---
The "Alex Protocols" were not a suggestion. They were a new, inescapable law of my universe, and Lexi Vance was its merciless enforcer. My life now had a rigid, terrifying structure. Mornings were for college classes, which felt like a bizarre, mundane dream. Afternoons and evenings were for the P.V.S.C., which was my vibrant, chaotic, and deeply unsettling reality.
The clubroom had been transformed into a high-tech lab dedicated to one subject: me. Wires snaked across the floor, connecting to sensors that were now permanently living in a small kit Sage insisted I carry. The main whiteboard was a terrifying tapestry of graphs, formulas, and observations about my every twitch and sigh, all under the bold heading: EMOTIONAL CATALYST TRIALS - PHASE 1.
"Alright, Subject Alex," Lexi began, perched on his stool. Today's lab coat was accessorized with fishnet sleeves and a spiked choker. The contrast between his clinical role and his aggressively alternative fashion was somehow the most normal thing about my day. "Hypothesis: Strong emotional states act as an amplifier or modulator for your absorptive abilities. We'll begin with a baseline emotional state: contentment."
I stared at him from the "testing chair"—a repurposed dentist's chair they'd somehow acquired, bolted to the floor in the center of the room. "How exactly am I supposed to feel 'content' right now?"
Sage, who was calibrating a biometric monitor, looked over. "Just try to relax, Alex. Think of something pleasant." He finished with the wires and gently attached a sensor to my temple. His fingers were warm and sure. "Perhaps think about how helpful you're being."
His tone was kind, but the words felt loaded. My "helpfulness" was the reason I was strapped to a chair.
Yuki, tasked with "ambiance," had dimmed the lights and was waving a stick of sandalwood incense around. "I'm creating a serene environment for optimal contentment!" he declared, before tripping over a cable and nearly setting Lexi's notes on fire.
This was my life.
"Baseline heart rate and skin conductivity are stable," Sage reported, his eyes on the laptop screen. "Aura resonance is at a steady 4.2 on the Vance Scale."
"Good," Lexi said, making a note. "Now, for the first stimulus. Yuki, the footage."
Yuki, having extinguished the incense, bounded over to a large monitor. "Okay, Alex! Get ready to feel super content!"
The screen flickered to life. It showed a compilation of the most saccharine, heartwarming videos imaginable: puppies tumbling over each other, kittens sleeping in tiny baskets, babies laughing. It was a tidal wave of pure, undiluted cute.
I watched. The puppies were... fine. The kittens were... okay. The baby giggles did nothing.
"Readings unchanged," Sage reported, a faint frown on his face. "No significant fluctuation."
Lexi tapped his chin. "Fascinating. Immune to manufactured sentimentality. Or perhaps his definition of 'contentment' is fundamentally different from the norm." He gave me a long, appraising look. "Let's try a more... personalized approach. Sage."
Sage nodded. He stood and walked over to a small mini-fridge they kept in the corner. He pulled out a plate covered in plastic wrap. He brought it over and unveiled it with a quiet flourish.
It was a perfect stack of pancakes, golden brown, with a small pat of butter melting on top and a bottle of real maple syrup beside the plate.
My pancakes. The exact kind my mom made.
A wave of genuine, unforced warmth washed over me. The smell of the syrup, the familiar sight... it was a direct line to the last shred of my normal life. I felt my shoulders relax for the first time all day.
"Biometrics are shifting," Sage said, his voice soft. "Heart rate decreased by twelve beats per minute. Respiration deeper. Aura resonance is... smoothing out. Becoming more coherent."
Lexi's eyes widened, and he scribbled furiously. "So, his contentment is tied to nostalgia. A sense of safety and familiarity. Noted." He looked from the pancakes to me, his gaze calculating. "Excellent. Now we have a baseline. Yuki, take the pancakes away."
"What? No!" I protested as Yuki gleefully snatched the plate away. "I didn't even get to eat them!"
"The stimulus was the emotional response, not the caloric intake," Lexi said dismissively. "Now, for the next trial. Stimulus: Fear."
The warmth and comfort vanished, replaced by a cold knot in my stomach. The lights dropped lower. Yuki switched the monitor to a live feed from a night-vision camera pointed at my face.
"Fear is a primal, powerful emotion," Lexi lectured, circling the chair. "We'll start with a classic. Yuki, the audio."
