The apartment was modest but comfortable, the kind of space that spoke of someone who valued function over form but still appreciated a certain aesthetic quality. The living room occupied most of the open floor plan, with hardwood floors that showed their age through small scratches and worn patches where foot traffic had been heaviest over the years. The walls were painted a neutral beige, decorated sparsely with a few framed prints—abstract art pieces that added color without demanding too much attention.
A small kitchenette occupied one corner, separated from the living area by a breakfast bar with two stools tucked underneath. The appliances were dated but clean, the countertops clear except for a coffee maker and a small collection of mugs hanging from hooks beneath the cabinets.
The furniture was minimal—a couch, a coffee table, a bookshelf that held more dust than books, and a small entertainment center with a television that Elijah rarely turned on. Everything was arranged with an eye toward maximizing the limited space, creating an environment that felt open rather than cramped despite the apartment's small footprint.
The couch sat positioned near the window, angled to catch the natural light that poured through during the day. It was an old piece, the upholstery worn soft from years of use, with cushions that had molded to the shape of whoever sat in them most frequently. A throw blanket was draped over one arm, and a couple of pillows were scattered along its length.
Outside the window, the afternoon sun hung in the western sky, its light slanting through the glass at that particular angle that only happened in the late hours of the day. The rays caught dust particles floating in the air, turning them into tiny points of brilliance that danced and swirled with each small movement in the room.
The window itself reflected that light back into the space, creating a warm glow that bathed everything in golden tones. The reflection in the glass showed the street below—cars parked along the curb, a few pedestrians walking past, the occasional vehicle driving by—all of it slightly distorted by the imperfect surface of the old windowpane.
Elijah sat on the couch in that pool of sunlight, his body angled toward the window but his attention focused entirely on something in his hands. His posture was hunched forward slightly, elbows resting on his knees, his fingers turning something over and over with slow, methodical movements.
The bracelet.
The delicate silver band caught the light with each rotation, the small charms dangling from it creating tiny shadows that danced across his palms. His eyes were fixed on it with an intensity that suggested he was trying to will it to reveal its secrets through sheer force of concentration.
His expression was one of deep contemplation—brow furrowed, lips pressed together in a thin line, jaw tight. It was the face of someone working through a complex problem, connecting dots that didn't want to be connected, following threads that kept trying to slip through his fingers.
The sound of the apartment door opening broke his concentration. The metallic click of the lock turning, the soft creak of hinges that needed oil, the gentle thud of the door closing.
Janet stepped into the apartment, and everything about her posture screamed exhaustion. Her shoulders were slumped, her movements slower than usual, lacking their typical energy and grace. She carried her purse in one hand, the strap sliding down her arm as she moved.
She reached down and slipped off her heels with visible relief, using one foot to push off the shoe from the other, then reversing the process. The shoes were black pumps with a modest heel, professional but clearly uncomfortable after a long day. She left them by the door, wiggling her toes against the hardwood floor with a small sigh.
Her work clothes—a pencil skirt and blouse combination—showed signs of a long day, the fabric slightly rumpled, the collar not quite as crisp as it had been that morning.
She looked up, finally noticing Elijah sitting on the couch, and offered a tired smile. "Hey, you're home early. How was your—"
"You know," Elijah interrupted, his voice cutting through her greeting with the sharp edge of suppressed emotion, "when you and I got together that day and became inseparable, I knew something wasn't right."
Janet froze mid-step, her smile faltering, confusion replacing the warmth in her expression.
Elijah continued, his eyes still on the bracelet, not looking at her. "I had this notion within me, this feeling telling me there was more than met the eye in our encounter. And it kind of makes sense—all these troubles came my way immediately after I met you, Janet."
The final words came out in a tone of pure rage, barely controlled, his voice dropping to something dangerous and cold. His hands clenched around the bracelet, knuckles going white, the delicate metal digging into his palm.
Janet's eyes widened, her body language shifting from tired to alert in an instant. "Elijah, what do you mean? Slow down, I can't understand what you're saying. What troubles? What are you talking about?"
