“Another one?” Detective Zhang frowned at the scattered bottles of hair conditioner on the floor of Cabin 23. This was the third “accident” this month on Space Station Iris.

“Yes, sir,” Officer Chen replied, carefully documenting the scene. “Dr. Lin was found unconscious here at 0300 hours. The medical team confirms mild concussion, likely from a fall.”

Zhang’s eyes narrowed at the mess. In the artificial gravity of the station, items didn’t just float away - they had to be deliberately scattered. The conditioner bottles formed an almost artistic pattern around the victim’s usual sleeping spot.

“Pull up Dr. Lin’s statement when she regains consciousness,” Zhang ordered, studying the security feeds. “And get me everything on her research project.”

“Already done, sir.” Chen projected a hologram showing complex molecular diagrams. “Dr. Lin leads the station’s cognitive enhancement research. They’re developing a compound that could potentially boost human intelligence by 300%.”

“Fascinating timing,” Zhang muttered. “Right before the annual Science Council review.”

A soft knock interrupted them. Dr. Wang, the station’s head researcher, stood in the doorway. Her usually immaculate lab coat was wrinkled, dark circles prominent under her eyes.

“Detective, a moment?” Her voice wavered slightly. “There’s something you should know about Lin’s research.”

Zhang gestured for her to continue.

“The compound…” Dr. Wang hesitated. “It works. Too well, perhaps. In our last trial, the test subject began solving quantum equations that would take our supercomputers years to process. Within hours, they were theorizing about dimensional travel.”

“Where is this subject now?”

“That’s just it - they vanished. Literally. The security feeds show them simply…disappearing. Right after they wrote pages of calculations about parallel universes.”

Zhang looked again at the scattered conditioner bottles. Under UV light, tiny droplets formed a perfect mathematical sequence across the floor.

“Dr. Wang,” he said carefully, “would you say Dr. Lin was close to replicating these results?”

The scientist’s face paled. “She had a breakthrough yesterday. Said she’d finally cracked the formula’s stability issues.”

Zhang’s communicator buzzed - a message from the medical bay. Dr. Lin had awakened, but her first words made little sense: “They’re coming through. The others. So many others.”

The detective stared at the seemingly random pattern of conditioner bottles. Random, except…when viewed from exactly the right angle, they aligned perfectly with the star configuration visible through the cabin’s viewport.

“Officer Chen,” Zhang said quietly, “run a spectrum analysis on these bottles. I want to know if-”

The station’s lights flickered. Through the viewport, the stars seemed to blur and shift.

And in the reflection of the cabin’s polished floor, Zhang could have sworn he saw another version of himself staring back, surrounded by countless other reflections, all reaching for the same bottle of conditioner.

The lights stabilized. Dr. Lin’s belongings remained scattered, but now they seemed to pulse with an otherworldly energy. The investigation was far from over, but Zhang wondered if anyone was truly ready for where it might lead.

In Space Station Iris’s Cabin 23, something had begun. Whether it was an ending or a beginning remained to be seen.

The only certainty was that somewhere, in some dimension, another Detective Zhang was asking the exact same question.