The lights went wrong before the alarms did.They didn't flicker, not exactly — they breathed, brightening and dimming in slow, irregular rhythms like lungs made of glass. The air changed with them, expanding and contracting with every pulse. Each inhale carried a dry warmth that stung the sinuses, each exhale left a faint chill on the skin. It smelled faintly of heat: metal warmed to the edge of burning, then cooled before the scent could bloom, like the aftertaste of lightning on a stormed plain.
Kahn lay awake, listening.The dorm vents whispered the same filtered wind, but the hum beneath it was off-beat, stuttering between frequencies. The sound wasn't just in his ears — it crawled through his teeth, a vibration that made his jaw ache. His cuff vibrated once — not a warning pulse, but something like a heartbeat. When it stopped, the silence left a pressure behind, a vacuum in his chest that made him realize how loud the quiet truly was.
He sat up. The room looked the same — four walls, a desk, the faint light strip running across the ceiling — but it felt too large. The edges had receded, swallowed by something invisible. The air had weight now; every breath dragged a metallic tang across his tongue. Shadows along the corners seemed to have depth, as if the walls were bending away instead of standing still, breathing with the same strange rhythm as the lights.
Something in the air changed again.A new scent threaded through the sterility — blood, thin and fresh, metallic but not sharp, like a nosebleed in the next room. The taste reached him before the smell did, copper blooming faintly across his tongue, ghostlike but real.
Then came the alarm.
It started low, just a distant groan that vibrated through the floor, then bloomed into a deep pulsing note that rattled the metal bunk frames. The corridor lights beyond his door flared red, spilling through the seams like liquid. The building's voice followed, smooth and synthetic, but cracked at the edges, like a machine trying to mimic fear:
CONTAINMENT ANOMALY – LEVEL TWO.ALL FRAGMENTS TO STATIC HOLD.
He grabbed his cuffs, snapping them on as the floor vibrated harder. The metal felt alive, faintly hot, a pulse answering his own. For three beats it matched him perfectly, then drifted, falling slightly out of sync — a heartbeat trying to separate.
Out in the corridor, boots slammed against steel. Other recruits spilled from their quarters, eyes wide, movements jerky from half-sleep and panic. The buzz-cut woman had already armed her suppressor baton; its copper edge hummed faintly, a sound so high it scraped the back of the skull. The air reeked of panic — sweat, ozone, the burnt scent of machinery running too hot. Someone down the hall retched; the taste of bile and static briefly mixed with the metallic air.
Voss appeared from the end of the hallway, trench coat flaring behind him, eyes shadowed and raw from sleeplessness. His voice cut through the noise like gravel dragged across a steel plate."Everyone to bay three! Now!"
Kahn fell in line. The lights overhead strobed, but unevenly — not red anymore, more like rust and pale blue chasing each other, bleeding together. The hum of the suppressor fields deepened into a droning note that pressed against their skulls. It made the air taste like burnt copper and rainwater, cold and sharp at once.
They entered Containment Bay Three.
It was enormous — a cathedral of machinery. Rows of vertical tanks lined the walls, each filled with viscous silver fluid that glimmered like mercury. The air inside the bay was heavy, moist, and cold enough to sting the throat. Every breath carried the taste of chemicals, every exhale fogged faintly before vanishing. Shapes hung suspended inside the tanks, twitching faintly under containment pulses. The smell was thick — ozone, coolant, and something organic beneath it all, a sour-sweet rot that clung to the tongue.
Selene stood on the central platform, backlit by the white flare of emergency light. Her voice was level, but the edges vibrated with tension, like a frequency barely held in check.
"Sector Theta echo residue has reanimated," she said. "Residual thought contamination spread through network relays. Containment barriers are cycling out of phase."
She turned toward Voss. The light caught her eyes, making them look metallic. "I told you the neural audits weren't clean."
Voss grunted, his hand brushing a console smeared with condensation. "You want to argue, or you want to live through it?"
