw something light up. He walked towards it, his eyebrows furrowed as he watched a tall person dressed in a dark hoodie hurrying away from him. There was nothing particularly suspicious about that, but somehow it felt strange and his instincts told him something wasn’t quite right. Because of this, he decided to follow the person walking away from him. His uniform was already almost completely soaked from the rain anyway.

A dog barked at the passing figure which caused them to move faster. Shane started to walk faster to keep up. He kept a fair bit of distance between them, but this also made it harder to figure out anything about the person he was following, since he couldn’t see any details.

His hunch seemed to be turning out to be correct when the figure walked towards a man dressed in black, who looked just a bit suspicious leaning against a tree. A triumphant grin appeared when something was exchanged and the person turned around. Shane quickly hid behind another tree with a thick stump and no leaves, but he was pretty sure he saw a young woman hiding underneath the upturned hood.

When she walked past Shane without noticing him, he decided to follow her again; he wanted to know where she was going. She didn't follow the exact same route back, instead stopped somewhere else and stayed there seemingly for no particular reason. It didn't seem like she was waiting for something, so he just hid behind the corner and tried to see what she was doing. He followed her movements when she took something out of the pocket of her hoodie. It looked like she was typing something on a phone. A few seconds later, the ground started to tremble slightly under his feet, but he was definitely not paying any attention to it.

“NYPD! Stay where you are!,” he ordered the woman, while carefully stepping closer with his gun drawn, safety still on.

The woman looked up, her eyes wide with surprise. The shadows covering her face almost made it seem as if there were two voids where her eyes should be. He approached her, she stayed where she was and he quickly took the phone-like device from her hands. Instantly, her demeanour changed. She tried to grab it out of his hands causing Shane to accidentally press a few buttons. The device felt cold, but very light in his hands. It didn’t look like a phone. He raised his gun again, pointing it towards her with his free hand.

“That’s not yours, give it back!” she hissed threateningly.

Shane opened his mouth to answer her, but was distracted by something moving next to the young woman, causing his gaze to shift. There was something strange happening to the wall but he didn't have a lot of time to process it, his brain jumped to the conclusion that it had to be her secret hiding place or something along those lines. The woman reacted to his lapse of attention, snatched the device out of his hands and suddenly ran straight towards the wall.

“Wait!” Shane called after her. “You can’t just run away!”

That obviously didn't stop her and he wasn’t planning to use his gun, so he just ran after her. His mind didn’t really comprehend the strange opening that had appeared in the wall, he just focused on the young woman jumping right at it and followed her example, trying to stop her from leaving. Officer Hall was athletic and fast, giving him an advantage in this situation. He was faster than she was and managed to put his arms around the woman mid-jump, just as they went through the rift in the wall.

They both should’ve landed rather hard on the ground, but their fall seemed cushioned. The device the girl was holding slipped out of her hand and landed a few feet away. The girl had yelped in surprise when she felt the arms wrap around her body unexpectedly, most people wouldn't dare to follow her through the rift. Now she was pushed to the cold ground by a heavy body. Cold gusts of wind blew over them.

“No,” she growled, gritting her teeth, her words barely audible over the howling of the wind.

A little shocked, Shane scrambled to his feet. He was afraid he might’ve broken some of the woman's bones by landing on top of her, or at least bruised her. When he had put his arms around her and pushed her onto the ground, she felt almost fragile under his touch.

The young woman groaned softly from where she was laying on her back and closed her eyes for a moment. Shane automatically reached out to help her to her feet. She glared at him when she opened her eyes again and looked around. Shane, who initially focused on her, did the same.

The human brain is exceptionally good at only seeing and noticing what it wants and expects to see.

He had no idea what he expected, but not this. So far, he successfully ignored the cold gusts of wind, but now he could see a white landscape stretching as far as the eye could see. Visibility seemed lower too, was that snow? He had to squint his eyes to be able to look into the wind. His already wet uniform, whose dark blue color contrasted sharply with the all white surroundings, seemed to almost freeze right on the spot. If he looked up, he wouldn't even be able to see the color of the sky. The brick wall they came through was nowhere to be seen, instead there was a huge wall of ice.

“Goddamnit…” the woman mumbled to herself.

Those words made Shane turn back around so he could face her. She sat on the snow covered ground, her hood askew on her head, revealing strands of light blond hair. She looked a lot younger than he initially had estimated. She held the strange device from earlier in her hands. It looked as if it had cracked open, several dully colored threads became visible through the crack.

“Right dimension, wrong place,” She focused on Shane with an angry look on her face. “This is your fault, you broke it!”

She scrambled to her feet and pointed at him with a slender finger, her face twisted with anger as white flakes blew across her face and pushed her hood down. She hardly seemed to notice, or it just didn't matter to her at all. Now that she was standing, he could see that she was only a few inches shorter than himself. Her small frame stood out against the snow.

“Me? I didn’t do anything.”

“Yes, you,” she snapped back. “You just had to get involved and look at what you’ve done! You broke it and now we’re stuck in the 7th. We might even freeze to death if we can’t make a new rift or find a way to civilisation. My boss is gonna be so pissed when I miss this delivery.”

Her voice sounded sharp but it barely got through to Shane, he was pretty much flabbergasted and had no idea what she was talking about. 7th what? What rift? His mind just went blank, as if the icy landscapes around him weren't weird enough already.

“What in god’s name are you on about?” he sneered, just because she snapped at him. “Where are we? How did we end up here? This doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“We’re in the 7th dimension, you nitwit!” She threw her hands up from frustration. “That’s what you get when no one tells you anything.”

Shane frowned because he still didn't understand it at all. The girl, or young woman, Shane couldn't decide on that one, had long since stopped looking at him and only had attention for the device in her hands. She started pressing buttons carefully. Shane wrapped his arms around himself and started to shiver, it was very cold. He could hardly feel his fingers.

“I think it’s still working… kinda.” she seemed to be talking to herself.

“What did you mean with the 7th dimension?”

She looked up to Shane and the expression on her face left nothing to the imagination. She obviously thought he was the most stupid and annoying person she'd ever met. What he didn't know was that she thought this about almost everyone, but just never really expressed it this vividly.

She gave up on the tinkering with the device, tucked it in the pocket of her hoodie and pulled the hood further over her face to protect her from the wind and snow. Her nose and cheeks were red from the cold and the crease between her brows was still there.

Shane raised his hands to his head to check if his police cap was still there. It wasn't and when he looked around the cap was nowhere to be seen. He frowned, but made no attempt to understand where the cap had gone. At this point he considered the possibility that jumping after the woman knocked him out and this was just a strange figment of his subconscious or something like that.

"I'll explain it later," she told him impatiently. "We better find some kind of shelter before we freeze."

Shane nodded mindlessly and began to follow her when she walked away. She had previously talked about a civilization, so why shouldn't they go there? He decided to just shut up and trudge after her, eyes narrowed against the strong wind. If this was his subconscious dreaming stuff up, how come it felt like his fingers were really freezing off? Just to be sure, he put his hands away in the pockets of his pants, where it felt a little warmer because they were not exposed to the wind and snow.