Steam curled off the hot stones in the corner, clouding the transparent walls that separated him from the thousand-foot drop to the street. He wiped a layer of sweat from his forehead while wondering why anyone thought cooking themselves in a wooden box was a luxury. The view of New York from the rooftop was supposed to be the selling point, though the city looked mostly like a circuit board designed by a drunk engineer from this angle. He checked the dermal display on his forearm, noting the time required for the others to arrive. Being genetically modified meant he practically vibrated with excess energy even while sitting still, making patience a skill he hadn't quite mastered yet. While the heat would have knocked out a standard human in twenty minutes, his modified metabolism just repurposed the thermal buildup, feeding it back into his own reserves. Through the condensation on the glass, a massive holographic advertisement floated by, selling some new variant of the spice that was tearing the galactic senate apart. It was ironic how the galaxy was practically dissolving into political anarchy over an alien drug while he was sitting here in a towel, waiting for his team to bring the coordinates for a door that might not even exist. If the gateway was real, it wouldn't be advertised on the side of a skyscraper. He closed his eyes, listening to the hum of the city below. Finding a breach in reality required silence and precision, two things New York actively conspired to destroy. He considered leaving, though staying seemed like the better strategic play since this sauna was the only place in Sector 7 with enough dampening shielding to block the local surveillance drones. The solitude, unfortunately, had a shelf life shorter than cheap dairy in a solar flare. The cedar door hissed open, admitting a parade that defied both thermal dynamics and good taste. It started with a acrobat who seemed to be wearing a towel folded into an origami swan, followed by a bearded lady whose facial hair held more dignity than the current Senate, and concluded, bafflingly, with a four-piece Mexican band squeezing their guitarróns into the steam-choked room. They didn’t speak; in the year 3012, vocal cords were apparently too analog for the entrepreneurial criminal. Instead, a greasy, telepathic tendril slithered into his mind, bypassing his neural spam filters with the grace of a drunken unicyclist. *“Amigo,”* the thought echoed, vibrating against his frontal lobe like a plucked string, *“why sustain the mediocrity of standard biology?”* The band mimed playing their instruments with exaggerated subtlety, a silent concerto of solicitation, while the acrobats struck poses that highlighted their unnaturally bulging veins. The mental broadcast ramped up, projecting images of mountains being pulverized by bare hands. They were peddling a modified strain of the galaxy-eating spice, enhanced to amplify strength by a factor of a thousand—perfect for the consumer who needs to open a pickle jar or demolish a suspension bridge before breakfast. He sighed, leaning back against the scorching wood. It was a special kind of irony that the dampening field designed to block government spies was apparently permeable to telepathic clowns marketing contraband. They smiled at him with shark-like benevolence, their mental pitch promising godhood for the low price of one’s sanity, assuming he didn't mind his brain melting out of his ears like candle wax. Before he could form a rebuttal involving the strategic relocation of their guitarróns to anatomically improbable locations, a volunteer emerged from the fog. It was a pale, doughy man who looked like he managed hedge funds for people who hunt endangered species for sport. He accepted the sample—a glowing, violet lozenge—with the eagerness of a spaniel accepting a treat, popping it into his mouth before the sales pitch had even concluded. The reaction was immediate and catastrophic. The man didn’t just trip; he embarked on a profound, high-velocity migration away from reality. He hit the cedar planks with a wet thud, thrashing like a trout electrocuted by a toaster, screaming that the geometry of the universe was trying to audit his soul. It was a spectacle of total biological evacuation; as he rolled across the floor, his sphincter resigned its commission with immediate effect, turning the pristine sauna into a Jackson Pollock painting composed entirely of bodily waste. The Mariachi band, true professionals, didn't miss a beat, creating a jaunty, upbeat soundtrack to the man's complete disintegration of dignity. He clawed at the air, shouting that his mother was a trapezoid and that gravity was a government conspiracy, all while marinating in his own fluids. Then, exactly five minutes later, the madness snapped off like a light switch. The man stopped twitching, sat up amidst the carnage, and wiped a smudge of excrement from his cheek with the casual demeanor of someone checking a voicemail. His eyes, now clear but terrifyingly hollow, locked onto the bearded lady. "Worth it," he wheezed, ignoring the smell that was currently peeling the varnish off the walls. With a shaky hand, he tapped his wrist interface, transferring thirty thousand US dollars—enough credits to buy a small moon or a slightly used senator—directly to the circus troop. "I'll take the family pack. Load me up." The sheer biological horror of the exchange washed over him without leaving a stain; he wasn’t captivated by the offer of chemical oblivion. The only high he was chasing involved leaving this dimension entirely, not just hallucinating that the drapes were singing opera. His mind traveled back to the door they were searching for—the elusive exit sign in a theater that was clearly burning down. Finding a gateway to a parallel universe demanded a level of focus that was difficult to maintain while a man reassembled his psyche in a pile of his own waste, but the genetically modified brain has a wonderful capacity for selective ignorance. He was mentally triangulating vector coordinates, trying to ignore the acrobats who were now juggling the client’s credit chips, when his internal comms flared hot. The dampening field, it seemed, was no match for the encrypted screech of Wolverine. Despite the feral handle, Wolverine was a girl of deceivingly slight stature, possessing the genetic predisposition for violence usually found in badgers and mid-level bureaucrats. Her voice cracked through his telepathic interface, bypassing his auditory nerves with the subtle grace of a brick through a stained-glass window. *“Stop marinading, you thermal-loving narcissist,”* she broadcasted, her thoughts carrying the distinct digital flavor of high-urgency encryption. *“My sensors are picking up a resonance frequency that matches the Key. Unless you want the door to open into a vacuum while you're wearing nothing but a towel and a smile, I suggest you move. The window is closing faster than a politician's promise.”* He barely had time to register the warning before the cedar door hissed open again, admitting a menace far more bureaucratic than telepathic drug dealers. Three agents of the Galactic Hegemony’s Enforcement Division squeezed into the cramped space, clad in midnight-blue kinetic armor that cost more than the building’s foundation. They blocked the exit with the grim efficiency of a sudden tax audit, their faceless, obsidian helmets reflecting the hedge fund manager’s still-smoldering shame. "Remain stationary," the lead agent barked, his voice synthesized to the exact frequency of a disappointed parent. "We detected a Class-4 Reality Breach signature. Also, this establishment is not zoned for Mariachi-based commerce." The agents raised plasma rifles that hummed with lethal intent, ignoring the terrified squeak of the bearded lady. The situation had escalated from 'uncomfortable' to 'executable' in under four seconds. He sighed. Diplomacy was usually the preferred route, but diplomacy took time, and Wolverine was currently screaming coordinates into his skull. It was time to leverage the very environment he’d been complaining about. He tapped into the thermal reserves he’d been stockpiling for the last hour. His modified metabolism flared, converting the latent sauna heat into a focused concussive charge stored within his skin cells. With a thought that felt like cracking a knuckle, he released the energy in a violent, omnidirectional pulse. The air instantly flashed into a superheated steam shockwave, slamming into the agents and fogging their complex optic sensors with blinding white condensation. As they staggered back, their suit coolants screaming in mechanical protest, he didn't bother fighting past their heavy frames. Instead, he sprinted toward the panoramic window, activating the gravity-inversion coils in his heels. He shattered the reinforced glass with a calculated shoulder check and plummeted out of the sauna, free-falling into the toxic gray smog of the New York skyline while the secret police were left to arrest a very messy room.