SUBJECT 47: AWAKENING

The Test of Fire

The sirens won’t stop screaming.

Their pitch rises and falls like they’re panicking for us, corridors pulsing with that impossible blue light, flickering like the building’s heartbeat’s gone out of rhythm.

Aveline hauls me to my feet. I’m not sure if I’m standing or floating. My legs barely remember how to be legs.

“Easy,” she mutters, catching my elbow. “The neural backlash will pass.”

Devon crouches near the wall of blown-out monitors. He’s pale, glassy-eyed, twitchy-fingered, muttering mostly to himself. “It’s not just lockdown,” he says, voice flat.

“It’s hijacked. Every input gets pre-countered. Like it’s reading my thoughts before I can think them.”

My head’s still full of static. Like someone played a recording of the universe directly into my brain at full volume.

“They know you now,” Aveline says, too calm for the weight in her words.

“Your pattern stood out. Enough to earn interest.”

I try not to ask what that means. Try not to wonder what kind of thing can “earn interest” from an alien hive-mind.

“Before they send something to dissect you,” she adds.

So much for not wondering.

She nods to the end of the corridor. Blast doors groan open, exhaling mist from somewhere far colder than here.

Behind them, the hallway stretches impossibly long, like the campus swallowed a few city blocks when no one was looking.

“Where are we going?” Devon asks, pulling himself up.

Aveline walks. “To the simulation floor.”

We follow. There’s no point asking how a simulation facility fits under a university. Nothing fits anymore.

***

The chamber looks like a cathedral if cathedrals were built by code and fear.

Multi-level scaffolding. Neural pods lined up like coffins with better wiring. Every surface hums with energy, like the whole place is listening.

At the center, suspended midair, is the second construct.

The alien thing. Same design as the one in the containment vault, but this one’s awake.

Tendrils of metal snake out from it, plugged into walls, processors, atmosphere. A thousand cables. None of them labeled. All of them alive.

“It’s from the crash,” I say, because it feels wrong not to acknowledge it.

“The memory core survived intact,” Aveline confirms.

“This one was built to interpret consciousness.”

The construct twitches, just slightly. Its outer shell ripples from metal to something neural, like it’s deciding what form to be.

And then it sees me.

Three rings of blue light blink from its center. Pulse. Expand.

Recognition.

Exactly like before. Only this time… it feels closer.

“Is that… normal?” Devon asks. His voice is too quiet for comfort.

“No,” Aveline says. “But nothing about him has been normal since Omega triggered.”

The lights fade. Then they pulse again. Slower. Deliberate. Watching.

“Training?” I ask, though I already know the answer.

Aveline’s voice sharpens. “No. This isn’t to prepare you. This is recon.”

I blink. “Recon for what?”

“To see what kind of weapon you are.”

She doesn’t flinch when she says it.

“Devourers outmatch us on every metric,” she continues.

“We’re not looking for a win condition. We’re looking for anomalies. Your neural pattern interrupts their hive-link. That’s our foothold. We just don’t know what form it takes when pushed to the edge.”

Devon scrolls through feeds, face lit by flickering numbers. “Seventeen subjects. None lasted past the two-minute mark.”

I stare at him. “None?”

Aveline just nods.

The construct pulses again, three rings. Faster this time. Like it heard my heartbeat spike and decided to echo it.

There’s something in the way it watches me. Not curiosity. Not hostility. Recognition.

Kira steps out from the far console bank, hair pulled back, eyes tired. She kneels beside the primary pod, adjusting something in the safety protocol harness.

“You’re already at stress-fracture levels,” she says, not looking at me.

“Your synapses are running hot. Like the link to the fleet fried something that hasn’t cooled down yet.”

“So I might die before I even get in there.”

She pauses. Then: “Yeah. You might.”

Great.

Devon’s back at the monitors. “It’s adapting to your signal,” he mutters. “Like it’s tuning itself around you.”

I run a hand down my face. It comes away shaking. “And what am I supposed to do inside?”

“Survive,” Aveline says.

That’s all she gives me.

“Learn. Push your enhancements. See what kind of disruption you create. We’re watching every variable.”

“And if I fail?”

“Then we’re already dead,” she says simply. “Might just happen sooner.”

I look at the pod. Cold metal. Black restraints. The kind of place people lie down in before things go wrong.

Kira notices my hesitation. “Don’t do this if you’re not ready.”

I almost laugh.

“I haven’t been ready since the day they rewired my skull,” I say. “But if I don’t go in, no one learns what these things want.”

She meets my eyes. Hers are steady. “Then promise me something.”

“What?”

“If the neural pressure spikes, you pull the disconnect.”

“And if I can’t?”

“Then we know the limits,” she says, quietly.

The pod opens.

I sit. The armrests are cold. My hands won’t stop shaking.

I try to remember who I was, before all of this. Before Omega Protocol, before the veins in my arms turned silver, before the dreams stopped being dreams and started leaking into the real.

But it’s all static now. Just fragments and ghosts. My name still sounds like mine. But it doesn’t feel like it anymore.

Aveline watches me strap in.

“The construct’s linking to the Devourer tactical core,” she says.

“You’ll face hunter-killers. Designed for one purpose: eliminating anomalies like you.”

“How many?”

She doesn’t smile. “It scales based on performance.”

“That’s messed up.”

“It’s realistic.”

The lights overhead dim. The construct pulses again, faster. Impatient.

Devon flips switches. “Neural interface aligning. Quantum links online.”

Kira grips my shoulder. “You’re not alone in there. We’re monitoring everything.”

“Right. Until the moment I die.”

She doesn’t argue.

The construct’s glow floods the chamber, three rings again, this time searing bright, blooming outward until they flood my vision.

Something stirs in my head. My veins light up. I feel the resonance hit me like a second heartbeat inside my own.

“Final systems check,” Devon calls. “Safety protocols engaged.”

“What happens if those fail?” I ask.

“They won’t,” Aveline says.

“That’s not…”

“It’s the best you get.”

The pod locks down.

Everything gets quiet.

Then the neural bridge hits.

Quantum data slams into my skull like a floodgate opening. I’m not just seeing the construct, I’m inside it. It’s studying me with a kind of curiosity I don’t think a machine should have.

“Neural interface established,” Devon says. “Beginning consciousness transfer.”

“Vitals stable,” Kira adds. “Neural patterns… uh. Not standard.”

“Define ‘not standard,’” I say, or maybe I just think it.

“You’re integrating at levels we didn’t think were possible,” Aveline says. “The construct recognizes something in you.”

“Is that what killed the others?”

“No. They couldn’t connect at all. You’re… doing something new.”

My body fades. The room dims. My vision fractures into code and light and memory not my own.

“Beginning consciousness transfer,” Devon repeats. “This is, God. This is off-scale.”

“Kira?” I say. “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” her voice filters in. “But it’s faint. You’re almost through.”

“There’s something else in here,” I whisper.

A pause.

“Hunter-killer protocols just activated,” Aveline says. “Combat scenarios loading.”

“How many?”

“We’ll find out together.”

My vision goes white.

I am no longer in the pod.

“Transfer complete,” Devon says. His voice sounds like it’s on the other side of a canyon.

Kira’s whisper chases after it.

“God help him.”