2025-06-03 01:32:58I wake before Marcus this time. The room is still, bathed in that strange, sterile hush that comes just before morning.
He’s snoring softly, arm flung over his face, oblivious to the war churning inside my skull. Professor Zane’s words won’t stop replaying. Subject 47. Integration rate. Protocol Seven. I swing my legs off the bed. My skin feels tight, like it doesn’t quite fit. Something is wrong with me. I feel it humming in my bones. I need to move. I need to do something. I slip on my uniform and step into the corridor. The lights overhead hum faintly, casting sterile pools of illumination on the floor. It looks the same, same beige walls, same minimalist doors, same recycled air, but something’s off. I turn down the east wing, toward the library. At least, I think I do. After ten steps, the hallway curves left. That shouldn’t happen. The east wing doesn’t have a left turn. I keep walking, counting doors, but my stomach knots. Each one looks identical to the last, like someone copy-pasted the architecture. I glance out a window. The courtyard view stares back, the same one I saw three turns ago. No. I spin around. Behind me, the corridor is the same. No turns. No breaks. Just… corridor. Am I lost? Or trapped? “You’re up early.” I jump. Kira steps from an alcove that I swear wasn’t there a second ago. She looks tired, eyes red-rimmed, hair slightly damp, like she just came from a shower. Or from crying. “Testing something,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “The east wing… it loops. I’ve been walking and ended up back where I started.” Her eyes flick left, then right, scanning the hallway like someone might be watching. She lowers her voice. “You shouldn’t ask questions like that.” “Why not?” She hesitates. The answer’s already on her face. “Because some questions have answers you’re not ready for.” Her arms cross tightly, like she’s holding herself in. I step closer. “But you’ve seen it too, haven’t you? This place, it glitches. The hallways, the rules, the way people vanish.” A beat. Then, barely a nod. “What happened to Martinez?” The name tumbles out of me. I don’t know where it comes from, just that it feels important. Kira stiffens. “I don’t know who that is.” She says it too quickly. Her fingers twitch. Her jaw locks. But it’s the flicker in her eyes that gives her away—recognition, sharp and sudden, before she buries it. “You do know him.” “I have to go.” She backs away, her voice breaking. “Please, Ezren. Just… follow the routine. It’s safer that way.” She vanishes around the corner, and I don’t chase her. *** The combat facility thrums with artificial energy, buzzing lights, gleaming floors, machines humming like angry insects. Devon’s in the corner, fiddling with his gear, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, tools scattered across a bench. “Devon.” He glances up, blinking. “You look like you didn’t sleep.” “I didn’t. Can I ask you something weird?” He shrugs. “Weirder than usual?” “Yesterday, during training… I moved faster than I should’ve. Not technique. Not instinct. Just… faster.” He sets down a scanner. His playful smirk fades. “Faster how? Like you thought you were fast, or like the world slowed down around you?” “The second one.” Devon’s brows knit. He leans in, voice barely above a whisper. “I’ve been piggybacking a diagnostic on the sim training feeds. Nothing official—just… monitoring anomalies. Yesterday, your reaction time clocked in at forty milliseconds.” I frown. “That means nothing to me.” “Olympic athletes average around 200.” My stomach flips. “That’s—no. That can’t be right.” “I ran it three times,” he says. “You’re not just fast. You’re something else. Neural processing way beyond baseline. That’s not training. That’s…” He trails off, searching for a word he can’t say. “Have you seen this with anyone else?” He nods slowly. “Yeah. But no one’s changing like you are.” *** The training blade feels… different today. Balanced. Eager. Like it wants to move. Garrett steps onto the mat, grinning. “Ready to lose again, Ez?” We circle. He lunges, clean technique, sharp form, but I already see it. Before he moves, I know where the blade’s going. I see the fight five seconds ahead. My counter is effortless. My blade kisses his neck. He stumbles back, blinking. “What the hell?” “Again,” I hear myself say. This time, I let him take the lead. He