A low, guttural growl emanated from hidden speakers, followed by the sound of dragging chains and a faint, distorted whisper of my name. "Alex... Aaaaaalex..."
It was cheesy. It was straight out of a B-movie. But in the dark room, strapped to a chair, with the knowledge that the supernatural was very, very real, it worked. My heart began to hammer against my ribs. The static in my bones, which had been a smooth hum since the bathroom incident, sharpened into a jagged buzz.
"Significant spike!" Sage announced, his voice tight. "Heart rate 140 and climbing. Adrenaline and cortisol levels are spiking. The aura... it's flaring. Resonance at 7.8 and increasing!"
The air around me grew cold. The single, naked lightbulb hanging above the whiteboard began to flicker violently.
"Lexi," Sage said, a note of warning in his voice. "The energy is becoming unstable."
"Just a little more," Lexi insisted, his eyes glued to his instruments. "We're approaching a threshold. I need to see what happens!"
The whispers grew louder, the chains closer. A shadow in the corner of the room seemed to detach itself from the wall and stretch towards me. It was just a trick of the light, I knew it was, but my terrified brain didn't care. The buzzing was a scream now, a pressure building inside my skull. I squeezed my eyes shut.
"Stop it!" I yelled, my voice cracking. "Turn it off!"
The fear crested, and for a split second, I felt that same pulling sensation from the bathroom, but inverted. It wasn't drawing something in; it was about to push something out.
Suddenly, the fear vanished. Not faded. Vanished. Like a switch had been flipped.
The creepy audio cut out. The lights stopped flickering. The room was silent and still.
I opened my eyes. Sage was standing by the audio controls, his hand on the power switch. He had a look of cold fury on his face that I had never seen before. He was staring at Lexi.
"That's enough," he said, his voice low and dangerous, filling the entire room. "The experiment is over."
---
The silence in the room was heavier than any ghostly presence. The only sound was the faint hum of the laptop fan and my own ragged breathing. Sage stood by the wall, his broad shoulders tense, his hand still resting on the audio switch. The look he was giving Lexi could have frozen hell over.
Lexi, for his part, seemed more intrigued than chastised. He lowered his clipboard slowly, his analytical gaze shifting from the now-stable sensor readings to Sage's furious face, and finally to me, pale and trembling in the chair.
"Subject's biometrics are returning to baseline with remarkable speed," he noted, his voice clinical, though a flicker of something else—annoyance? excitement?—was in his eyes. "The cessation of the stimulus resulted in an almost instantaneous normalization of the anomalous energy field. The fear-based amplification appears to be directly linked to external provocation, not self-sustaining."
"I said, it's over," Sage repeated, his voice a low, resonant growl that vibrated in my bones. He walked away from the wall, his movements deliberate and powerful. He didn't stop until he was standing between my chair and Lexi, a physical barrier. "You pushed him too far. You saw the energy fluctuation. What if he couldn't control it? What if that... release... hurt him?"
Yuki had been frozen near the monitor, his usual energy completely gone, replaced by wide-eyed worry. "Sage is right, Lexi," he whispered. "Alex looked really scared. His aura got all... spiky and scary."
Lexi sighed, a theatrical sound of put-upon genius. "We are pioneers in an unknown field! There are bound to be moments of discomfort! The data we gathered from that spike is invaluable!"
"The subject is not disposable!" Sage's voice rose, cracking through the room like a whip. I flinched. I'd never heard him raise his voice. He always spoke in that soft, coffee-warm tone. This was different. This was raw. "His name is Alex. He is not 'the subject'. He is a person, and he was in distress. Your protocol ends the moment that happens. That is the only protocol that matters."
He turned his back on a sputtering Lexi and knelt before my chair again. His expression had softened, but the intensity in his rust-red eyes was, if anything, greater. He began carefully detaching the sensors from my temples, his fingers gentle against my skin.
"Look at me, Alex," he said, his voice back to that familiar, soothing cadence, but layered with a steel I now knew was always there. "Breathe. You're safe. I won't let anyone harm you. Not even in the name of science."
His words were a balm and a cage. He was my protector, my guardian angel. But the way his thumb stroked my cheek as he removed the last sensor felt like he was wiping away a tear and marking his territory all at once. I did this. I saved you. You belong to me.
