The glow hadn't faded.
It lingered at the center of the frame, steady and patient, pulsing faintly like the rhythm of a heart hidden behind metal walls. White light spilled out just enough to trace the lines of his hand, the curve of his wrist, the trembling edges of his fingers.
He held still, breathing shallow. His palm hovered inches above the surface, but he couldn't bring himself to touch it again.
The chamber was silent. Too silent. The kind that gnawed at the edges of thought until every breath, every twitch of muscle, every scrape of fabric on his skin sounded deafening. He shifted his stance, and the faint scuff of his boot against the metal floor echoed back at him like a warning.
Nothing else moved.
The walls remained seamless, black plates fitted together with surgical precision. The consoles around him stayed dark, lifeless. Only the glow responded—steady, patient, unchanging.
It was waiting.
He knew that much.
Waiting for him.
His mouth was dry. He swallowed hard and realized his throat was still raw from days—hours?—of screaming, choking, coughing. Time had slipped into a blur since the pod opened. There was no sun here, no clock, no rhythm to mark the hours. Just the slow cycle of breath and the press of silence.
He pressed a hand against his chest, feeling the steady rise and fall. His heart was too fast, his lungs still tender. The cold hadn't left him. It clung to the marrow of his bones, a parasite that refused to release its grip.
And now this.
He licked his lips and whispered under his breath, the words rasping out like sand dragged across stone.
"…What the fuck are you?"
The glow gave no answer.
He half expected movement in the corners of his vision—shadows peeling away from the walls, machines unfolding with a hiss of hydraulics, something alien and sharp stepping forward from the dark. But nothing came.
Only the light.
Steady. Patient. Waiting.
He forced himself to breathe slower. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Military training, muscle memory—something buried deep enough to survive even this silence. Focus. Stay present. Don't spiral.
The thought of touching it again made his stomach clench. But ignoring it felt worse.
Because it wasn't just a light.
It was aware.
He could feel it.
Not sight, not sound—something deeper. The same way he had felt the hum in the floor, the vibration in the air. This wasn't a dead system flickering with the last dregs of power.
This was attention.
And it was fixed on him.
He glanced around the room again, eyes tracing every seam, every plate, every console. Still no movement. Still no hum of machinery. Only that thin seam of white, breathing in rhythm with his pulse.
He took a slow step back. The light didn't dim.
Another step. Still the same.
He clenched his jaw.
"Waiting for me…" he muttered.
The words sounded too loud. They bounced off the walls and came back sharper, like someone else had spoken them. He flinched, glanced over his shoulder, found only shadow.
No escape.
No one else here.
Just him. And the light.
He didn't touch the light.
It moved first.
The pulse quickened—one slow breath, then another, then a tighter beat that seemed to sync to the rhythm in his chest. A low vibration gathered under the soles of his boots, so faint he wasn't sure it was real until the ring above the console stirred and drew itself together—filaments of pale blue threading out of the dark, knitting a thin, spinning halo over the hemisphere.
He flinched, but didn't step back.
The halo stabilized. A faint chime—bone-dry, almost brittle—cracked the silence.
"Connection established."
Not a voice from a throat. The words arrived shaped and clean, like they'd been cut from the air and laid in front of him. He felt them in his ears, his teeth, the back of his tongue.
A second line followed, clipped and precise:
"Identity fragment detected."
His mouth worked before his mind caught up. "Identity—what?"
No answer. The halo widened, throwing a soft wash of light across the room. The hemisphere brightened to match, and for a moment the chamber existed as a series of ghost-edges—doorways without doors, panels without seams, his own shadow drawn thin and tall against a wall that suddenly felt much farther away.
The ring shifted. Threads of light descended like rain and struck the console's surface, hardening into lines. A map tried to coalesce—circles, corridors, layered arcs—but it stuttered and broke, reforming a few centimeters to the left, then fracturing again.
"Network integrity: compromised."
"Local functions: partial."
He swallowed. "Where am I?"
The halo spun, slower now. When the reply came, it was as dry and careful as the others:
"Undersystem 04–Delta. Environmental stability: acceptable. Reserves: low. Continuity threshold requires external input."
Continuity. That word again. He let it turn over once, twice, as if a different facet might catch light. Nothing useful surfaced.
He spoke without meaning to: "Explain continuity."
The ring thinned, as if listening. A faint pattern—concentric ripples—passed under his palm even though he wasn't touching the console.
"Continuity: the maintenance of sequence across interruption. Structural. Cognitive. Operational."
"Local: structural continuity unstable. Cognitive continuity pending. Operational continuity minimal."
His pulse had steadied, but the skin along his forearms prickled. "Pending what?"
"External input." A pause. Then, almost the same tone, but not quite: "Material."
He stared at the halo as if it might shift its meaning if he glared hard enough. "Material," he repeated, and heard his voice catch—dry, rough. "What kind of—"
The ring dipped lower, casting a tight circle around the console, and a new shape tried to build in the air: a schematic, tall as his ribs, ghost-light framing a figure. Humanoid proportions. No face. No features. Just a scaffold of limbs and a column where a spine should be. It held for two seconds before collapsing into static and reassembling as a column of text he couldn't read—curving letters, precise and wrong—then broke apart again.