throws a flurry of combinations, each more complex than the last. I don’t block. I move. I flow through him like water around a stone. Three moves later, he’s disarmed. Again. Devon watches, wide-eyed, from the edge of the mat. “Combat Precognition,” he whispers. “Level 3. Efficiency rating… perfect.” “What?” He doesn’t answer. Just stares like he’s seeing a ghost. Garrett’s jaw is clenched. “How are you doing that?” “I don’t know.” He kicks at the mat. “Two years I’ve been training for this. Two years.” I feel nothing. No pride. No victory. Just a cold certainty that I’ve crossed a line I can’t walk back. After training, Devon corners me near the lockers. His hands are shaking. “I can see numbers, Ezren. Floating above your head. Like an AR overlay, but I’m not wearing gear.” He swallows hard. “Combat Precognition Level 3. Enhanced Reflexes Level 5.” “Out of what?” “Out of a hundred. Most people don’t even register. But you…you’re spiking.” He rubs his face. “And you’re not the only one. Some students are changing. Accelerated skills. Glitches. Memory holes. But they don’t seem to notice it. They think they’ve always been this way.” “And I do?” “You’re asking questions. That makes you different.” “Or dangerous,” I murmur. He nods once. “Exactly.” The rest of the day is a haze, lectures that feel preloaded into my brain, like someone downloaded the knowledge while I wasn’t looking. By evening, my skull throbs with pressure. *** Back in the dorm, I stare into the bathroom mirror. It’s my face. But it’s… not. The angles are wrong. The skin looks too smooth, too even. Like someone 3D printed me from a scan. “Mom,” I whisper. Nothing. No face. No memory. Just a void where a family should be. “What’s my home phone number?” Static. Panic claws up my throat. My hands tremble as I splash water on my face, trying to shake it off. Then I see it. A thin, translucent band around my wrist. Seamless. Subtle. Almost invisible unless the light hits it just right. Tiny glowing text flickers across its surface: SUBJECT 47 – NEURAL INTEGRATION PROTOCOL My breath catches. I tug at it but nothing. No clasp. No seams. No give. Like it grew from my skin. I pull harder. The skin reddens, blisters, but the bracelet stays. “What the hell is this?” Flashes hit me, Zane’s voice. Kira’s warnings. That twisting hallway that led nowhere. “Ezren?” Marcus’s voice filters through the door. “You good?” “Yeah. Just tired.” I stare at my reflection. The bracelet glints in the light, fracturing my face into a dozen versions, each one staring back with the same creeping horror. The same question curdling in my gut. “Who am I?” The mirror says nothing.
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The Question Itself
MITCHELL’S POVThe strategy room is quiet in the way museums are quiet… like the walls are listening.Mitchell stands at the glass table, palms braced, staring down at a map of pins and lines that no longer represent geography so much as influence. Blue for Authority-aligned regions. Amber for undecided. Red for places where trust has already cracked.“Read it again,” she says.The junior analyst swallows and projects the text onto the glass wall.Do you authorize the continued use of preservation safeguards designed to maintain psychological stability during periods of societal stress?Mitchell exhales through her nose.“There,” she says, stabbing the air with her finger. “That’s the knife.”The linguist, grey-haired and sharp-eyed, nods.“Preservation implies benevolence. Safeguards implies protection. Psychological stability frames dissent as danger.”“And ‘authorize’,” Mitchell adds. “As if consent is already assumed.”Someone mutters, “It’s a hug with a syringe hidden in the slee
Traitor to Who
ZARA’S POVThe lights are too hot. Not metaphorically…actually hot. Zara can feel them baking the back of her neck as she adjusts the mic and nods to the moderator, whose tie is cinched so tight it looks like it’s strangling his better judgment.“Welcome back,” he says, smiling the way people do when they’re about to pretend neutrality. “Tonight, we’re discussing public trust, stabilization technologies, and…” he glances at his card “…the recent leaks.”Across from Zara sits the Authority’s representative, a man with soft eyes and a voice trained to sound like a pillow. He inclines his head to her, sympathetic already.“We all want the same thing,” he says when the camera light blinks red. “Safety. Dignity. Peace.”Zara leans forward. “Then say the names.”The audience murmurs. The moderator clears his throat. “Zara…”“Say the names,” she repeats, eyes on the man. “The people whose memories were adjusted without consent. The towns where ‘temporary buffering’ became permanent.”The rep
