SUBJECT 47: AWAKENING

Fractured Awakening

The medical bay ceiling tiles swim into focus.

Real tiles with water stains and hairline cracks, not the endless liquid-metal surface that had tried to kill me.

Real fluorescent lights hum overhead, casting harsh white light that makes my eyes water.

I lift my right arm and froze.

Bio-metallic veins snake beneath my skin from fingertips to shoulder, pulsing green-silver like captured lightning. They branch and merge in geometric patterns that shift when I flex my fingers.

"Kira?"

"Here." Her chair scrapes against linoleum.

"You've been out for six hours."

I sit up. The movement flows too smoothly, as if the joint’s been lubricated by alien engineers.

The hospital gown crinkles as I swing my legs over the bed's edge.

"This isn't the simulation."

"No. You're back in the real world." She holds up a scanner, its LED display already flickering erratically.

"Sort of."

The device starts smoking the moment she points it at me. Acrid plastic burns my nostrils as she drops it with a curse.

"Third one today," she mutters, kicking the smoldering wreckage under her desk.

"Every scanner we try just dies. Fourth, if you count the one that actually caught fire."

"What's wrong with me?"

"That's what we're trying to figure out." Dr. Aveline enters, tablet clutched against her chest like armor. Dark circles ring her eyes. Coffee stains dot her lab coat.

"The bio-metallic material is still in your bloodstream. Still changing you."

I stand, testing my balance.

The world tilts sideways for a heartbeat—not from dizziness, but from time itself stuttering.

Dust motes hang suspended in shafts of sunlight.

Kira's breath catches mid-exhale, her chest frozen between rise and fall.

The fluorescent light above freezes between flicker and steady glow.

Then time snaps back like a rubber band.

"Did you see that?"

"See what?" Kira asks, blinking normally.

"Everything stopped."

"Your reflexes are operating faster than human baseline," Dr. Aveline says.

"Yesterday's tests showed reaction times that shouldn't be possible. If you're experiencing temporal distortion on top of that..."

I walk to the mirror mounted on the far wall.

Each step lands with perfect precision, my body moving with fluid grace that feels borrowed from something else.

My reflection wavers like looking through water.

My eyes flicker. Green-silver light pulses in my irises, lasting just long enough to confirm I'm not hallucinating before fading back to brown.

"The integration didn't stop when you left the simulation," Dr. Aveline continues.

"It's accelerating."

She activates her tablet, shows me brain scans that hurt to look at directly.

Neural pathways branch in fractal patterns that twist my perception.

"This was your brain yesterday." She swipes to a new image. "This is from an hour ago."

Where human neural networks should map familiar territories, alien architecture spreads like crystalline growth. New structures branch through areas that should contain nothing but cerebrospinal fluid.

"Am I dying?"

"We don't know." Her tablet screen flickers, pixels dancing in chaotic patterns.

"Your cellular structure is changing at the molecular level. Blood chemistry that defies classification. Brain tissue showing architectural modifications that rewrite everything we understand about neurology."

I touch the mirror's surface. Glass cracks in spider webs radiating from my fingertip, each fracture line glowing faintly with green-silver light.

"I can hear the walls."

"What do you mean?" Kira leans forward in her chair.

"Singing. Not sound exactly, but vibrations. Frequencies from the chambers three floors down."

Kira and Dr. Aveline exchange glances heavy with implications.

"Those chambers are electromagnetically shielded," Dr. Aveline says carefully.

"Soundproof barriers, quantum dampening fields. Nothing should penetrate that containment."

"But you're hearing them anyway," Kira finishes.

The bio-metallic veins pulse brighter as I press my palm flat against the wall.

The metal surface feels warm, alive, thrumming with currents that speak in languages older than human civilization.

Through the vibrations, I sense the facility's vast electronic nervous system—computers processing classified data, monitors displaying classified readings, communication arrays reaching toward orbital satellites.

"Your body is acting as some kind of conductor," Dr. Aveline observes, watching the patterns beneath my skin pulse in rhythm with whatever I'm sensing.

"Interfacing with electromagnetic fields in ways that violate basic physics."

"How long before I stop being human?"

The question hangs in the air, thick with antiseptic and ozone from dying electronics.

Dr. Aveline's tablet dims, its screen flickering as my emotional state spikes.

"The transformation appears progressive," she says finally.

"Each day brings new capabilities. But also new departures from baseline human physiology."

"That's not an answer."

"Because we don't have one." Frustration edges her voice.

"You survived direct neural interface with technology that killed seventeen other test subjects. We're documenting biological adaptation that has no precedent in medical literature."

"What about the others? The ones who died?"

"Massive neural hemorrhaging within minutes of interface initialization," Dr. Aveline replies.

"Their brains couldn't process the alien data streams. Cognitive architecture collapsed immediately."

"But mine didn't collapse."

"No. Yours adapted. Restructured itself to accommodate information processing that shouldn't

be possible for organic tissue."

I walk to the observation window, looking out at corridors where researchers hurry past with equipment designed to monitor extraterrestrial threats.

None of their instruments can properly analyze what I'm becoming.

"The alien fleet changed course after your simulation session," Dr. Aveline continues.

"Bio-mechanical ships that have moved with predatory confidence for weeks are now circling Saturn's outer rings. They've never shown caution before."

"I hurt them." The memory burns through my reconstructed neural pathways—consciousness spreading through their unified network like weaponized discord. "Taught them what pain feels like."

"And they gave you something in return. Integration with biotechnology that's millions of years beyond anything humans have developed."

Through the window, I watch a maintenance technician struggle with a malfunctioning security door. The electronic lock flickers between red and green, unable to decide whether to grant access.

I focus on the mechanism, feeling its electromagnetic signature through the bio-metallic conduits beneath my skin.

The lock clicks open.

"Did you do that?" Kira asks.

"I think so."

"Remote electronic manipulation," Dr. Aveline murmurs, making notes on her dying tablet.

"Adding that to the growing list of impossible abilities."

The veins beneath my skin pulse brighter, responding to my emotional state with alien sensitivity. Through them, I feel data flowing through the facility's servers—classified reports about the approaching fleet, personnel files, communication logs with Deep Space Monitoring stations scattered across the solar system.

"Your brain activity is rewriting itself," Dr. Aveline says, watching readouts cascade across her tablet's cracked screen.

"Neural pathways we mapped yesterday no longer exist. New ones form faster than we can track the changes."

"Into what?" I ask. "What am I becoming?"

She meets my eyes through the window's reflection, her expression mixing scientific fascination with human concern.

"We don't know."

The bio-metallic veins pulse once more, brighter than before.

Outside, bio-ships circle Saturn with newfound fear, while inside, I stand at the center of a transformation that might save humanity or erase the last remnants of what I used to be.

I wonder if tomorrow I'll still care about the difference.