Her voice had that quality of genuine confusion, the sound of someone completely blindsided by an accusation they didn't see coming.
Elijah's lips curled into something that approximated a sneer, his face twisting with contempt. He stood slowly, his movements deliberate, and held up the bracelet, dangling it from his fingers so it caught the light, the charms swaying gently.
"This," he said, his voice dripping with venom. "Do you recognize this?"
Janet's mind raced, her internal thoughts a chaotic jumble as she tried to process what was happening.
*Wait, so it's just that? Maybe he thinks I'm cheating on him? With another guy who gave me that bracelet? Is that what this is about?*
Relief mixed with indignation flooded through her, and she took a step forward, her hands coming up in a placating gesture. "Elijah, it's not what you—"
"Is this yours?" He cut her off, his voice sharp as a blade, demanding an answer, not an explanation.
Janet paused, her mouth still open from the interrupted sentence. She looked at the bracelet more carefully, recognition finally dawning in her eyes. "Yes, it's mine, but I bought it for myself. I don't know what you think—"
Elijah stood up from the couch in one smooth motion, and something about the way he moved made Janet's next words die in her throat.
He took a step toward her. Then another. His footfalls were slow, measured, each one placed with deliberate care. The sound of his shoes against the hardwood floor seemed louder than it should have been, each *thud* resonating through the small space.
His posture was different—shoulders back, spine straight, chin slightly lowered so he was looking at her from beneath his brows. It was the body language of a predator approaching prey, of someone who had made a decision and was now acting on it with complete commitment.
Each step forward forced Janet to take a corresponding step back, her body instinctively responding to the threat his presence now represented. Her eyes darted between his face and the space behind her, calculating the distance to the door, to the kitchen, to anywhere that might offer escape or defense.
Confusion warred with the first stirrings of real fear in her expression. This wasn't the Elijah she knew—or thought she knew. This was someone else, someone dangerous, wearing his face.
"You know," Elijah said, his voice conversational now, which somehow made it more unsettling than the rage, "at a certain cafeteria, there was this waitress. She had this exact type of bracelet. And I realized there was more weirdness about it than just its plain surface."
The moment the word "waitress" left his mouth, Janet's entire demeanor changed.
Her eyes went wide—not with confusion anymore, but with pure panic. The color drained from her face, leaving her complexion ashen. Her mouth opened, forming words that came out stammered and broken.
"Elijah, I don't under—"
She never got to finish the sentence.
Elijah's hand shot out with surprising speed, his fingers wrapping around her throat. Not squeezing hard enough to completely cut off her air, but enough to restrict it significantly, enough to make breathing difficult, enough to send her body into immediate panic mode.
Janet's hands flew to his wrist instinctively, fingers wrapping around his arm, trying to pull it away. Her nails dug into his skin, leaving crescent-shaped marks, but his grip didn't loosen. Her other hand came up, palm out, fingers spread wide in a universal gesture of "stop, please, stop."
Her mouth worked, trying to form words, but only choked sounds came out—gasping, desperate attempts to speak or breathe or both. Her eyes watered immediately, tears forming at the corners and spilling down her cheeks.
She tried to step backward, to create distance, but Elijah moved with her, maintaining his grip, his face impassive and cold. Her hand gestures became more frantic—both palms up now, moving in short, rapid motions, begging, pleading, the kind of movement that transcended language and spoke directly to primal human empathy.
Her fingers opened and closed, grasping at air, at his arm, at anything that might help. She shook her head—small, quick movements—her eyes wide and locked on his face, silently screaming for him to stop, to let go, to listen.
"I want you," Elijah said, his voice eerily calm despite the violence of his actions, "to stop playing with me and tell me exactly who you are and why you approached me."
He brought the bracelet up with his other hand, holding it inches from her face, the charms catching the light and throwing small reflections across her features.
"And what exactly is this thing?"
Janet's expression shifted then, even through the terror of being choked. Something ugly rose to the surface—resentment, anger, frustration that had been carefully hidden behind a mask of love and concern. Her eyes narrowed despite the tears, her mouth twisting into something between a grimace and a snarl.
