The cell was a sanctuary of pain. After the soldiers dumped him back inside, Kyon didn't even make it to the cot. He crumpled on the cold floor, his body convulsing in silent, dry heaves. The migraine was a living entity, a parasitic star going supernova behind his eyes. It wasn't just pain; it was a sensory overload—phantom sounds of screeching metal, the smell of ozone and blood that wasn't there, a kaleidoscope of colors flashing across his vision even when his eyes were squeezed shut.
The "stabilizer" had worn off completely, leaving him raw and exposed to the full, unadulterated backlash of his own power. He felt… unwoven. As if his very timeline had been frayed, and he was experiencing past, present, and potential future agonies all at once.
He lost track of time. It could have been hours or minutes before the convulsions subsided into a full-body tremble. He crawled to the sink and splashed tepid water on his face, the pink-tinged liquid swirling down the drain. His reflection in the polished steel was a horror show: eyes sunken and bloodshot, skin pale and clammy, dried blood caked under his nose and in the corner of his mouth.
This is the cost, he thought, the words echoing dully in his battered mind. This is what it takes to be a "hero."
Jax's voice echoed in his memory, laced with that trademark disdain. "Sloppy. Reckless." The words stung more than the physical pain because they were true. He had no control. He was a child swinging a goddamn sledgehammer in a room full of glass.
He managed to haul himself onto the cot, every muscle screaming in protest. He stared at the seamless ceiling, trying to find a crack, a flaw, anything to focus on besides the agony. His mind drifted back to the simulation. The way the beam had vanished. He hadn't just moved it; he had erased a segment of its history. The concept was so terrifying he had to push it away. What if he'd missed? What if he'd erased a piece of the woman instead?
A cold dread, separate from the pain, settled in his stomach. They weren't teaching him to save people. They were teaching him to be a scalpel. A very, very dangerous one.
The next time the door opened, it wasn't for food or training. A different soldier stood there, this one holding a folded set of grey fatigues identical to Jax's.
"Change. Psych eval. Now."
The "psych eval" was in another featureless white room, but this one had a small, square table and two chairs. A woman sat in one of them. She was younger than Rostova, with kind eyes and a soft smile that felt utterly alien in this place. She wore a simple grey uniform, but no lab coat.
"Kyon, please, sit down," she said, her voice gentle. "I'm Dr. Elara. How are you feeling?"
It was such a normal, human question that it threw him completely. He stood frozen for a second before slowly sliding into the chair opposite her.
"Fine," he croaked, the lie tasting like ash.
Dr. Elara gave a small, understanding nod. She had a tablet on the table, but she didn't look at it. Her full attention was on him. "I've read the report from your first session with Instructor Jax. It sounds… intense."
Kyon just stared at her, his guard up. This was a trick. It had to be. The nice cop to Rostova's and Jax's brutal ones.
"Your power is incredible, Kyon. But it's also a tremendous burden. One that no one your age should have to bear." She leaned forward slightly. "I'm here to help you carry it. To give you a place to talk, without judgment. This is a safe space."
He almost laughed. A safe space? In a GHDI black site? He remained silent.
"Jax can be… abrasive," she continued, undeterred. "But his methods, however harsh, are designed for one thing: survival. The world outside these walls does not care about your potential. It only cares about your performance. Jax is preparing you for that reality."
"Why are you here, then?" Kyon finally asked, his voice rough. "If survival is all that matters, why the touchy-feely act?"
"It's not an act," she said, her eyes earnest. "Survival of the body is meaningless without survival of the mind. We've lost more assets to psychosis and suicide than to enemy action. My job is to make sure that when Jax is done forging you into a weapon, there's still a person left inside to aim it."
Her words were like a key turning in a rusty lock. Psychosis. Suicide. The idea that he wasn't the first to break here, that others had shattered completely, was both terrifying and perversely comforting. He wasn't alone in his terror.
"What happens if there isn't?" he asked quietly. "If the person doesn't survive?"
Dr. Elara's smile faded, replaced by a look of profound sadness. "Then the weapon is decommissioned." She didn't elaborate. She didn't need to.
They sat in silence for a moment. Kyon found his eyes drifting to the seam of the camera on the wall. Was Rostova watching? Was she listening?
"Jax said I was sloppy," Kyon muttered, almost to himself.
"Were you?"
"Yeah." He looked down at his hands, clenched on the table. "I couldn't move the beam. So I… I made a part of it disappear. It hurt. A lot."
Dr. Elara didn't seem shocked. "You altered a localized causal event. That's a significant step beyond simple stasis. The feedback would be exponentially worse. Your mind is trying to process an action that fundamentally violates the laws of physics as you understand them. The pain is a physiological manifestation of that cognitive dissonance."
Hearing it explained so clinically somehow made it less terrifying. It was a side effect. A known quantity.
