The silence didn't last.
Lance sat cross-legged on the cracked tile floor of the old subway station, his fingers tangled in Dario's fur like it was the last thing tethering him to gravity. Across from him, Kenton knelt on a flattened satchel of worn tech, building something delicate and fast with jittery fingers. Dani leaned against a rusted column nearby, flipping a thin, translucent shard of sigil glass between her knuckles like it was a coin.
The glyph seal still shimmered faintly at the mouth of the tunnel. The creature hadn't moved in ten minutes.
But Lance could feel it pulsing. Not just out there.
Inside.
The air tasted off. Like old pennies and refrigerated plastic. Every time he blinked, there was a half-second delay in the world catching up.
He stared at a smear of pale sweat on the floor near his shoe. It hadn't dripped. It was just... there. Like it had peeled off his body without motion. Like memory misplaced.
Kenton looked up from his tool kit, eyes flicking to Lance's expression—not judgmental. Studying.
"You're holding your breath again."
Lance didn't answer.
"You've done it four times in the past minute. Long gaps between inhale and exhale. It's a stress response, but also indicative of systemic rejection—your body doesn't know what part of it is foreign anymore."
Dani glanced over, unimpressed. "That's one way to tell a guy he's spiraling."
"He is," Kenton said without hesitation. "And the bleed's accelerating."
Lance swallowed. "Bleed?"
"You're leaking," Kenton said, as if stating a fact about a weather pattern. "In small ways. From the inside out. But the weird part is, it's not just you anymore."
Kenton rose, wiping his palms on his jacket. "When I scanned you before the subway, your vitals were still mostly human. Mostly. Now? You're throwing off signals that curve outside the laws of entropy."
Dani cocked her head. "That's science for 'he's screwed,' right?"
"No," Kenton muttered. "That's science for he's changing the shape of the data itself. He's not a threat yet. But his presence is redefining context. That's worse."
Dario let out a low whine. His eyes never left Lance.
Lance didn't move. He couldn't. His fingers were tingling again—fine, white dust falling from his knuckles. It landed without sound, dispersing like powder on water, vanishing into the floor.
He exhaled. The room shifted. Or maybe just his perception of it. The edges of Dani's coat bent at the corners. The graffiti on the far wall now said something in a language he didn't recognize.
He blinked again, longer this time.
And in that blink, he was alone.
No Dani. No Kenton. No dog.
Just silence. Endless, humming silence. And then, quietly, softly, a voice:
"You weren't supposed to live long enough to see this."
Lance's eyes flew open. Dani was crouched in front of him, staring hard.
"Hey. Earth to milk-boy."
He flinched, gasped, clutched Dario like a parachute yanked mid-plummet. His breath came fast and shallow.
"I think it's in my eyes," he rasped. "I—I think I'm seeing things backwards. Or inside-out. Or both."
Kenton was already beside them, running a scanner along Lance's arms. "The symbiote isn't invasive in the traditional sense. It's not replacing you—it's misinterpreting you. Like it's trying to rebuild a concept it only half-understands."
"What the hell does that mean?" Dani asked.
"It means he's not turning into it," Kenton said. "It's turning into him. Wrongly."
That stopped Dani for a breath.
Lance sat against the wall now, knees pulled to his chest. Dario's head rested on his lap, calm and steady as ever. The one constant. The one anchor.
Lance didn't cry. But if he had, the tears might've looked like milk.
Kenton turned toward Dani. "We can't keep him unprotected. If this goes on, we'll lose his definition. Not just his sanity. His... boundaries."
"And you're sure there's no playbook?" she asked.
"I've seen fragments. Scattered files. Erased people. They don't just go missing—they get reclassified. Removed retroactively. Like they were never real."
Dani stood, eyes narrowed. "So how the hell do we stop that?"
Kenton didn't answer right away. His fingers twitched. His jaw clenched.
Then, almost softly, like admitting a wound:
"I don't know. I just know we need to get him somewhere older than this thing."
"Older?" Lance whispered.
Kenton nodded. "Somewhere reality doesn't bend easily. Somewhere the rules were etched deeper. Places with weight."
Dani exhaled, sliding a bullet-sized device into her palm and rolling it over her knuckles. "Fine. You pick the place. I'll get us there."
Kenton turned to her with haunted eyes.
"You're not gonna like where it is."
She grinned, not kindly. "I don't like anywhere."
Lance leaned his head against the wall. Dario curled tighter against him.
The thing in his head wasn't whispering anymore.
It was listening.