I tried to ignore it for three days.
Didn't work.
The Enhanced Reflexes trait kept showing up in ways I couldn't dismiss. Tuesday morning, a bike messenger blew through a red light while I was crossing the street. My body moved before my brain caught up—one step back, just enough to avoid getting clipped.
The messenger didn't even slow down. Didn't look back. Just kept pedaling like pedestrians were environmental obstacles to dodge around.
I stood on the curb, heart pounding, hand pressed against a lamppost.
Eight percent faster reaction time had just kept me from ending up in the hospital.
Maybe longer.
The thing about percentages is they sound small until they're the difference between your bones and a bicycle going twenty miles an hour.
At work, I avoided Maya. Not dramatically. Just... took different routes to the break room. Ate lunch at my desk with my door closed. Left meetings right when they ended instead of lingering for small talk I'd never been good at anyway.
She noticed.
I could tell by the way she'd glance at me in the hallway, then look away when I didn't meet her eyes. Like we were two people trying very hard to pretend a thing hadn't happened by making it incredibly obvious we were pretending.
The awkwardness grew. Filled the space between us like something physical. Like if we acknowledged it, it would become real, and if we didn't, maybe it would eventually evaporate.
I hated it.
But I didn't know how to fix it without talking to her, and I couldn't talk to her without lying, and I was tired of lying about things I didn't even understand yet.
Wednesday night, I couldn't sleep.
Lay in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to my upstairs neighbor's TV through the thin walls. Some late-night show with a laugh track that made me feel even more alone.
The system had been quiet since that first night. No new messages. No updates. No helpful hints about what the hell was happening to me.
Just the trait. Permanent. Changing the way my body moved through the world in ways I was pretty sure violated several laws of physics or at least made them uncomfortable.
I closed my eyes.
Took a breath.
"Are you there?"
Nothing.
I felt stupid talking to the darkness. Like I was a kid again, asking if there were monsters under the bed, except this time the monster was inside my head and seemed to have administrative access to my nervous system.
Tried again anyway. "I know you're real."
Silence.
Then—
Not words, exactly. More like... intent. Cold. Transactional. Something that bypassed my ears and landed directly in my head like spam email I couldn't unsubscribe from.
SYSTEM ACTIVE. HOST ACKNOWLEDGED.
I sat up so fast I almost fell out of bed.
Nearly gave myself whiplash confirming I was having a mental breakdown.
"What do you want?"
No response.
"What are you?"
Nothing.
I waited. Five minutes. Ten. Long enough for the adrenaline spike to fade into the kind of exhaustion that comes from accepting you're probably losing your mind.
The presence faded. Or maybe it had never been there at all, and I'd just imagined the whole thing because my brain was trying very hard to make sense of catching falling objects before they fell.
Except I knew I hadn't.
The system was real. It was listening.
And it was waiting for something.
I just had no idea what.
Thursday, I tried a different approach.
Sat at my desk during lunch, door closed, blinds drawn like I was about to commit some kind of white-collar crime instead of just trying to document my own psychological collapse.
Pulled up a blank document.
Started typing everything I knew:
SYSTEM RULES (WHAT I KNOW)
Trigger: Kiss (0.5+ seconds, lip contact) Result: Trait acquisition Traits are permanent First trait: Enhanced Reflexes (Common, Rank F, +8% reaction time) Source: Maya Reeves, accidental contact, Halloween party System can communicate (apparently) System has terrible timing
SYSTEM RULES (WHAT I DON'T KNOW)
Why me? Are there others? Can it be removed? What happens if I refuse to trigger it again? What is the system's purpose? Why did it install itself after a workplace kissing accident? Is this covered by HR?
I stared at the list.
Too many unknowns.
The ones about HR were probably less important than the others, but my brain was grasping for anything that made this feel less insane.
I closed the document without saving it. No point leaving evidence of my mental breakdown in my work files.
Across the office, through the glass wall of my cube, I saw Maya walking past. She slowed. Made eye contact.
I looked away.
She kept walking.
That night, I tried again.
Lights off. Sitting on my couch in the dark like some kind of meditation exercise except instead of finding inner peace I was trying to have a conversation with whatever had taken up residence in my brain.
"I need answers."
The presence returned. Faster this time. Like it had been waiting for me to ask nicely or at least ask at all.
QUERY ACCEPTED. SPECIFY.
My pulse jumped.
Okay. It was actually responding. That was progress. Terrifying progress, but progress.
"Why was I chosen?"
SELECTION CRITERIA ARE NOT DISCLOSED.
"That's not an answer."
CORRECT. IT IS A STATEMENT OF POLICY.
I blinked.
Was the system... being sarcastic?
No. That was impossible. It was a system. Systems didn't do sarcasm. They did error codes and progress bars and occasionally crashed at inconvenient times.
"Can I turn this off?"
Silence.
"Can I turn this off?"
NO.
The word landed like a door slamming shut. Final. Absolute. The kind of 'no' that didn't leave room for negotiation or appeals or asking to speak to a manager.
I tried a different question. "What happens if I don't... if I just never let it happen again?"
HOST BEHAVIOR IS NOT RESTRICTED. OUTCOMES WILL ADJUST ACCORDINGLY.
"That's not reassuring."
IT WAS NOT INTENDED TO BE. IT WAS INTENDED TO BE ACCURATE.
Definitely sarcasm.
Or at least something close enough that the difference didn't matter.
"Adjust how?"
No response.
The presence faded.
I sat in the dark for a long time after that.
Thinking about the word "outcomes."
Thinking about Maya, and the way she'd looked at me in the hallway like I was a puzzle she couldn't solve.
Thinking about the bike messenger, and the eight percent that had kept me alive.
I was stuck with this.
Whatever it was.
Whoever—or whatever—had decided I should have it.
And there was nothing I could do about it except maybe learn to ask better questions.