Rain had been falling since morning, draping the entire city in a thin curtain of silver that blurred every edge of reality. Sirens cried from distant districts... restless waves of warning that never quite settled. Yet tonight, the loudest sound did not come from the streets above.
It came from the basement of a long-abandoned building... a place forgotten by everyone except those who needed silence for their sins.
Someone screamed.
It wasn't a normal scream. It was broken... torn out of a throat that no longer remembered hope. At the center of the room sat a teenage boy tied to a steel chair. His wrists were clamped down. His legs bolted to the frame. But he did not fight.
He simply stared into the darkness ahead... as though something far worse than pain waited inside it.
His name was Aaron Ray.
At least... that was the name they had given him.
Around him, men in black uniforms monitored screens filled with impossible readings... brainwaves spiraling like storms, heart rhythms that skipped patterns no human should survive, and electrical surges that made the machines whine.
A scientist whispered, his voice trembling.
"The subject displays extreme stability... no stress response... no emotional deviation... nothing remotely human."
No one disagreed.
No one believed Aaron was human.
The neon lights flickered above, scattering fractured shadows across his motionless face. His eyes were empty... not the vacancy of fear or unconsciousness, but the hollow stillness of someone containing something far too vast for flesh.
"Begin trigger procedure. Level three," ordered a tall man in the corner. His white coat looked medical, but the cruelty in his gaze was sharper than any scalpel in the room.
A younger researcher hesitated. "Doctor... level three could cause irreversible..."
"Do it."
A button clicked.
The room trembled.
Aaron's neural graph spiked instantly... so violently the line nearly cracked the upper boundary... yet he remained completely still. Not a twitch. Not a breath out of rhythm.
Then, without warning...
The lights died.
---
In total darkness, a voice surfaced... low, ancient, heavy enough to bend the air.
It echoed from a place no human imagination should ever reach.
〈You should not have awakened me.〉
Chaos erupted.
"Where is that voice coming from?!"
"That isn't human!"
"Turn on emergency lights! Now!"
A harsh click sounded overhead.
Red emergency bulbs flickered to life, flooding the basement with blood-colored light.
Aaron remained strapped to the chair.
Still seated. Still bound. But now he was trembling... just slightly... his head bowed as if his lungs refused to obey.
A scientist stepped forward cautiously. "Aaron... can you hear me? If you're feeling pain..."
Aaron lifted his head.
His eyes were no longer eyes.
Pitch black... fully black... no iris... no whites... just two voids swallowing the world.
The scientist stumbled backward. "Impossible... that mutation... no... that thing... it doesn't exist in any biological record! Doctor, he..."
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
Every emergency bulb shattered at once, crushed by an unseen force.
Guards raised their rifles with shaking hands.
"Subject is unstable!"
"Target entering awakening phase!"
"Do NOT approach!"
But before they could fire, another voice rippled through the darkness... deeper... colder... layered like a thousand whispers crawling over each other.
〈I have waited a long time for this body to awaken.〉
For the first time since the experiments began... Aaron looked afraid.
"Get out..." he whispered to himself. His voice cracked. "Don't come out... not now... I'm not ready..."
The lead researcher checked the remaining monitor... one still glowing dimly in emergency mode. A symbol pulsed on the screen... a spiraling inverted waveform from forbidden theory.
The Singularity Pulse.
Only one entity in their archives matched that signature.
The Anomaly.
"God help us..." the researcher breathed. "This child... should never have lived."
Aaron opened his eyes again.
The pure blackness dissolved... replaced by a faint red glow... like embers learning how to breathe.
"Who authorized trigger level three?" he asked quietly.
The calm in his voice was sharper than any scream.
A guard pointed his rifle, hands trembling. "S-stay where you are! You're still a test subject!"
Aaron didn't move.
But the chair binding him crumbled into dust.
Not broken.
Not blasted apart.
Just... undone.
As if centuries of decay had collapsed in a heartbeat.
He rose slowly. His frame looked thin... ordinary even... but the look in his eyes forced every man in the room to step back.
"I don't want to hurt anyone," Aaron said softly.
Somehow, the words made everything worse.
"Open fire!" someone screamed.
Gunshots roared.
Three rounds...
Four...
Five...
The bullets froze midair.
Suspended...
Motionless...
Time itself fracturing around them.
Aaron tilted his head.
A moment later, the bullets reversed direction... twice the speed... ripping back through the air toward the guards.
Screams followed.
Aaron shut his eyes, agony tightening his jaw.
"Why must you force me to do this...?"
The head researcher clung to a metal counter as his legs gave out. "Absolute momentum manipulation... from a human... this is... this is..."
His words died.
Aaron stood in front of him.
No footsteps.
No approach.
Just instant presence... like reality blinked.
"Let me go," Aaron whispered.
The researcher nodded helplessly.
Aaron walked toward the colossal steel exit door. Before he touched it, the facility director... an old man leaning on a cane... spoke behind him, voice shaking yet resolute.
"Aaron... you are not something this world can contain. If you walk out... the world will end."
Aaron turned slowly.
For the first time in his existence, he smiled.
But it wasn't a human smile.
It was the smile of someone who already knew the truth.
"The world ended the day I was born."
With a single touch, the fifty-centimeter steel door dissolved into dust.
Aaron stepped outside.
Night greeted him with heavy rain and the scream of sirens across the drowned city. Asphalt glittered like a fractured mirror beneath the storm. Aaron stood in the downpour, letting the cold soak into his skin... though something far colder burned inside him.
A whisper slithered through his mind.
〈I will rise, Aaron. Sooner or later... this body will be mine.〉
He bit his lip until blood mixed with rain.
"No," he breathed. "I will never let you."
Behind him, the facility began to burn... collapsing under the energy he had unleashed.
Emergency alarms wailed across the city.
And in the middle of the chaos, Aaron Ray spoke the words that would reshape the future.
"I am... not human."