"Will it always hurt this much?"
"The pain is a teacher," she said. "It's your body's way of defining your limits. With time, and with the stabilizers, you will learn to expand those limits. To operate through the pain. But you must also learn to respect it. Pushing too far, too fast, is how assets are lost."
It was the first piece of genuine advice he'd received since being dragged here. It wasn't a threat. It was a warning.
The session lasted another twenty minutes. She asked about his grandmother, about his life in Oakland, about what he felt when he first used his power. He found himself giving short, clipped answers at first, but the sheer normality of the conversation, the lack of immediate threat, wore him down. He didn't tell her everything, but he talked more than he had to anyone since his capture.
When the soldier returned to take him back to his cell, he felt marginally less like he was going to shatter into a million pieces.
The next day, training was different.
Jax was waiting for him in the White Room, but the large crate was gone. Instead, a single, small wooden block sat in the center of the floor.
"No simulations today," Jax grunted. "Today, we learn finesse. Or you blow your own brains out. Your choice."
He pointed at the block. "I want you to lift it."
Kyon stared at him. "What?"
"You heard me. Lift the block. Without touching it."
Understanding dawned, and with it, a fresh wave of dread. "You want me to… rewind it?"
"I want you to move it from point A to point B using only your mind. I don't care how you do it. Stasis, rewind, make it fucking fly. Just get it off the floor."
Kyon approached the block. It was just a simple cube of pine, about the size of a die. It looked innocuous. Harmless.
He took a deep breath, trying to ignore the phantom ache in his skull. He focused on the block, trying to find that mental grip, that slippage. The headache flared immediately, a warning shot. He pushed past it, concentrating on the block, on the space around it.
SCREEE——
The world jammed again. The sound was a physical blow. The White Room froze, the air turning to glass. The pain was instant, a hot wire being threaded through his sinuses. He looked at the block. It was frozen, a foot off the floor? No. He hadn't lifted it yet. It was still on the floor. In the frozen time, it was immovable, anchored.
He tried to push it with his mind. Nothing. He tried to imagine it floating. Nothing. He was just a boy standing in a frozen room, his brain on fire, staring at a piece of wood.
Frustration boiled over. He remembered the beam. The unmaking. He focused on the block, not to move it, but to erase the moment of it being on the floor. To put it… somewhere else.
The pain escalated from a hot wire to a white-hot branding iron pressed directly against his cortex. He screamed into the silence, his vision tunneling. He pushed.
The block didn't move. It flickered. For a nanosecond, it vanished, and in the same instant, reappeared two inches to the left. It also now had a hairline crack running down its center.
Kyon lost his hold. Time crashed back. He stumbled backward, clutching his head, a fresh, violent nosebleed immediately soaking his upper lip. He fell to his knees, gasping.
Jax walked over and picked up the block. He examined the crack, then looked down at Kyon, who was trembling on the floor.
"You teleported it," Jax said, his voice devoid of its usual mockery. It was flat. Analytical. "Or more accurately, you erased its position in one location and re-established it in another. You didn't move it through space. You edited its coordinates in reality." He dropped the block. It clattered on the floor. "That's not finesse, kid. That's a fucking sledgehammer. You used a reality-altering event to move a block of wood two inches. The energy cost to result ratio is insane."
He knelt down, his face close to Kyon's. "You're thinking like a god. You need to start thinking like a mechanic. You don't replace the entire engine because a spark plug is dirty. You clean the plug." He tapped his own temple. "Control isn't about brute force. It's about precision. It's about using the least amount of power for the maximum effect. What you just did… that's how you burn out. Permanently."
He stood up. "Again. And this time, don't try to rewrite the laws of physics. Just… nudge it."
The session lasted two hours. Two hours of agonizing, failed attempts. Kyon tried "nudging." He tried imagining time flowing differently around the block. He tried everything he could think of. The block barely twitched. He managed to make it vibrate once. Another time, he accidentally aged a small patch of its surface, turning the fresh pine a rotten, greyish color. Each attempt came with a fresh wave of feedback, leaving him dizzy, nauseous, and bleeding.
By the end, he was a broken mess on the floor, surrounded by a dozen blocks—some cracked, some aged, one that had seemingly fused with the floor itself—all testaments to his catastrophic lack of control.
Jax looked down at the carnage. "You're a disaster." But for the first time, there was a flicker of something else in his eyes. Not respect. Not quite. But a dawning realization of the sheer, chaotic potential he was dealing with. "But you're a persistent disaster. Get up. We're done for today."
As the soldiers led him away, Kyon caught a glimpse of himself in the reflective surface of the door. He looked like a ghost—pale, haunted, with dark circles under his eyes and blood smeared across his face.
He wasn't Kyon Wilson, the kid from Oakland, anymore. He was Subject 77. He was Asset Chronos.