SUBJECT 47: AWAKENING

The Revelation

The headache starts in History of Strategic Warfare, a needle behind my eyes, sharp and sudden.

Professor Zane’s voice drones from the front of the room, his cadence smooth and disinterested.

Something about ancient flanking maneuvers. But the words warp as they reach me, like they’re traveling underwater. My vision pulses.

I blink.

The classroom glitches.

Wooden desks flicker, replaced by cold metal slabs.

Students taking notes become pale bodies, limp, tethered to tubes, chests barely rising.

The warm sunlight spilling through the windows turns sterile, replaced by overhead fluorescence humming like a swarm.

Then…

It snaps back.

Wood. Not metal. Students, not pale bodies.

Zane’s lecture resumes mid-sentence, but my heart won’t slow. The bracelet around my wrist burns hot.

“Ezren?” Zane’s voice cuts through. “You seem… distressed.”

He’s staring at me now. The students don’t look up. Still scribbling.

“I’m fine.” The words scrape out of my throat.

He steps from behind the podium. “You experienced a neural spasm. A minor one. These things are common during periods of… adjustment.”

“Adjustment,” I repeat. The word coils like a snake in my stomach.

“I saw it. The real room. We’re prisoners.”

Zane freezes. Just a fraction of a second, but I see it.

Then his eyes flick toward his wrist device.

“Subject 47 showing premature awakening,” he murmurs.

“Initiate containment.”

Time fractures.

He reaches for me.

I’m already moving.

The chair skids back. I’m on my feet, lunging toward the exit. My body moves like it doesn’t belong to me, faster, sharper, efficient. Zane shouts something, but the words blur.

The other students never flinch. Still writing.

I slam through the classroom door and run.

***

I find Kira in the library, buried in a stack of old archives, alone at the far table beneath an amber lamp.

“We need to talk,” I whisper, sliding into the seat opposite her.

She looks up, and I see it immediately.

Fear.

Real, not rehearsed. Her green eyes lock on mine, and her lips barely move. “Not here.” She gathers her things fast, papers vanishing into her bag.

“Follow me. Don’t look back.”

We weave through silent corridors, past windows that show skies too perfect to be real. The walls hum like they’re alive.

She leads me through a door labeled “Maintenance – Authorized Personnel Only,” the handle cold in my hand.

The room beyond smells of copper and ozone. Dim lights flicker overhead.

“How long have you known?” I ask, breath shallow.

“Known what?” she replies, but her voice is brittle.

“That we’re not students. That this place is a lie. That people who ask questions vanish.”

Kira exhales like she’s been holding it in for years. Her shoulders sag against the wall.

“They don’t vanish,” she says.

“They’re erased. Their rooms get reassigned. Friends forget them overnight. The system edits them out.”

“How long?”

“A while.” She wraps her arms around herself.

“I remember flashes. Things that don’t add up. People who were here one day, gone the next. And no one notices. No one wants to.”

“I think I’m changing,” I admit. “Faster than I should be.”

She looks up sharply. “You are. I’ve seen awakenings before. Yours is different.”

She hesitates, then adds, “There are others. Students who remember pieces. We’ve been keeping quiet. Waiting for something to shift.”

“It just did.”

***

The door creaks. Devon steps in, his face drawn tight with urgency. His eyes flick between us, and he moves like he’s bracing for impact.

“They know,” he says, clutching a tablet.

“Zane filed the report an hour ago. Subject 47 flagged for containment.”

I blink. “How long have you been tracking this?”

“Since orientation week.” He flips the screen around, lines of code, graphs, neural maps.

“I’ve been scraping data from hidden nodes. The simulation’s bleeding at the edges. And they’re ramping up for something big.”

“Like what?” Kira asks.

“Phase Two.”

My mouth goes dry. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“They’re syncing us. Everyone who’s begun awakening, our neural signatures are spiking in the exact same pattern. It’s not a coincidence.”

He flicks through the graphs. They pulse in perfect unison, dozens of Subject IDs streaming across the display.

“This isn’t random,” Kira mutters, tracing the overlay with her fingers.

“The harmonics… they’re coordinated. Like a network calibration.”

“How many of us are there?” I ask.

“At least fifty. Maybe more. But here’s the kicker—whatever they’ve been preparing us for? It starts tonight.”

The silence deepens. Even the lights seem to dim.

“Phase Two Integration Protocol,” Devon continues, tapping rapidly. “If I’m reading this right, they’re about to fuse us. Minds linked. Skills aggregated. One shared consciousness.”

I swallow hard. “A hive mind.”

“Not just a hive mind,” Devon says.

“A weapon. Controlled remotely. No free will. No individuality.”

Kira’s voice is quiet. “Can we stop it?”

“Maybe. If we reach the main server in time.”

“Where is it?”

Devon’s jaw tightens. “It doesn’t exist in the simulation. We’d have to break the illusion. Find our real bodies.”

“Is that even possible?”

He hesitates. Then Kira speaks.

“There’s a theory,” she says.

“A neural overload, like ripping off the mask. A jolt strong enough to cause feedback. Force the system to show us the real world.”

“And if it fails?” I ask.

Devon doesn’t answer right away. Then: “Then we die.”

“Or worse,” Kira adds. “We stay. But not as ourselves.”

I look at both of them. Kira, hardened, protective. Devon, brilliant and desperate. Me, still reeling, but no longer blind.

“Then we don’t wait,” I say. “We fight.”

My bracelet pulses again. Slow and steady, like a heartbeat counting down.

Six hours.