Julian leaned back against the railing overlooking Scheveningen beach, smelling ocean and taking in the people down on the sand. It was chilly, and a haze just thick enough to make the whole sky glare stretched to the horizon. Not exactly beach weather, but you take what you can get in the Netherlands - some diehards were even out in shorts and bikini bottoms, making the best of it.

Strictly speaking he was supposed to be observing an arbital tribunal at the ICC right now - some kind of contract dispute in the Greater Mauritius project. But then, Julian was never the most diligent student. What's the point in orchestrating a fieldwork trip to the Hague if you're not going to spend it at the beach? He'd get the notes from Selene once they were back in London, she owed him one. At the thought of home he sent a snap of the beach to his girlfriend Olivia, stuck in lecture at King's College. No response. She was probably actually paying attention, achiever that she was.

On the beach below a child played Dunebots, entranced as the synthetic warriors smashed pieces off each other then cannibalized them for parts. Two tribes had formed this match, a horde of nimble crawlers skittering across the beach, and a smaller group of wheeled behemoths reminiscent of those obsolete tanks armies once shelled each other with. The ground was packed down from sea spray, allowing the wheeled bots to tilt through like jousters without risk of bogging down in loose sand.

Presently the wheels developed a wedge tactic. A heavily armored vanguard crashed through the crawler herd, carving a few off from the group. A lighter secondary force swooped in from one side, pinning the stragglers for dismemberment. From there it was over in minutes - rinse and repeat until the exponential factor dominated and no crawlers remained. The child powered down the bots and redistributing the components onto a nearby dune, eager to stage a new conflict. Julian lost interest and turned his gaze further down the beach.

A wave of discord rippled through the sunbathers in front of him. A family of four sat on a towel, enjoying a snack. The daughter looked down at her phone, then started talking animatedly to the others, waving her screen. The mother shrieked, the father sobbed silently. A pair of nearby sunbathers noticed the outburst and the cycle repeated. In minutes the mood of the beach had changed from peaceful calm to pandemonium.

With some trepidation Julian prepared his own investigation. A quick adjustment to his sunglasses turned on VR mode, then he fired up Ram-Rapam, the latest viral streaming sensation. The most popular feed autoplayed immediately. Julian wished it hadn't.

He looked out through borrowed eyes into air thick with smoke. Shards of broken glass littered a cobblestone lane, blown out from the four-story buildings above. A few mangled bikes were littered across the road, the owners either fled or fallen. Just ahead a planter box burned halfheartedly, issuing its own contribution to the choking haze. An ashy skeleton of a tree still smoldered inside it.

Just visible in the distance, an apartment building had collapsed into a jumble of brick with occasional steel ribs jutting out perversely. Julian had been around the world but couldn't place this war zone. Maybe hell, sixth circle?

Motion partway down the block caught his eye. A slender figure stumbled out from a doorway, body engulfed in towering flame. He took three steps down the sidewalk, tripped, then pitched face-first to the ground. The rush of air from the fall acted as a bellows, fanning a final incendiary burst. It was as if the man's spirit were some volatile substance, fueling the fireball as it fled the charred husk. Julian really hoped the man was dead, that the feeble twitches were just an illusion of the flame. He tried closing his eyes, but the afterimage was no better. He was thankful at least that he couldn't smell here.

The man's screams had sounded muffled, before fading from the register entirely. Julian noticed his earbuds had turned down the volume on the scene and cancelled much of the noise. Julian tried sampling the raw input. The soundscape was dominated by great waves of grating klaxons, crashing against each other and occasionally synchronizing into one demonic harmony before falling back into anarchy. It took him a minute to decipher the noise: it was the sound of a thousand smoke alarms blaring at once. He expected to hear the whine of approaching sirens added to the mix. None came.

Unable to watch the smoldering corpse any longer, Julian looked down. Another mistake. His avatar's clothes were grey and patchy, had burned away entirely in a few places, fused with skin in others. What flesh Julian could see was raw, red, angry, cracked, oozing. Bile rose in his throat.

He finally had the good sense to disconnect, thumbing the switch on the controller in his pocket. The app dropped him back to the clip-roll where he saw the feed's metadata: London, 8 minutes ago.

Some kind of prank. Had to be. That couldn't be London. But hadn't that bombed out drugstore looked kind of like a Boots? And might that have been a sign for the underground in the distance?

Reality crashed down on him. His school, his friends, his mom, Olivia. His life. The flaming man. His own charred and weeping skin. He ripped off the headset and threw up violently onto the sand below. He heaved until everything was gone, then once more for good measure, until his back hurt, his abs ached. The full-body shakes finally settled out, replaced by a detached numbness. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder. An unfamiliar voice, "Here friend, drink this."

Julian took the proffered canteen gratefully, eager to purge the foul taste in his mouth. He swallowed deeply, greedily. Stopped. The liquid tasted wrong. Bitter. He looked up at the crouching stranger, larger than he was expecting. Dark shades, buzz cut, head-to-toe jungle camo. Military. No, paramilitary, a Blackmountain logo stitched across the right breast of the fatigues. Not a common sight in the Union. Or a welcome one.

"Who the fuck are you, and what was in that flask?" At least, that's what Julian intended to say. The last came out more like "wha wazzinthaflash". Somewhere in the distance a phone was buzzing. His phone? The buzzing stopped, or had everything else just started buzzing? His left pocket had something that might help, but what was it? Focus. A headset controller with its chord keyboard, good for court transcriptions. Or covert texting about the professor's toupee.

His hand was distant, wrapped in thick wool. With effort he jammed it into his windbreaker. After some fumbling it brushed the controller handle, grasped it. Correctly oriented, thank god. He poured all his focus into his fingers, a little pinpoint of sensation seen from a darkening tunnel. The memorized keystrokes so fluid a minute ago were now a foreign language, each press a halting conscious effort. He clicked off what he hoped was a distress signal, sent to whomever had just called him. He hoped it wasn't a spammer.

The darkness closed over him, and he slept.