Morning came without sunlight.
The Federation complex never changed brightness — the ceiling lights simply warmed by two degrees, tinting from surgical white to the soft gold they called "dawn." It fooled no one. The air smelled faintly of machine coolant and sterilized linen, not air or rain. Every breath carried a metallic tang, as if filtered through steel lungs. Somewhere deep in the ducts, fans hummed with the steady rhythm of containment, a sound so constant it blurred into the blood's own pulse.
Kahn sat at the edge of his bunk, staring at the cuff on his wrist.The glow from the night before had dimmed, but the warmth remained. When he pressed his fingers to the metal, it pulsed once — a small, living throb, like a heartbeat answering his own. The touch left a faint static sting on his fingertips, a whisper of the energy coiled beneath the skin.
The words on the wall were gone.
He didn't remember cleaning them.Only the faint smell of ozone lingered near the spot, sharp and sweet, like a storm that had passed through an enclosed room.
He rubbed at his eyes until colors swam behind the lids — violet, copper, white — the same colors from the dream. When he blinked, for a split second, the room folded at the corners, like the walls had exhaled. The air seemed to shift temperature, a subtle pressure building behind his temples.
A knock broke the silence. Two precise taps. Then the door slid open before he could answer.
Selene stepped inside. The smell of cold ozone came with her, faint but unmistakable. Her presence always made the room feel smaller, as if the light itself bent around her. The air cooled by a few degrees, raising the fine hairs on Kahn's arms.
"Morning checks," she said. Her tone wasn't greeting or command; it was observation — sterile and exact. "You didn't report last night's neural activity."
Kahn's mouth was dry, his tongue heavy with the taste of metal and sleep. "Didn't think there was much to report."
Her gaze sharpened. "That's a lie."
He froze. The hum of the vents seemed to deepen.
Selene crossed the floor, the click of her boots syncing perfectly with the low pulse of the ventilation system. Each step left a faint vibration through the floor plating. She stopped close enough that he caught the faint scent of static off her skin — sharp, electric, like lightning just before it hits. A whisper of heat rolled off her coat, edged with the faint trace of gun oil and synthetic leather.
"The monitors registered conceptual fluctuation at 0300 hours," she said. "Fragment resonance outside safe thresholds."
He swallowed. "I—was dreaming."
"Dreams don't leave residue," she said quietly. "We found electromagnetic shift in the dorm sector. Your cuff glowed."
So they had seen it. He looked down at the cuff again, the metal dull under the sterile light. The faint hum in it had subsided, but the ghost of warmth still pressed against his skin. "It stopped."
"For now." Selene's voice softened — not comfort, but curiosity. "What did it show you?"
He hesitated. The memory felt fragile, like glass still cooling from a melt."Mirrors," he said finally. "And something behind them. It spoke."
Her eyes flicked — a small motion, gone before it finished. "What did it say?"
Kahn hesitated. The words came with a metallic taste, cold and bitter."Align or break."
Selene was silent for a long time. The hum of the vents filled the gap, steady, mechanical, hiding the soft rhythm of her breathing. Somewhere distant, a relay clicked, echoing like a heartbeat in the walls. When she finally spoke, her voice was almost too soft to catch.
"You listen more than you should."
He opened his mouth, but she raised a hand. "Keep it to yourself. The Federation has no protocols for messages from the Kernel. They call them auditory hallucinations and prescribe isolation. You wouldn't like isolation."
Something in her tone — almost human, almost pity — made his stomach twist.She turned toward the door. "Calibration briefing in ten. Don't be late."
When she left, the air felt lighter but colder, as though the room exhaled relief and fear at once.Kahn stared at the cuff again. The metal was cool now, innocent. His reflection in it looked normal — but when he leaned closer, the pupils of his reflection didn't move with his own.
Calibration Chamber
The recruits stood in a semicircle beneath a suspended grid of light.Each beam cast thin white columns that hummed softly when touched — containment frequencies tuned to match the fragments inside them. The air was dry, sharp, full of the smell of ozone, burnt insulation, and disinfectant. Beneath it all lingered the faint scent of human anxiety: sweat, nerves, breath caught too long.
Voss prowled behind the consoles, tapping through telemetry feeds. His coat swished faintly, carrying the warm scent of coffee and burnt dust — the only trace of something alive in a room designed to erase all warmth. The lights reflected in his glasses, thin gold lines flickering with each data stream.
"Calibration day," he grunted. "That means: don't twitch, don't talk, don't think about running. The grid notices when you lie."
The symmetrical recruit stood across from Kahn, perfectly still in his beam. Even his breathing seemed measured to avoid disrupting the light. His cuffs reflected twin halos on the floor. He glanced at Kahn once, just long enough to let the silence become personal.
Selene's voice cut through from the control balcony — clear, amplified, surgical."Begin phase one."
The beams flared, flooding the room with white so pure it erased shadows. Heat washed across Kahn's face; the smell of scorched metal stung his nostrils. The fragment inside him writhed, tasting the field. Static crawled under his skin like a current seeking ground.
"Pulse sync," Selene ordered.
The cuffs vibrated — faintly at first, then harder.Kahn's bones felt hollow. He heard whispers through his own bloodstream: numbers, patterns, counting backward in a language he didn't know. The light pressed harder against his skin, almost tactile, like invisible hands testing the edges of his form. Every breath carried static.
His reflection in the beam's mirrored floor rippled — not flat anymore but deeper, as though the ground beneath him opened into another room identical to this one. Inside that reflection, the symmetrical recruit was watching him too, but not looking up. Watching through him.
Kahn blinked. For an instant, he saw it again — the phrase, faint and luminous, written across the mirrored floor between them:
ALIGN OR BREAK.
The light cut out. Silence slammed down like a weight. The smell of burnt circuitry lingered, sharp and acrid, catching in the throat.
Voss exhaled, tension cracking from his shoulders. "All readings normal," he said, though his tone didn't sound convinced. "Nobody exploded. Always a good day."
The recruits dispersed, boots squeaking faintly against the mirrored floor. The air shimmered with residual heat, like the ghost of light refusing to fade.
Selene stayed on the balcony, eyes fixed on Kahn. He pretended not to see. The rival's gaze brushed his as he passed — calm, measured, but sharp enough to cut.
"Whatever it is you're becoming," the rival said quietly, "make sure it chooses a side."
Kahn didn't answer. The hum of the grid still lived in his ears, whispering its endless binary:one or zero. align or break.
The taste of copper lingered on his tongue long after the lights went dark.