THE RELIC OF VEINS

Chapter 5 — Echoes of the Firemind

When Bruce opened his eyes, he was lying on a leather couch under soft amber light. For a heartbeat he thought the nightmare was over, until he noticed that the light didn’t have a source.

It just existed, glowing from nowhere. He sat up slowly. The air smelled of rain and antiseptic. A hospital? he thought.

No machines beeped. No footsteps. Just the faint hum of silence stretched too tight. Then a voice came from behind him. “Welcome back, Mr Willis.”

Bruce turned. A woman in a gray suit stood beside a polished desk. Her face was calm, symmetrical, too symmetrical. Her eyes, pale green, never blinked. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Dr Sera Hollis,” she said. “Cognitive restoration specialist. You were brought in after an… incident.”

He rubbed his temples. “Where’s Lena?”

“Lena?” She frowned slightly. “You were alone when the rescue team found you.”

“That’s not possible. She, she pulled me out”

“You suffered severe delusions from neural overburn. Hallucinations are expected.”

Bruce laughed weakly. “Of course. A neat little diagnosis to make it all disappear.”

Dr Hollis didn’t react. “I need to run a brief evaluation. What’s the last thing you remember?”

He hesitated. Flames. Screaming. Aimes. But saying those words felt dangerous, like naming a ghost. “An explosion,” he said finally. “In a lab.”

“Good. And before that?”

He blinked. “A crash. My basement. A… relic.”

The doctor tilted her head. “Describe this relic.”

He gestured vaguely. “Metal sphere. Glowing veins. It, it’s inside me now.”

Dr Hollis smiled politely. “Of course it is.”

Her tone was warm, but the words were wrong, rehearsed, as if spoken by someone who didn’t know what emotion should feel like. Bruce leaned forward. “You don’t believe me?”

“I believe you believe it,” she said.

He stared at her. The walls behind her shimmered, just for an instant, like heat haze. “Where am I really?” he asked.

“In recovery.”

“Where’s the door?”

She pointed. “Behind you.”

He turned, and there it was: a door that hadn’t existed a second ago. A smooth metal frame, handle gleaming.

Bruce stood. “If I walk through that, I’m free?”

Dr Hollis nodded. “Absolutely.”

He took a step, then stopped. “What happens if I don’t?”

Her smile didn’t move. “Then you stay until you’re ready.”

“Ready for what?”

Her voice softened. “To remember what you did.”

The light dimmed. The air grew colder. “Doctor?” he whispered.

But she wasn’t there anymore. The room stretched wider. The couch dissolved into ash beneath him. The door melted into the wall.

And from the dark, he heard Aimes’s voice. “You should’ve walked through, Bruce. It was mercy.”

He spun around. “Where are you?”

“Everywhere the fire touched.”

The amber light pulsed, turning red. Shadows crawled across the ceiling, merging into shapes, faces screaming soundlessly.

Bruce clutched his chest. “This isn’t real!”

“Reality is whatever burns longest,” the voice said.

The world folded again, and suddenly he was standing in a narrow hallway lined with mirrors. Each reflected a different version of him: burned, bleeding, smiling, crying.

Each mouth moved in sync. “You left her,” they whispered.

“You let her die.”

“No,” Bruce said. “She’s alive!”

“Then call her.”

He did. “Lena!”

A single mirror flickered, showing her face. She was kneeling beside something unseen, whispering his name through static. “Lena!” he shouted, pressing a hand to the glass.

Her eyes lifted, terrified. “Bruce, don’t listen to him”

The mirror cracked. “Too late,” Aimes murmured.

The floor tilted. Bruce fell forward, through the mirror. He landed hard on concrete. The air was heavy with smoke. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead. He knew this place. The lab. Again.

But everything was wrong. The machines were arranged differently. The bodies on the floor wore faces he didn’t recognize.

And in the center of the room stood a younger version of himself, alive and unscarred, talking to Aimes beside a burning relic. Bruce’s breath caught. “What…?”

Younger Bruce said, “If we do this, there’s no turning back.”

Aimes smiled. “That’s the point.”

“You said it wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“It won’t,” Aimes lied smoothly. “Not anyone that matters.”

Bruce’s stomach turned. “No. No, that’s not”

Younger Bruce reached out and touched the relic. The explosion replayed, the same blinding light that had killed him once before. He watched himself die.

Then the scene froze, mid-flame, and Aimes turned toward him, not the younger one, the one outside the memory. “You remember now,” he said gently. “You volunteered.”

Bruce’s throat locked. “That’s a lie.”

“Is it? You begged me to let you be the first host. You wanted to be more than ordinary. The crash, the accident, all of it came later. You built the lie because the guilt was too heavy.”

Bruce backed away. “You’re trying to twist it”

“Am I?” Aimes stepped closer through the frozen fire. “Why else would the Ember choose you? It seeks its reflection.”

“Stop!” Bruce shouted. “Get out of my head!”

Aimes smiled. “I can’t. You brought me here.”

The world began to collapse. The frozen fire roared back to life, swallowing everything in gold and red.

Bruce ran, past the echo of his own corpse, past the ghosts of the dead scientists, past the walls melting into liquid glass.

He burst through a doorway, and found himself once more in the office with the couch and the calm, blinking light. Dr Hollis was there again, tapping her pen. “Welcome back,” she said. “Shall we begin your evaluation?”

Bruce stared at her. Then he looked at his hands. They were glowing, faint ember light pulsing beneath the skin. He smiled, hollow. “Sure, Doc. Let’s begin.”

She nodded, pleased. “Tell me, Mr Willis. How do you feel?”

He looked her straight in the eyes. “Awake.”

The light overhead shattered, revealing fire behind it.