SUBJECT 47: AWAKENING

The Resistance Forms

The bracelet’s pulse syncs to my heartbeat, quick, rhythmic, urgent.

Each thud is a countdown, a drumbeat to war. Six hours.

The number echoes through my skull like a chime in a bell tower just before it falls.

Devon clutches his tablet like it’s a lifeline.

Kira moves ahead, eyes scanning corners with surgical precision. She doesn’t say it, but she’s scared. We all are.

“We need a blind spot,” she murmurs.

“Somewhere they don’t watch.”

“I know a place,” Devon answers, already veering off the path.

We pass an access hatch I’ve never noticed, industrial, heavy, labeled with red-letter warnings.

Devon bypasses the lock with a device pulled from his coat, the panel giving way with a sigh of released pressure.

Inside, the air hums. Ozone. Copper. Overworked circuits.

Screens cover the walls, some old, flickering, others streaming raw code, heat maps, internal schematics.

This is no classroom lab.

“How long have you been doing this?” I ask, watching a stream of data form a simulated top-down view of the facility.

“Since I stopped sleeping.” Devon settles into a worn chair, back already curved toward the keyboard.

“Kept dreaming about my sister. She was turning nine. I missed her birthday. Again.”

He doesn’t look up, just types, rapid and precise. Screens ripple as he pulls up layered infrastructure maps, revealing the bones beneath the skin of our simulation.

“See this?” He highlights areas in glowing red.

“Simulation boundaries. Three-mile radius. Anything outside is blank space or fabricated. But these”, he circles blinking nodes, “these are real doors. Real paths out. Guarded like hell.”

The layout locks in my brain, routes, blind zones, overlapping fields of surveillance.

My thoughts rearrange themselves into a tactical overlay I didn’t know I could build. Like my mind is learning to think in layers.

“How many others like us?”

“Seventeen fully awakened.” Devon doesn’t pause typing.

“But look at this.”

A biometric screen unfurls, heart rates, neural spikes, metabolic anomalies.

Dozens of Subject IDs pulse in synchronization, climbing together like something pulling us up from underneath.

“Phase Two is underway. Integration rates are spiking across the board.”

I step closer to the screen, watching numbers rise in unison.

“How long?”

Devon’s fingers freeze. “Four hours. Maybe less.”

***

The medbay looks sterile, calm. A lie.

Light pours in like sunlight, but I can feel the flicker behind it, artificial, calculated to feel real.

Kira moves like she’s running on fumes, grabbing tools with practiced familiarity while her hands shake just beneath the surface.

“Routine enhancement check,” she says aloud, a line for the cameras embedded in the walls.

The scanner touches my skin. Cold metal, colder silence.

Her breath stutters as results bloom across the display. “Fifteen percent increase in muscle density,” she whispers.

“Ezren, that’s not evolution. That’s something being rewritten.”

She turns the screen, jaw tight. Behind the official files is a buried report, encrypted, medical clearance required.

Deterioration patterns.

Skin thinning. Cellular collapse. Neuroplasticity failures. Organs degrading like overclocked machinery burning through the last of their fuel.

I look at her. Her face is drawn tighter than I’ve ever seen it.

“The older students…” Her voice catches.

“The ones who’ve been under longer, they’re dying. Slowly. Quietly. The enhancements come with a timer.”

I reach out, take her hand. The weight of it scares me. Too light.

“Then we move fast,” I say.

“We get them all out. Before the system finishes eating us alive.”

***

Devon’s bunker smells of dust and dry metal, the stale breath of forgotten infrastructure.

The storage unit stretches longer than it should, lined with cables, salvaged tech, and signal blockers rigged from whatever he could steal without raising alarms.

Kira settles onto a cushion, her scanner flickering as she checks our vitals again.

Devon’s screens glow like constellations in the dark.

“The channels are working, for now,” he says, not looking away from the code.

“But every burst we send makes them search harder. They’re catching on.”

“I reached nine others,” Kira says.

“Five are with us. Four more are hesitant.”

“The rest?”

“Too afraid. Marcus wouldn’t even let me finish a sentence. Elena ran.”

Devon swears. “I encrypted the messages, but they must’ve flagged them anyway.”

“They’re not just scared of the system,” Kira adds.

“They’re scared of you.”

That stings more than I expect.

“Why?”

“They can feel something cracking around you, Ezren. The simulation feels thinner when you’re nearby.”

She’s right. And they’re not wrong to fear it.

Devon’s voice is low. “They don’t know what you’ve seen. Or what you’re becoming.”

Kira rises. “Then we move with those who haven’t forgotten how to choose.”

I nod. “We coordinate. No more waiting.”

Devon’s screens rearrange, names, dorms, tracking patterns. “Seventeen awakened. Nine active. Four maybes. Four out of reach.”

“We form cells,” I say.

“Devon, comm ops. Kira, medical. I take point on field actions and coordination.”

The scanner crackles.

Static.

Then a voice, distorted, panicked.

“Don’t… contact me again… they’re watching. If you resist… they’ll erase you.”

Marcus.

The message dies in static.

Kira closes her eyes. Devon doesn’t move. The room is quiet enough to hear our own breathing.

Then the world explodes.

Sirens, real this time, blare through the underground space. Red lights flare like blood.

Devon’s systems light up with alerts.

“They’ve started,” he says, barely audible. “It’s now. Phase Two is online.”

Through the concrete above, we hear it.

Metal arms unfolding. Machines powering up.

And the screaming.

Students, our classmates, crying out as something happens to them that was never meant to be survived.

Kira’s face goes white. “What do we do?”

I swallow the fear and find my voice.

“We fight.”

Devon’s screens stutter. “Medical wing. It’s all starting there.”

“That’s where they’ll take them,” Kira says, already grabbing supplies.

“We don’t get another shot.”

“I’ll reach out to the others,” Devon says.

“Emergency frequencies only.”

“You said we weren’t ready,” Kira tells me, voice hard with resolve.

“But that was never the point, was it?”

I look at the bracelet on my wrist. It pulses faster now, like it knows we’re on borrowed time.

“We don’t wait,” I say.

“We move.”

Above us, the screaming doesn’t stop.

The resistance we planned isn’t enough.

Now it’s a rescue.