The tanks behind her shivered.Ripples passed through the silver fluid — faint, then sharper, forming rings that shimmered like oil under light. One of the figures inside pressed a hand against the glass. The handprint stayed, glowing copper at the edges. The smell of hot iron filled the air, sharp enough to taste.
"Grid reboot in ninety seconds," Selene said. "Keep your fragments locked."
But Kahn could feel it — a pressure in the air, pulling at his chest like a tide. The hum rose through his spine, vibrating in his teeth. The whisper in his blood returned, sliding between the alarm's beats, intimate and unmistakable:
Align or break.
The glass on the nearest tank cracked.A perfect spiderweb, each line glowing faint orange. Fluid began to drip — slow at first, then faster, each drop hissing as it hit the copper floor. The shape inside twitched violently, movements too sharp, too repetitive. The handprint spread until it looked like a flower of light blooming across the glass, petals made of fractures.
Then the tank burst.
The noise hit like thunder. The floor shuddered under the impact, sending vibrations up Kahn's legs. Fluid splashed across the floor, steaming where it landed, burning the air with a chemical tang. The smell was unbearable — metal, ammonia, electricity, and decay. A figure stepped out of the wreckage — thin, featureless, head tilted as if listening to something only it could hear.
For a moment, the room itself froze.Then every tank along the wall shuddered in sequence, glass groaning, fluid churning. The pressure made Kahn's ears pop.
Selene's eyes flared red. "Suppressors to full!"
Voss slammed his palm on the control node. The floor lit up, copper veins igniting in a radial pattern. The light hurt to look at, too bright, too white, washing everything in sterile brilliance. The hum became a roar — not sound but vibration that shook the air like thunder trapped indoors. Kahn stumbled back as heat and static rolled through the bay.
The thing from the first tank moved.It didn't walk; it shifted, flickering between frames like a broken film reel. When it passed between lights, its edges warped — first skeletal, then fluid, then nothing at all. The sound it made was wet static, a glitching hiss that crawled over the skin. Every time it moved, the smell of rust and scorched copper filled the room.
Kahn's cuffs burned hot. His vision fractured, doubling, tripling. He saw two Selenes, one slightly delayed — one real, one mirrored. Both shouting orders, both wrong in different ways. His fragment writhed beneath his skin, whispering in feverish loops that scraped like insects under glass:
Let me out. Let me fix it. Let me break it right.
He clenched his jaw until he tasted blood. "Not now."
Voss shouted something, but the noise drowned it out. The emergency lights flickered, then died, leaving only the ghostly blue of the tanks and the copper veins beneath their feet glowing like buried lightning.
In the half-dark, Kahn saw the rival.Standing still amid the chaos, calm, light reflecting in perfect symmetry across his face. Even the sweat on his skin mirrored itself, twin beads rolling down each cheek. He raised one hand — slow, deliberate — and the nearest echo froze mid-motion, its form snapping into a mirrored silhouette. Every movement in the room hesitated for a fraction of a second, as though time itself were trying to align.
Kahn felt his fragment buck in response, muscles tightening, breath catching in his throat. Opposites colliding again, symmetry against fracture, control against instinct.
The rival turned his head just enough for Kahn to see his profile, voice carrying through the static:"Containment is order. You are not."
And before Kahn could respond, the glass behind them screamed.A dozen more tanks fractured at once — light, fluid, and reflections bursting into the air like shattered mercury. The sound hit with physical force, vibrating through bone and blood.
The alarm began to stutter, voice breaking between words, caught in a feedback loop:
CONTAINMENT—BROKEN—BROKEN—BROKEN—
The sound filled the world — a rising tide of static and machinery howling in unison. The air thickened, tasting of metal and ozone, of storms trapped indoors. Kahn's vision blurred under the white heat of it.
And somewhere beneath it all, faint but certain, the Kernel whispered —soft, intimate, and infinite:
Welcome home.