She tried to speak, tried to spit words at him, but his hand on her throat made it impossible. Only choked, gargled sounds emerged.
And then the bracelet began to make noise.
It started as a soft hum, barely audible, then grew rapidly in volume and complexity. The sound was a hybrid—the rushing, tumbling crash of a waterfall combined with the sharp, grating screech of glass being scraped across glass. The two sounds shouldn't have been able to exist simultaneously, should have canceled each other out or created something entirely different, but instead they layered, each maintaining its distinct quality while somehow merging into a unified whole.
The rushing water sound provided a base—constant, flowing, with variations in pitch and intensity that mimicked the natural rhythm of falling water. Over and through this, the glass-scraping sound wove patterns—sharp, crystalline, almost musical in its irregularity, like someone playing a saw or rubbing the rim of a crystal glass.
But the sound wasn't coming from the bracelet itself. If someone else had been in the room, they wouldn't have heard anything. The sound was echoing directly in Elijah's ears, originating from inside his own head, as if speakers had been implanted directly into his auditory cortex.
The volume increased exponentially, going from uncomfortable to painful in seconds. Elijah's grip on Janet's throat loosened, then released entirely as his hands flew to his ears, pressing hard against them as if he could physically block out a sound that was being generated from within.
He stumbled backward, his face contorting in pain, his mouth opening in a silent scream that couldn't compete with the noise filling his skull. His knees buckled, and he went down, first to a kneeling position, then lower, bending forward until his forehead nearly touched the floor.
His hands pressed against his ears so hard that his fingers went white from the pressure, his arms trembling with the effort. His entire body began to shake, muscles spasming involuntarily as his nervous system tried to cope with the assault.
Janet stood where he'd released her, one hand massaging her throat, the other braced against the wall for support. She coughed—deep, wracking coughs that shook her entire frame—trying to get air back into her lungs, trying to clear the sensation of his fingers wrapped around her windpipe.
Her eyes watered still, but now from the coughing rather than tears. Red marks were already forming on her neck, the outline of his hand clearly visible against her pale skin.
She looked down at Elijah on the ground, clutching his head in obvious agony, and something in her expression transformed completely.
The fear vanished. The pain and distress melted away. What replaced it was pure, undiluted delight.
A smile spread across her face—not a kind smile, not the warm expression she'd worn so often in his presence, but something cruel and satisfied. Her eyes lit up with malicious joy, the kind of expression that came from watching an enemy suffer.
She took a step toward his hunched form, then another, until she was standing directly over him. She drew her leg back and kicked him hard in the back, her stockinged foot connecting with his spine with a solid *thud*.
The force of the blow sent Elijah sprawling forward, his hands leaving his ears momentarily to catch himself, though they returned immediately as the sound continued its assault. He ended up on his side, curled into a fetal position, still clutching his head, his face twisted in agony.
Janet's voice, when she spoke, carried a tone of righteous indignation mixed with condescension, the sound of someone who'd been waiting a long time to say these words.
"You ignorant fool!" She spat the words at him, venom dripping from every syllable. "After I literally comforted you, was there for you, gave you my maiden grace—brutally took it from me—and you still dare to suspect me?"
She lifted one foot and placed it deliberately on Elijah's head, pressing down just enough to be uncomfortable, to be humiliating. She looked down at him with a expression of supreme contempt—one eyebrow raised, lips curled in a sneer, eyes half-lidded with disdain. It was the look of someone regarding something beneath them, something that existed only for their amusement and use.
"You know," she said, her voice taking on a conversational quality that made the words even more cutting, "I'm really tired of all this charade. This time, why don't you be the doll to be played with instead of me? How do you think of that, hmm?"
Elijah barely heard her through the cacophony in his head. He was on both knees now, his body swaying slightly, his hands still pressed desperately against his ears. His eyes were squeezed shut, his face a mask of suffering.
But inside his head, something else was happening.
