The world was a shattered mirror, and Leo was every fragment.
He was a child, lost and crying in a supermarket that smelled of disinfectant and decay. He was a Sweeper, his muscles coiled with power, firing a plasma rifle at a shadow that laughed. He was an old man, feeling his heart stutter its final, tired beat. He was the Grave-Titan, a colossus of sorrow, feeling the terrifying nothingness eat away at its core.
These realities overlapped, bled into each other, vying for dominance. There was no "Leo" to curate them, only the chaotic storm of a hundred borrowed lives and a dozen broken timelines.
The only constant was the white room.
It was a sterile, padded cube. No seams, no windows, no furniture. A single, recessed light provided a shadowless, relentless glow. Soft, classical music played from an unseen source, a programmed attempt at calm. It was the pinnacle of containment, designed to provide zero sensory input that could fuel a psychic Aptitude.
It was also a perfect hell for a fractured mind with nothing left to focus on but itself.
A section of the wall hissed and became transparent. Captain Valerius stood on the other side of the plasteel, a data-slate in his hand, his expression one of intense, clinical focus. He observed the figure in the center of the room.
Leo was curled on the floor, but his limbs twitched erratically, as if controlled by different pilots. One moment his hand would claw at the padding, the next it would gently stroke it. He muttered in a cacophony of voices—a child's whimper, a soldier's curse, his own voice pleading for it to stop.
"Subject is experiencing persistent, simultaneous identity fragmentation," Valerius dictated softly into his slate. "Motor control is non-unified. The consciousness has not re-coalesced following the dissipation event."
He tapped the slate, and the music cut off.
In the room, Leo's head snapped up. The different voices coalesced into a single, ragged shout. "Turn it back on!"
Valerius made a note. "Auditory stimulus is a tether. A point of commonality for the disparate consciousnesses. Noted." He did not turn the music back on. He needed data, not comfort.
"Where am I?" Leo asked, his voice shifting mid-sentence from terror to confusion.
"You are secure," Valerius replied, his tone flat. "Do you know what you did?"
A flicker of the true Leo surfaced, lanced with pain and memory. "The Titan... I... it's gone." Then another fragment took over, snarling. "You made me do it! You broke me!"
"I utilized an asset to save eight thousand four hundred and twelve lives," Valerius corrected. "The cost, while significant, was necessary. The data we are gathering now is equally necessary."
He tapped the slate again. This time, a low, dissonant hum filled the white room—a faint, simulated Gloaming frequency.
Leo recoiled, scrambling backward until he hit the wall. The different selves reacted as one: in terror. "Stop! Make it stop!"
"The subject displays a unified defensive response to hostile resonant frequencies, despite its fractured state," Valerius murmured, taking notes. "The core survival instinct remains a powerful unifying force."
He cut the hum. Leo slumped against the wall, panting, his several selves united in exhaustion and relief.
"This is monstrous."
Valerius didn't turn. Kaelen stood behind him, her arms crossed, her face a mask of disgust as she watched the scene.
"He saved us all," she said, her voice low and dangerous. "And you have him in a box, poking him with a stick to see how he squirms. He's a person, not a subject."
"He was a person," Valerius said, finally looking at her. His eyes were chillingly calm. "Now he is something more and something less. He is a precedent. He is the first human to channel that magnitude of directed negation and survive. Understanding him is the key to replicating the effect. To building a future where we don't need to rely on the self-immolation of one man."
"He's breaking apart!"
"And we will learn how to put him back together. Stronger. More resilient." Valerius turned back to the window. "His sacrifice bought us more than just the survival of the enclave, Kaelen. It bought us a blueprint. I intend to use it."
Inside the white room, Leo had begun to cry, the sobs shifting between the heartbroken wails of a child and the weary tears of an old man. Kaelen looked from his broken form to Valerius's unwavering back.
A chilling realization settled over her. The true horror wasn't the Gloaming outside the walls. It was the cold, calculating abyss that had taken root inside them, wearing a captain's uniform. Valerius wasn't just studying Leo's breakdown; he was reverse-engineering it.
The battle for the enclave was over. The battle for Leo's soul—or whatever was left of it—had just begun. And Kaelen knew, with a soldier's certainty, which side she was on.