THE SEVENTH MINUTE

Light tore through the corridor like a flash grenade. Nurses screamed. Machines shrieked. Michael’s hand was locked on the dying man’s chest, glowing veins of gold and red crawling up his arm like living fire.The bleeding stopped. The man gasped, air flooding his lungs. Then something went wrong. Pain hit Michael’s chest like a blade. His spine arched, vision warping, breath stolen. The energy didn’t stop, it fed back. He tried to pull away, but his hand wouldn’t obey. The patient’s eyes snapped open, bright, unblinking, wrong. “Let go!” a nurse shouted.Michael yanked back, staggering into a tray. Metal clattered. The man on the bed convulsed violently, then lay still. Flatline. Everyone froze.Michael’s hand was smoking. His pulse was wild. The world hummed, every heartbeat in the room vibrating in sync with his own.He looked up. Rhea Cole stood at the end of the hallway, watching. No surprise. No panic. Just quiet approval. She mouthed two words: “You see?”Security rushed in, d

The city swallowed Michael whole. Rain hissed down the glass towers, washing the ash from his hair. Sirens howled somewhere behind him, chasing ghosts through the night.He ducked into an alley, pulse hammering in sync with the thrum inside his chest. The glow under his skin dimmed, barely.He whispered to himself, “Okay, Michael. You just exploded through a wall. You can handle… whatever this is.”“Talking to yourself now?” Michael froze.A figure leaned against the graffiti-smeared wall, hood up, cigarette tip glowing ember red. The stranger’s voice was dry, almost amused. “Don’t worry,” the man said. “I’m not with them.”Michael’s stance stiffened. “Who’s them?”“Anyone hunting what you’ve become.” The man stepped forward, rain catching on his coat. His eyes shimmered faint blue. “Name’s Silas.I heard your resonance from three blocks away. Thought I’d see if the stories were true.”“Stories?” Michael repeated.“About a kid who survived a death surge. About someone who balanced bot

Michael burst through the wall expecting pain, but instead found air that shimmered like glass and a floor that didn’t feel solid. He stumbled into darkness, coughing, his pulse vibrating like a drum inside his chest. A pale glow pulsed ahead. Lyra stood a few meters away, her back to him, surrounded by floating screens, old monitors, some cracked, others flickering with encrypted feeds. The place smelled of metal and damp earth. Michael blinked. “Where are we?”“Below the city,” she said, not turning. “One of the last safe channels the Board doesn’t own yet.”Michael glanced around. Cables crawled across the walls like veins. Every screen showed fragments, faces, city grids, genetic readouts marked RESONANT: CLASSIFIED.“This is insane,” he murmured. “You live here?”“I exist here,” she corrected. “Living stopped meaning much after they pulled me out of the lab.”He hesitated. “Pulled you out?”Lyra finally faced him. “I wasn’t born, Michael. I was grown, from a failed experiment

The blast wasn’t light, it was sound. A low-frequency hum rippled through the air, shaking Michael to his core. He staggered back, clutching his chest, waiting for pain, but there was none. Only… silence. “Kane, what did you”“Shut up and listen,” Kane said, striding toward him. The weapon hummed in his grip. “If you can still hear me, it worked.”Michael blinked. “Worked? You shot me!”Kane’s voice was calm, deliberate. “That wasn’t a bullet. It was a disruptor pulse. Fried the node Helix planted in your neural lattice, temporarily.”“Temporarily?”Kane nodded. “You’ve got six hours before your brain starts syncing with the Reclamation frequency again. That’s when they’ll take you.”Michael’s pulse quickened. “You’re saying I’m a walking receiver?”“More like a ticking one,” Kane replied.Michael clenched his fists. “You knew about this all along, didn’t you?”Kane didn’t deny it. “I tried to stop them.”“By putting me on the table?”Kane exhaled. “You were already dying, Michael. Y

When the white faded, cold wind took its place. Michael blinked into the gray morning light. Dust swirled around broken concrete pillars, and the skyline of what used to be the north district leaned like a row of cracked teeth.He touched the ground. Real dirt. The air bit at his skin. Am I awake? A voice from somewhere above answered the thought. “You tell me, Johnson.”Michael spun. Kane, the real Kane this time, covered in ash, one arm bandaged. Michael hesitated. “You’re actually here?”Kane gave a tired smirk. “Unless we’re both inside the same bad dream.”Michael stared. “You were glowing, your eyes”“That wasn’t me,” Kane said quickly. “That was the failsafe trying to copy my voice. You fought it off.”Michael’s head pounded. “So I’m free?”“Free enough to run.”Michael exhaled, half a laugh, half disbelief. “Where are we?”“Grayline,” Kane said. “The old medical sector. What’s left of it after the Board cleaned house.”Michael looked around. The ruins stretched as far as he co