The world around him—the apartment, Janet, the floor beneath him—began to fade, becoming transparent, unreal. In its place, another reality asserted itself.
He was younger. Much younger. His perspective had shifted again, his body now that of a teenager—maybe sixteen or seventeen. He was wearing clothes he vaguely remembered from that age—jeans, a t-shirt, sneakers.
And he was sitting in a chair.
The chair was metal, cold against his skin, with straps binding his wrists to the armrests and his ankles to the chair legs. The straps were leather, worn soft from use, but strong—no amount of pulling or twisting would break them.
The room around him was small and completely soundproofed. The walls were covered in acoustic foam panels—those pyramid-shaped pieces that absorbed sound waves, preventing any echo or reverberation. The door, when he looked at it, was heavy and sealed tight, the kind used in recording studios or interrogation rooms.
In front of him, positioned about six feet away, were two large speakers. Professional-grade equipment, the kind used in concerts or movie theaters, capable of producing volumes that could damage hearing or worse.
And from those speakers poured the sound.
The hybrid waterfall-glass-scraping noise, but amplified, refined, perfected into something specifically designed to cause maximum psychological and physical distress. The bass frequencies of the waterfall sound resonated in his chest, making his heart rhythm irregular, interfering with his breathing. The high frequencies of the glass-scraping attacked his auditory nerves directly, sending pain signals shooting through his brain.
But it was more than just loud or unpleasant. The sound had patterns—repeating sequences that his brain tried to recognize and predict, only to have those predictions violated, creating constant cognitive dissonance. There were subliminal elements too, sounds just below or above normal human hearing range that his body could still detect, could still react to, even if his conscious mind couldn't identify them.
The lyrical quality of it—because it was musical in a twisted way, following some kind of structure or composition—meant his brain couldn't simply filter it out as noise. It demanded attention, forced processing, required cognitive resources that left no room for anything else.
The volume fluctuated unpredictably, going from almost bearable to excruciating without warning. The pitch would shift, sometimes slowly, sometimes in jarring jumps. The rhythm would speed up, then slow down, then fragment into chaos before coalescing back into something almost recognizable.
And through it all, the hybrid nature of the sound meant different parts of his auditory system were being attacked simultaneously—the mechanical vibration detection systems responding to the low-frequency waterfall sounds, the delicate hair cells in his cochlea overwhelmed by the high-frequency glass sounds, his brain's pattern-recognition systems trying and failing to make sense of the whole.
Teenage Elijah strained against the straps, his body moving in repetitive, desperate motions. He pulled with his arms, trying to free his wrists—left, right, left, right—the leather creaking but not giving. He pushed with his legs, trying to tip the chair, to move it, to do anything that might change his situation. His torso twisted, shoulders rolling, spine flexing, every muscle group engaged in the futile effort to escape.
His head rolled from side to side, banging against the back of the chair, as if physical pain might distract from or override the auditory assault. His mouth opened wide, probably screaming, though he couldn't hear his own voice over the sound from the speakers.
The movements were mechanical, repetitive, exhausting. Left arm pull, right arm pull, legs push, torso twist, head roll. Again. Again. Again. An endless cycle of struggle that achieved nothing, changed nothing, helped nothing.
His eyes—when they were open—showed profound fatigue. The lids were heavy, drooping even as he fought to keep them up. Dark circles had formed beneath them, and the whites were bloodshot. His gaze was unfocused, staring at nothing, or perhaps at something only he could see.
His expression cycled through pain, desperation, exhaustion, determination, defeat, and back to pain in an endless loop that matched the rhythm of his struggling.
And then, through the overwhelming sound, another voice penetrated.
Janet's voice, though distorted, echoing as if coming from very far away or through layers of water.
"...when my director assigned me with the duty of keeping you in check, I was skeptical at first..."
The words reached him in fragments, pieces of a larger speech, each one clear enough to understand despite the assault on his ears.
"...didn't want to, but the more I was with you, your brute attitude really bewitched me..."
Teenage Elijah's eyes widened slightly, some part of his consciousness recognizing that he was hearing something important, something he needed to understand.
