The bell rings with a shrill, metallic edge that scrapes down the hallways like an alarm. Students pour from classrooms in noisy, chaotic currents—laughing, complaining, shoving, dragging backpacks, texting without looking where they're going. Lockers slam like artillery.
But in the center of all this motion, a boy stands noticeably out of place.
The boy, Donald, watches the crowd with an alertness that doesn't match his age. His posture is erect, shoulders at a naturally defensive angle that no school counselor would ever be able to interpret. His eyes move with crisp accuracy. He takes in gestures, spacing, line-of-sight, potential threats, exits—things no teenager should be mapping with such precision.
He isn't nervous. But he feels… profoundly out of sync.
His backpack hangs from one shoulder, not because it's comfortable that way, but because the strap across his chest restricts rotational movement in emergencies—something his instincts tell him is unacceptable, even though he has no memory of where he learned that.
Students pass him without noticing how wrong he looks. A few glance at him, usually because he doesn't mimic the rhythms of social life around him. Others avoid eye contact because there's something about the quiet intensity in his gaze that feels, to them, unsettling.
He waits for the corridor to thin. Crowds are "high-risk zones" according to a whisper that lives in the back of his skull. He doesn't know who taught him that. He doesn't remember their voice. But the rule lives on.
When he finally starts walking, his steps are too controlled, too quiet. He doesn't walk like a teenager; he walks like a shadow that doesn't want to be heard. His feet touch down soft and stable, toes pointing forward, never crossing lines, never wasting motion. Even his breathing, steady and slow, is almost unnatural in an environment where everyone else is breathless with youth.
"Hey!"
A voice snaps behind him sharp and sudden, his muscles tighten. His head doesn't turn first; his shoulders do. His stance shifts, eyes narrowing just a fraction.
"Relax, dude," the boy approaching says, half-laughing. "Didn't mean to scare you."
Donald forces a small smile, though it feels foreign on his face. He has been practicing smiles in mirrors. They never fully look right.
"Right," he says. "Sorry. I was… distracted."
"Yeah, sure." The boy, Daniel, from his math class, adds. "Wanna walk with me to the cafeteria? They've got those terrible square pizzas today. You can use them as weapons if you get bored." The boy grins, visibly impressed by his attempt to crack a joke.
Donald hesitates. He's supposed to say yes. That's what normal kids do, according to every guidebook, every adoptive-parent conversation, every counselor session. He wants to try. But something inside him tenses at the idea of sitting with his back exposed, surrounded by noise and unpredictability. He can predict dozens of possible snags: a dropped tray triggering a reflex, a sudden shout, a chair scraping across the floor like a threat.
"Maybe later," he replies, carefully flattening his tone so it sounds casual. "I'm meeting someone."
A lie. But a small one.
Daniel shrugs and walks off, not offended. "Cool. See you around."
Donald watches him disappear into another wave of students, then exhales slowly, forcing his shoulders to unwind. It was his second day in the school. The children were nice, well most of them, but he didn't feel like this was a place for him. He'd rather face a hundred men with weapons than one crowded cafeteria. He doesn't know how he knows that, but he knows it with absolute certainty.
He heads toward the stairwell, where it's quieter. For a moment, he thinks he's alone. Then a memory hits. No trigger. No warning. The world around him flickers, like an old film strip briefly misaligned. The hallway dissolves into a dim, humming chamber. Stainless steel. Glass monitors. Fluorescent lights casting surgical pallor. The screaming brightness of sterile white and automaton order.
He sees a woman walking toward him, a blonde nurse with a medical mask and glacier-calm eyes. Her steps are measured, balanced, practiced. Her uniform pristine, her gloves crinkling as she checks notes on a clipboard.
"Subject viable," she says softly, with a warmth that does not reach her eyes.
"Neurological response...enhanced. Behavioral conditioning...satisfactory."
He is lying on a gurney. His arms restrained. His skin cold. There are others across the room. His breath catches. His chest tightens. He hears the hum of machines behind her and the faint, unmistakable sound of fluid dripping into tubes. The smell of antiseptic and ozone and death. A metallic taste floods his tongue. Pressure builds behind his eyes. Then…
"Hey, you good?"
A voice yanks him back to the present. The hall snaps into existence again like someone pressed play after a pause. A girl is standing a few feet away—short, dark curls pulled into a ponytail, textbook hugged against her chest. Her expression is cautious.
"You zoned out," she says. "Like… hard."
He forces himself to inhale. His fingers unclench from his backpack strap.
"I'm fine," he says. Too quickly. Too rehearsed.
"You sure? You looked like you were going to pass out."
He pauses, then offers a softer tone. "Just tired."
She studies him, eyes skimming his face as if searching for cracks. "You're the new guy, right? The one from…" She tries to remember.
He nods. "Yeah." Cutting her off.
"I'm Mara." She shifts her books and gives him a half-smile. "If you ever want someone to show you around, I'm usually in the art room or library. Both quieter than the rest of this place."
Quieter. The word lands gently.
"Thanks," he says.
She disappears into a classroom, and for a moment the hallway is almost peaceful. He stands there, taking in the stillness before the next wave of noise comes. He can feel something crawling inside his skull, half-forgotten instincts clawing to be remembered, half-buried horrors whispering from beneath the floorboards of his mind.
He wants to be normal. He wants to choose who he is, instead of being haunted by the version someone tried to manufacture. But as he walks toward his next class, his shadow tilts unnaturally behind him, following with the mechanical exactness of a soldier trained long before he knew what childhood even meant.
School ends before long. Their English teacher, a neighbor to his adoptive parents, tries to encourage him to join a club. The stout woman recommends several activities, football, baseball… foreign terms to which he replies.
"I can try."
Then he walks off toward the waiting school bus.
The house is quiet in the late afternoon, the kind of quiet that feels curated, like the air itself has been instructed to behave. Sunlight spills through the living-room windows in long amber stripes, warming the edges of furniture, softening the photographs arranged on the mantle—smiling faces, summer trips, a wedding portrait of the couple who call themselves his parents.
Donald stands in the doorway, backpack hanging loosely from one hand, watching the scene like someone observing a home through glass rather than standing within it. The house smells of lemon polish and drying herbs. Dinner simmers in the kitchen—tomato, garlic, something softening in broth.
These are supposed to be comforting smells. Familiar smells. They feel foreign to him, like scents from a country he has only read about.