Rain drizzled against the glass facade of the thirty-seventh floor of the AeonTech building. Kairo Vale stood quietly at the elevator, shoes soaked, the words "We'll call you if anything opens up" still echoing in his head. He didn't expect a callback. He wasn't disappointed.
Kairo wasn't one to hope. Not out of despair, but because he believed in seeing, not wishing. He stepped into the humid buzz of the city, the glass towers around him gleaming with secrets. Behind those polished windows—affairs, betrayals, hushed promotions, and unseen breakdowns. The world hid everything behind smiles and soundproof walls. He wanted in.
He walked. The streets pulsed with life. Umbrellas jostled. Horns blared. People passed, all pretending. His eyes scanned the skyline, trying to see through it. But glass only reflected his own empty expression.
Then came the sirens.
Ahead, a small car had veered off the road into the trees. Smoke spiraled from its hood. An ambulance blinked red and blue, EMTs lifting a limp man onto a stretcher. Kairo slowed, not out of concern, but compulsion. He needed to see. Something about the scene didn't fit. The man being rescued wore tailored clothes, too expensive for a coincidence. A tablet flickered in the wreckage, code still scrolling.
He took a step closer—and slipped.
A scooter, unseen in the downpour, slammed into him. Pain erupted in his ribs. His head hit pavement. Then nothing.
---
The hospital air was sterile, distant. Machines beeped. Kairo lay unconscious.
In the next bed, the suited man awoke. Pale. Breathing hard. He fumbled in his coat, pulling out a steel capsule no larger than a thumb. No label. Just a triangle etched in the metal.
He looked at Kairo.
With trembling hands, he opened Kairo's shirt and pressed the capsule against his chest. A needle hissed. The silver inside writhed, alive. It slid through the needle into Kairo's bloodstream, vanishing.
The man exhaled slowly, as if releasing the last breath he'd been holding onto. His body went still. Monitors flatlined.
He was dead.
A nurse rushed in moments later. She checked both patients. Kairo's vitals were stable. The other man... gone.
But inside Kairo's veins, something had begun to change.
---
Hours passed.
Doctors came and went. Nurses monitored Kairo's condition. He remained unconscious. Unmoving. But his brain activity had started to spike in strange rhythms—waves that didn't match normal human patterns. Surgeons discussed possibilities, but none understood what they were seeing.
In Kairo's mind, dreams swirled.
Glass melted. Faces twisted. Voices whispered beneath the skin of reality. Threads of color danced through darkness. The world was folding inward. He floated somewhere in between.
He didn't wake.
Not yet.
The world around him moved forward, unaware that something beneath its surface had already begun to stir.