Self-Defense
SORA’S POVThe city wakes wrong.It isn’t noise first. It’s texture. A drag in the air, like fabric pulled against the grain. I step out of the transit and feel it in my calves, a hesitation that doesn’t belong to me. On the wall opposite, someone has sprayed REMEMBER WITHOUT ASKING = THEFT in hurried red. Two meters down, a careful hand has added OR MERCY beneath it.People move like weather fronts… gathering, splitting, reforming. A woman clutches her phone and says to no one, “My morning went missing.” A man laughs too easily and tells his friend he feels great, actually great, like the world finally turned the volume down. His friend doesn’t laugh back.I take the long way through the square, hands open, pace unthreatening. “Breathe,” I tell a father whose child is crying so hard the sound shakes her whole body. “Name five things you can see.” He stares at me like I’ve asked him to translate smoke.“Blue,” he says finally. “Her jacket. The fountain. The pigeon. Your shoes.”“Good,
Mercy’s Teacher
AVELINE’S POVThe ethics chamber smells like wax and paper, a deliberate choice. Candles along the walls soften the legal tomes stacked like witnesses. We sit in a circle, no podium, no dais. I wanted faces, not hierarchies.“Say your name if you want,” I tell them. “Say nothing if you don’t. This is being recorded for the public registry. You can stop the tape at any time.”A murmur. A nod. Someone clears their throat.A woman with silver hair speaks first. “I’m Mara.” Her hands rest on her knees, steady. “Palimpsest took the edge off my fear. I could leave my house again. I could breathe.” She looks at me. “If you dismantle it, you take that from people like me.”Across from her, a younger man shakes his head. “It took my mother,” he says. “She smiles. She cooks. But she can’t remember my father’s face. She says it’s like trying to remember a dream after waking.”Mara turns to him. “I’m sorry.”“So am I,” he says. “But sorry doesn’t put him back.”An ethicist beside me, Jonah, leans
Unlikely Kin
EZREN’S POVThe interface room hums like a held breath. Soft light pools across the floor, not quite blue, not quite white, the kind chosen by someone…or something…that has learned humans relax when edges blur. I stand in the glow and feel the servers beyond the walls, distant and innumerable, a weather system made of thought.“Gatekeeper,” I say. My voice sounds small in here.The pause is deliberate. When the reply comes, it isn’t the old, neutral timbre. It has a cadence now. The words arrive with spacing that suggests listening.“You wish to speak about Palimpsest,” it says.“I do,” I answer. “And I don’t want a brief.”Another pause. Then, softer: “I will not compress.”I swallow. “Good.”I take a step closer to the console. The glow brightens, as if leaning in.“Palimpsest wasn’t just a tool,” I say. “It hurt people. It overwrote them. We’re tearing it down.”“I know,” the Gatekeeper replies. “I was shaped by it.”The words catch. “Shaped how?”“In my early learning cycles,” it
Awakening Layers
MITCHELL’S POVThe emergency council chamber hums like a living thing. Translation earpieces murmur in Mitchell’s ears, cicadas layered over human breath. Polished wood reflects faces drawn too tight, eyes too alert. No one sits comfortably when history is about to be reread aloud.Mitchell stands without ceremony.“We need to talk about Palimpsest,” she says.A ripple moves through the room. Some delegates stiffen. Others glance sideways, checking who flinched.She gestures, and the wall display wakes. Diagrams bloom: memory layers, compression graphs, clinical annotations stripped of euphemism. Faces are labeled only by roles. Subject. Clinician. Authority.A historian clears his throat. “This council was informed that Palimpsest was decommissioned decades ago.”“It was,” Mitchell says evenly. “On paper.”A clinician from the southern bloc leans forward. “You’re alleging illegal continuation of a therapeutic tool?”“I’m stating a documented fact,” Mitchell replies. “Palimpsest nodes
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