"...someone under the radar of the director isn't such an ordinary person..."
The voice continued, Janet's confession coming through in pieces but comprehensible.
"...I have been using this Neural Link Transmitter to override your sensations—sight, hearing, smell, touch, feeling—to manipulate your sense of perception..."
Each word lodged itself in his memory despite the torture of the sound, his mind cataloging them, storing them away.
"...implanted within a microchip that was engraved into you long ago..."
Horror mixed with the pain in his expression.
"...the more your senses are altered, the more you lose your true sense of time, place, and even person. Your feelings are overridden, and you react based on them, not on your true self..."
And then Janet's laugh—high, sharp, the stereotypical villain's laugh that should have been ridiculous but instead was terrifying in its genuine delight at his suffering.
"Ha ha ha ha ha! HA HA HA HA!"
The sound mixed with the torture-noise from the speakers, creating a cacophony that should have broken him completely.
But teenage Elijah, strapped to that chair, forced his exhausted mind to think through the confusion and pain.
No. No, this isn't... I'm feeling fatigue. Hearing that annoying sound. Seeing myself trapped. Having thoughts of wanting to escape. But...
His brow furrowed with the effort of thought.
My true self, my body, is with Janet. Not here. So all of this might be just a hallucination. Yes. My gut feeling is telling me my real body is still fine, not trapped.
The realization spread through him like cool water on a burn.
I will listen to my gut feeling. And it's telling me to punch that scumbag woman.
Back in the real world, Janet had reached down toward Elijah's legs, intending to grab his ankles and drag him somewhere—perhaps to a bedroom, perhaps to finish what she'd started with whatever this neural transmitter was capable of doing.
Her fingers had just wrapped around his left ankle when his leg suddenly jerked, drawing back, then shooting forward with surprising force.
His foot connected solidly with her stomach—not a light tap, but a real kick, driven by muscle memory and instinct even though his conscious mind seemed elsewhere.
The air exploded from Janet's lungs in a sudden "OOMPH!" sound. Her grip on his ankle released immediately, and she stumbled backward, her arms wrapping around her midsection. She lost her balance completely and went down hard, landing on her backside with a solid thud that probably hurt more than the kick itself.
She stared up at Elijah from her position on the floor, her eyes wide with genuine shock, her mouth hanging open, her carefully constructed control shattered.
"Impossible," she gasped, still trying to catch her breath, one hand pressed against where his foot had connected. "What's... that's not... this isn't happening. How—?"
Elijah was standing.
Not gradually, not with effort, but as if some switch had been flipped. His hands had left his ears, dropping to his sides. His posture was upright, balanced, centered.
But his eyes were the most disturbing part.
They were open, but empty. Not vacant in the way someone unconscious would be, and not focused on anything in particular. They stared straight ahead, unblinking, the pupils neither dilated nor constricted but fixed at some middle point.
It was the look of someone whose conscious mind had disconnected from their body, leaving only the most primitive systems in control—instinct, reflex, the autonomic nervous system keeping everything running while the higher functions were elsewhere.
His breathing was steady and even, too regular to be natural, as if his body had gone into some kind of automated mode. His face showed no expression—no pain, no anger, no fear, nothing. Just blank neutrality, like a mannequin or statue.
His body swayed very slightly, the kind of micro-adjustments the human body makes constantly to maintain balance, but there was something mechanical about it, something that suggested these movements were happening without any conscious input.
He stood there, perfectly still except for that slight swaying, his empty eyes pointed vaguely in Janet's direction but not actually seeing her. It was deeply unsettling—more unsettling than if he'd been raging or attacking or doing anything that suggested conscious thought and intention.
This was something else entirely.
Janet remained on the floor, staring up at him, all her earlier confidence and delight completely evaporated. Her face showed pure shock mixed with confusion and the first stirrings of real fear.
She'd done something to him—manipulated his senses, overridden his perceptions, trapped his consciousness in some kind of manufactured experience.
And yet, somehow, his body had fought back.
Without him even being present to direct it.