The separation was not
immediate.It was surgical.
Silent.
Elián understood as soon as he woke up in the sealed room, without windows,
without panelsaccessible controls, with a constant white light that indicated
neither day nor night.
There were no alarms, no interrogations, no open
violence.Only absence.He tried to regulate his breathing reflexively, to find the shared pulse as he had
doneSo many times. She closed her eyes, counted her heartbeats, tried to anchor
herself.
One…
two…
three
…
Nothing.
The fourth heartbeat did not come.
A cold emptiness pierced his chest, and he sat up with an involuntary gasp. His body
reacted before his mind: cold sweat, a fine tremor in his hands, a sharp
pressurebehind the sternum.
"No," she whispered. "Not like that."
The separation was not only
physical.It was sensory.
They had broken the synchronization.
In the deep containment sector, Kael was in a different cell. Narrower. Darker.
The containment field was absolute, designed to block not only movement, but
any bioenergetic exchange.
Kael felt as if an invisible organ had been ripped out of him.
He fell to his knees, not fully understanding why. His body, trained to endureTorture,
deprivation, and isolation—I didn't understand that specific absence. It didn't hurt
like a wound. It hurt like an amputation that doesn't bleed.
He was breathing with
difficulty.He searched for
the rhythm.
He wasn't there.
A low, stifled roar vibrated in his chest. He didn't release it. He couldn't allow himself
to.But the impulse remained there, compressed, dangerous.
"Elián…" she said softly. The name
didn't respond.The first few days were the worst.
For Elián, time became a useless concept. He slept at irregular intervals, waking
with the constant feeling that he had forgotten something essential.The body
kept trying to synchronize with a pulse that no longer existed.
He ate without being hungry. He drank without being thirsty.
I was living in a state of waiting that led nowhere.
In the sealed room, a mechanical voice spoke to him only when absolutely
necessary.
—Psychological evaluation in progress.
Cooperate. Elián did not respond.
Not out of rebellion, but because every word seemed irrelevant to her compared to
theabsence that inhabited him.
In Kael, the separation manifested itself in another way.
Her body reacted with constant hypervigilance. She slept little. Her senses were
overwhelmed. Every sound was a threat. Every shadow, a distorted memory.
Without a regulatory presence, their impulses
intensified.Not outwards.
Inwards.
The system noticed it.
"Increased neural activity," a technician said. "It's losing stability."
"That's to be expected," Hale replied. "The link was interference. Its
removal."generates withdrawal.
"Withdrawal?" another repeated. "Like an addiction?"
Hale didn't respond immediately.
"Like an unauthorized dependency," he finally said. "It will adapt."Kael
heard those words from the other side of the glass.
ANDHe understood.They had no plans to return Elián
to him.They were planning to
reconfigure it.
Elian was brought before Commander Hale on the fourth day.
"His condition is worrying," she said, observing him with clinical attention. "Loss
of emotional regulation, sleep disturbances, mild dissociation."
Elian looked up.
"Give me back the connection," he said. "It's not dangerous."
"For you, maybe," Hale replied. "For the system, yes."
Elián gritted his teeth.
"They're destabilizing him," he insisted. "Kael needs that connection."
"Kael needs to obey," Hale replied. "And you need to accept that you crossed a
line."
Elián stood up abruptly, without
thinking. The guards reacted
immediately.
"If they break it," he said, his voice trembling with suppressed rage, "they won't get
aA more docile subject. They will obtain a weapon.
Hale watched him with dangerous calm.
"We've already considered that," he replied. "That's why we're adjusting the
protocol." Elián felt a chill.
—What
protocol?Hale
barely smiled.
—The replacement one.
The word fell like a sentence.
"Replacement for what?" Elián asked, even though he already knew."From you," Hale said. "We believe the bond can be replicated... with
encouragement."
appropriate.Elian's world crumbled.
"No," he said. "They can't force it. It doesn't work that way."
"We'll see," Hale replied. "If Kael needs an anchor, we'll give him one. One that
controls the system."
Elián was returned to his sealed room with brutal clarity.They
were not only separating him from Kael.
They were planning to take his place.
That night, Elián did not try to synchronize.
She sat on the floor, hugging her knees, and let the pain manifest
itself.Uncontrollably. The tears came without warning, silent, laden with a
helplessness I had never known.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I shouldn't have let them do
this." In the deep cell, Kael also reached his breaking
point.
When they introduced another human into the showroom—a trained technician,with
sensors and protocols— Kael felt the intrusion as a physical offense.
The human approached cautiously.
"There will be no contact," he said. "We just need to observe your
response." Kael looked at him.
And he felt nothing.
No
regulation.N
o calm.
I have no
desire. I only
reject it.
His body reacted immediately.
Not with uncontrolled violence, but with precise
coldness.The containment field vibrated."Activity is increasing," a technician warned. "Back up!"Kael stepped forward.The
human retreated.
"You're not him," Kael said in a grave voice. "And you can't take
his place." The alarm went off.
The field was reinforced, pushing him back.
Kael roared, this time not holding back completely. The energy crashed against the
barriers,making the room shake.
"Remove it!" Hale ordered. "This confirms the hypothesis."
Kael was breathing with difficulty, his muscles tense, his body burning.
"There's no replacement," he said, looking at her with barely contained fury. "What
they broke... there's no way."
You can copy.
Hale observed it with a mixture of interest and calculation.
"Then we'll rebuild it," he said. "Our way." When Kael was
left alone, the emptiness fell upon him once more. But
something had changed.
The pain was no longer just
loss.It was determination.
Elsewhere in the complex, Elián felt a sudden tremor, like a distant echo.
It wasn't
synchronicity.It
was resistance.
He raised his
head.
"You're still there," he whispered. "I know it."
The separation had been designed to break
them.But he had achieved something else.He had revealed the truth that neither of them could deny
anymore:Without the other, they were not complete.
And the system, in trying to break the link, had crossed its own point of no return.
Because now, Elián wasn't thinking about surviving.I
was thinking about recovering.
ANDKael…
I was thinking about escaping.