"Form-hosts available."
"Assembly protocols dormant. Reactivation possible with sufficient input."
He felt himself take a step forward without deciding to. The air inside the circle was warmer. The faintest smell of ozone bit the back of his tongue.
"Form-hosts," he said. "Hosts for… who?"
The halo's light narrowed, like an iris closing.
"Consciousness allocation: pending."
"Authentication insufficient for release of catalog."
A beat. "Supplemental clearance may be achieved through continued operation."
"So I work," he said, softer now, "and you trust me more."
Silence. Not a refusal, not an agreement. The ring just hovered, spinning, as if the motion itself was an answer.
He shifted his weight, feeling the ache in the small muscles of his calves, the tightness that had never fully left his chest. The cold had retreated, but only to the perimeter of his bones. "If I don't… do this," he asked, "what happens to your continuity?"
A brief flicker traveled the halo's circumference.
"Degradation continues."
"Local functions collapse."
"Stored sets drift toward loss."
Stored sets. He didn't like the way that landed.
"Define 'sets'."
"Collections."
Another pause, as if it were selecting from a palette of words he would accept. "Sequences. Records. Bound forms of pattern."
"People?" It came out before he could stop it.
The ring did not say no.
It did not say yes.
It spun. The hemisphere breathed a notch brighter. His shadow tightened on the wall.
A slow exhale shuddered out of him. He swallowed, tried to find the line between fear that kept him sharp and fear that would send him shaking. He had lived in rooms with dead radios and live rounds, in the tin-canned hours before dawn when you learned the weight of breath. This felt like that. Not dangerous yet. But ready.
"I don't know what you are," he said. "I don't know what this is."
The ring answered with what could have been patience or indifference.
"Minimum interface online."
"Language overlay engaged."
"You are recognized."
"Recognized how? By what?"
"Key matched to fragment."
"Fragment matched to record."
"Record: incomplete."
His throat tightened. "And the rest of me?"
"Unavailable."
The ring floated there, light grazing the edges of his knuckles. The hemisphere's surface cooled beneath the glow, frost-sheen turned to a thin sweat and then back again as if the console couldn't decide which state it belonged to.
He lifted his hand, hovered it over the surface. He didn't touch. The pressure behind his eyes eased and hardened in waves. Sleep tugged at the corners of his vision; hunger scratched at his belly; thirst hid beneath the taste of metal. None of it mattered. Not here.
"Show me," he said. "Show me the part you can show."
The halo dipped. A line traced itself across the console—sharp, clean—breaking to reveal a narrow path snaking through dark. A plan of corridors, a broken ring, smaller rooms nested like traps. One node pulsed near the edge.
"Auxiliary Intake."
Another node, deeper and lower, flickered red and then settled to a waiting pale.
"Assembly."
He felt the word rather than understood it. It carried weight, like a door pulled from a wall far below his feet.
"Can I get there?"
"Manual traversal required."
"Environmental risks: moderate."
"Active hazards: minimal."
"Minimal," he said. "You're sure."
"Margin: unknown."
He almost smiled. It didn't reach his mouth.
"Why me?" he asked, and knew that was the wrong kind of question for systems that measured life in functions and error rates.
The halo did not pretend.
"Nearest viable operator."
A breath's worth of pause. "Recognized."
He let the word sit in the space between them. Recognized. As what? As who?
He didn't ask again. He didn't think it would help.
The map faded to a skeleton of itself and then to nothing. Only the ring remained, soft and unblinking. The console dimmed a fraction, as if saving itself.
He stood there, counting four breaths, then eight, then twelve, until the numbers lost meaning.
"Okay," he said at last, voice low. "I'll need… supplies."
The ring brightened, almost imperceptibly.
"Local stores available."
"Allocation requires operator consent."
"Consent to what?"
A hush, deep enough to be a warning or a courtesy.
"To assume responsibility."
The words landed with a weight that had nothing to do with volume.
He watched the halo until his eyes watered. He blinked them clear and realized they stung because he'd forgotten to.
"Responsibility for what," he asked, but this time he already knew the answer wouldn't make it easier.
The ring did not change. The light did not move.
"Continuity."
He breathed in. Out. Found the ground under his feet again.
The chamber had not warmed, not really. But he felt less naked than he had an hour ago. Less like prey. More like a man standing at the edge of a road with no road to look at—only a direction.
He lowered his hand until his palm hovered over the console's skin. Close enough to feel the heat. Close enough to lie to himself about what counted as a choice.
"Then show me the intake," he said.
The ring flared once—quiet as a nod. A thin thread of light unraveled from the console and slipped toward the far wall, seeping into a seam he hadn't noticed before. The seam answered with a narrow line of pale blue crawling along the floor, a pulse marking the way.
Not a command. Not a promise.
A route.
He reached for the metal bar where he'd leaned it against the console's base. His fingers found the dents he'd left in it, small moons pressed into soft alloy. He lifted it to his shoulder and turned toward the light.
Behind him, the halo held steady in the air, a single watching ring, patient as a clock with no numbers.
He didn't look back.
He followed the first step until there was nothing but the next.