Lexi threw his hands up in the air. "Fine! Coddle the walking nuclear reactor! But we can't ignore the results. Fear is a potent catalyst. We need to understand it so we can control it." He pointed a finger at me, though his glare was for Sage. "What happens if he gets scared on his own, with no one to turn off the stimulus? What if he's alone and something triggers him? Your overprotectiveness could get him killed."
A cold dread that had nothing to do with fake ghost sounds trickled down my spine. Lexi, for all his insane methods, had a point. The terror I'd felt was real, and the power that had answered it was wild and terrifying. What if I lost control?
Sage finished freeing me from the sensors. He stood up, his tall frame once again looming protectively. "Then we teach him control," he said, his voice firm. "We don't terrorize him into it. We build his confidence. We make him feel safe and strong. A scared animal is a dangerous animal. A confident one is in command." He looked down at me. "We will find another way."
The standoff was broken by Yuki, who scurried over with a blanket and a juice box, his face a mask of contrition. "I'm sorry, Alex! The scary sounds were my idea! Here, this will help! It's got, like, electrolytes and stuff!" He shoved the juice box into my hands and then proceeded to wrap the blanket around my shoulders like I was a trauma victim.
I sat there, swaddled in a fuzzy blanket, sucking on a juice box, while the three most powerful people in my life decided my fate. Lexi, the brilliant, amoral scientist who saw my soul as a fascinating puzzle. Sage, the gentle, possessive guardian who saw me as a precious, fragile charge to be shielded. And Yuki, the chaotic, affectionate gremlin who saw me as the most exciting new toy ever created.
The fear test was over, but a new, more profound anxiety had taken root. I was the prize in a silent war between Lexi's thirst for knowledge and Sage's thirst for custody. And Yuki was the unpredictable wild card, likely to side with whoever promised the most fun—or the most access to me.
Lexi finally broke the silence, a new, different kind of smirk playing on his lips. It wasn't his usual smugness; it was cunning.
"Fine, Sage. You want to build his confidence? You want to find a positive emotional catalyst?" He leaned against the whiteboard, crossing his arms. "We'll test your theory. Tomorrow's trial: Stimulus - Flirtation and Positive Affirmation." His eyes locked onto mine. "Let's see what happens to your power, Alex, when you're not scared... but thoroughly, utterly flustered."
My juice box slipped from my suddenly numb fingers and hit the floor with a soft thud.
Sage's jaw tightened, but he didn't object. This was a challenge he couldn't refuse. A test of his methods versus Lexi's.
The battle for control over me had just begun, and the next battlefield was going to be my own hopelessly confused heart.
The silence that followed Lexi's declaration was profound. It wasn't the empty silence of the Liberal Arts building, nor the tense silence after Sage's intervention. This was a thick, charged silence, heavy with implication and a sudden, sharp shift in the battlefield. The war for my sanity was pivoting from horror to… something far more dangerous.
Sage was the first to move. He bent down, his movements still fluid and controlled, and picked up the juice box I'd dropped. He placed it on a nearby desk, his expression unreadable. When he straightened up, his rust-red eyes met Lexi's challenging stare.
"Flirtation," Sage repeated, the word rolling off his tongue like he was tasting a new, complex flavor. He didn't look angry anymore. He looked… contemplative. Strategic. "A positive emotional stimulus. To build confidence and observe its effects on his aura's stability." He gave a slow, single nod. "An acceptable alternative. But we do it my way. No overwhelming him. No engineered scenarios. We observe natural interactions."
Lexi's smirk was a triumphant, razor-sharp thing. "Naturally. The environment must be controlled, but the stimulus must feel organic to yield valid data. We'll simply… facilitate opportunities." His gaze swept over Yuki and then back to Sage, a general assigning roles to his troops. "We'll all participate. To gather a diverse data set on his reactions."
My brain, which had just begun to recover from the fear trial, short-circuited again. All participate? This wasn't an experiment anymore. It was a siege.
Yuki, who had been hovering anxiously, suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree. "Ooh! Ooh! Does this mean I get to be cute and flirty? I can be so cute! I'll be the kohai who looks up to his brave senpai!" He struck a pose, batting his eyelashes at me. "Alex-senpai, you were sooo brave facing that scary ghost! This little kohai feels so safe with you!"
A hot flush crept up my neck. It was ridiculous. It was over-the-top. And it was, against all logic and my better judgment, kind of working. The sheer, unadulterated adoration in his eyes was a tangible force.
