The containment base always smelled the same when they came back from fieldwork — like bleach over blood, like air too clean to be trusted.
The recycled oxygen had a weight to it, dense and dry, carrying a faint chemical sting that scratched the sinuses. Beneath it lingered something metallic, faint as breath on steel — the kind of scent that stuck in the back of the throat and never quite left.
The walls glowed white under recessed lights that hummed a steady, insect-like tone. That hum pressed faintly against Kahn's eardrums, a sound he couldn't unhear, vibrating just beneath thought. The same frequency thrummed in the cuffs still clamped to his forearms.
They radiated low warmth, the kind that didn't comfort — the kind that reminded the body of machinery. The smell of his own sweat mingled with the sterilized chill, a faint human note swallowed by the machinery's perfect breath.
He sat on the edge of the debrief chamber's steel bench. The metal bit into the backs of his legs through the thin fabric of his uniform, cold and slick. Around him, the other recruits waited — silent, pale, haunted by the stillness they'd walked through. Even their breathing sounded restrained, each inhale shallow, measured, as though the air might break if they took too much of it.
The mirrored wall across from them reflected everything: their exhausted bodies, the faint tremors in their hands, the copper stains on Kahn's sleeve from the residual echo. The glass caught the light wrong, a shade too bright, reflections lagging by half a heartbeat. It made his stomach turn, that microscopic delay — a shimmer that felt alive.
Selene entered. The temperature seemed to drop a degree.She carried no visible weapon, no data-slate, just the scent of cold metal and the faint trace of ozone that always lingered where her fragment touched the world. Voss followed, his boots scuffing faintly — a human sound against the sterile quiet. His coat smelled of old smoke, dust, and something dry, like paper left too long under heat lamps. He rolled an unlit cigarette between his fingers, the motion small and rhythmic, the soft rasp of paper against calloused skin barely audible.
"Sit," Selene said. The word carried weight enough to crush conversation before it began.
They obeyed.
The lights dimmed to a colder shade of white, almost blue.The hum deepened, crawling through the floor like distant thunder.Selene's gaze moved from one recruit to the next. Her pupils shimmered faintly, reflections moving inside them — faint geometric shapes spinning like clockwork beneath the surface. They made a sound too — almost inaudible, a crystalline ticking that didn't belong to any living thing.
"What did you see?" she asked.
The buzz-cut woman spoke first, voice low. "Spatial compression along corridor lines. Local time distortion. Echo identified as humanoid, pre-collapse imprint."
Selene nodded once. "Response?"
"Maintained suppression," she said. "No resonance breach."
"Good."
Her gaze shifted to Kahn. The silence stretched until he could hear the soft buzz of the light ballast above, until he could smell the faint copper tang rising again from his sleeve.
"What did you see?"
He hesitated. "It wasn't just residual. It… reacted. Looked at me. It spoke."
Voss's head tilted, the chair creaking softly. "Spoke?"
"Used a word," Kahn said quietly. "Fracture. Said 'fracture incomplete.' Then it—dissolved."
The hum of the lights grew sharper. A faint electrical crackle danced across the cuffs on his wrists.
Selene didn't move. Her expression stayed smooth, but her voice dropped into something almost soft. "Fragments sometimes echo the memories of the hosts they consume. They speak when they shouldn't. You do not listen when they do."
"It said my—"
Kahn stopped himself, but Selene's head turned slightly.
"It said your name?" she asked.
He swallowed. The air tasted like static. "Yes."
The silence that followed felt colder than any reprimand.Even the ventilation sounded wrong — a steady hiss that made his skin prickle.
Voss broke it first. "Residuals shouldn't know identifiers," he muttered. "Not unless there's bleed-through from the live field."
Selene's jaw tightened, but she didn't look at him. "We'll review telemetry. If the echo exhibited directed cognition, the site will be sealed for full dissolution. You'll all submit neural logs before sleep."
Kahn's skin crawled. "Neural logs?"
"A dream audit," Voss said, half-smirking. "They like to know what sticks to you after exposure. Sometimes the Kernel leaves fingerprints."
Selene ignored him. "Dismissed," she said.
The other recruits filed out quickly, boots clicking against steel. Kahn lingered a moment too long. The mirrored wall flickered again. His reflection stood a second late — same posture, same eyes, but its lips moved. He didn't hear words, only the faint hiss of static through his skull, like air escaping from a deep cut.
Selene's shadow crossed the reflection.
"Go rest," she said quietly. "If it calls again, you don't answer."
He nodded, throat dry. The smell of ozone and copper followed him out of the chamber like a ghost.
Later
The dormitory lights were set to artificial dusk.The ceiling panels pulsed faint amber, casting long shadows across the bunks. Thin vents hummed softly, exhaling cold, filtered air that smelled faintly of rain and recycled metal. The faint tang of lubricant and polymer drifted from the machinery lining the walls — the scent of maintenance pretending to be comfort.
Kahn lay on his bunk, the thin mattress creaking beneath him. The blanket was rough, military issue, carrying the detergent smell of something washed too many times but never truly clean. He stared at the ceiling — plain white, smooth as bone. His cuffs lay on the desk across the room, their faint blue glow dim but pulsing, a slow heartbeat that matched his own.
He could still feel the echo's eyes.The whisper of that word.Fracture incomplete.
Sleep didn't come easily. When it finally did, it came with sound — not words, not dreams, just a low vibration through the air, deep enough to feel in his teeth. The hum of the Kernel moving somewhere deep beneath thought.
And the faint taste of metal in the back of his throat, like something had crawled into his mind and stayed there.