Sage observed my reaction, his head tilted. He didn't speak, but his presence seemed to intensify, as if he was calibrating his own approach based on Yuki's. He walked over to me and began to neatly fold the blanket Yuki had draped over me, his movements slow and deliberate.
"You don't need to perform for anyone, Alex," he said, his voice a low, intimate murmur meant only for me. His fingers brushed against my shoulder as he smoothed the fabric. "True confidence comes from within. From knowing your own strength." He leaned in slightly, his tall frame blocking out the rest of the room. "And you are far stronger than you know. I see it in you. Every day."
His words weren't playful or teasing. They were a solemn affirmation, a vow. They sank into me, warm and heavy, carrying a weight of belief that felt both empowering and incredibly burdensome. He believed in me so completely it was terrifying.
Lexi, meanwhile, was observing everything with the focus of a hawk, his pen flying across his clipboard. "Note: Subject exhibits distinct physiological responses to different modalities of positive attention. Yuki's overt, playful admiration induces a rapid flush and increased fidgeting—a classic embarrassment response. Sage's more intimate, affirming approach causes deeper, slower breathing and a sustained elevation in heart rate—signs of… resonant validation. The aura is responding to both, but differently. Fluctuations are smoother, more rhythmic. No signs of destabilization."
He looked up, his eyes gleaming. "The hypothesis holds. Positive emotion is a viable, and perhaps superior, modulator. Now, for a third data point." He set down his clipboard and walked toward me.
My breath hitched. Lexi's approach was always unpredictable. He stopped a few feet away, not invading my space like Yuki or dominating it like Sage. He just looked at me, his head cocked, a contemplative expression on his freckled face.
"You know," he began, his voice losing its clinical deadpan and taking on a lighter, almost conversational tone. "For a normie, you're not entirely useless." A small, genuine-looking smile touched his lips. "It takes a certain kind of person to not only withstand our… enthusiasm… but to become the central pillar of it. You've got a stronger spine than I gave you credit for."
It was the closest thing to a real compliment he had ever given me. It wasn't about my power. It was about me. And coming from him, the smug, know-it-all leader who treated the world like his personal laboratory, it felt… huge. The blush on my neck spread to my cheeks, burning.
He saw it. His smile widened, just a fraction, and he took one step closer. "In fact," he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "you might just be the most interesting thing to happen to this club since we found that haunted toaster that burned Nazi symbols into the bread."
He reached out and, with a surprisingly gentle motion, tapped a finger right in the center of my forehead. "There's a good brain in there. Don't let Sage baby it too much."
The touch was brief, but it sizzled. It was a gesture of recognition, of inclusion. He was letting me into the inner circle, on my own merits.
I was drowning. I was being pulled in three different directions by three irresistible forces. Yuki's playful adoration was a sugar rush, addictive and fun. Sage's profound belief was a deep, warm current, promising safety and purpose. And Lexi's hard-won respect was a shot of pure, electrifying pride.
The static in my bones, which had been a jagged scream during the fear test, was now a warm, resonant hum. It felt… good. It felt like it was harmonizing with the room, with them.
"Aura resonance is holding at a stable 6.5," Sage reported from the laptop, his voice carefully neutral, though I could see the tightness in his jaw. "Energy signature is coherent and… brighter. No signs of stress. The positive stimulus is a clear success."
Lexi nodded, a look of supreme satisfaction on his face. "The data doesn't lie. The path forward is clear." He walked back to his whiteboard and wrote two words in huge letters: OPERATION: CONFIDENCE.
"The Alex Protocols are hereby amended," he announced. "Our primary objective is no longer just to test his limits, but to expand them. To build his control through positive reinforcement and… targeted social interaction." He looked at the three of us, his smirk returning in full force. "We're not just a research team anymore. We're his personal… support network."
The way he said "support network" sounded a lot like "harem."
I sat in the chair, the afterglow of their combined attention still warming me, the hum of my own power a comforting presence. I had been so afraid of what I was. But with them—with Yuki's boundless affection, Sage's unwavering protection, and Lexi's brilliant, demanding respect—it didn't feel like a curse anymore.
It felt like a superpower.
And as I looked at the three of them, already beginning to bicker good-naturedly about the best ways to "build my confidence" (Yuki: "Cuddle piles!" Sage: "Guided meditation!" Lexi: "Solving complex paranormal equations!"), I realized the most terrifying truth of all.
I didn't want to be saved from them anymore.
I was starting to like it.
---
To Be Continue...