2025-11-03 08:22:39Fluorescent lights hummed above him, steady and merciless. The air in the interrogation room was dry enough to burn the back of his throat.
Jason sat with his hands folded, cuffs glinting faintly in the overhead glare. Across from him, a woman in a dark suit flipped through a folder.
Her nails tapped the paper in slow rhythm. “Jason Rodriguez,” she said. “Former trauma medic. Dismissed yesterday from St. Matthew’s Hospital. Is that correct?”
“Depends who you ask.”
She looked up. “I’m asking you.”
He met her gaze. Calm. “Then yes.”
Another man stood in the corner, square shoulders, ear-piece coiled against his neck. He didn’t bother to hide his distrust.
The woman closed the folder. “You understand the situation?”
“I pulled a woman from a car wreck and kept her alive until your people got there.”
“That woman,” she said evenly, “was Lila Grant. The president’s daughter.”
He blinked once. “Didn’t know that.”
“You do now.”
The agent in the corner spoke for the first time. “And we need to know how.”
“How what?”
“How you revived her after seven minutes of cardiac arrest.”
Jason leaned back. “Good technique, decent luck.”
“Luck doesn’t re-start a heart that’s been still for that long.”
He shrugged. “Maybe you should update your textbooks.”
The woman’s mouth twitched, not a smile, something colder. “You understand why that answer won’t satisfy us.”
“I’m not here to satisfy you.”
The agent stepped forward. “Watch your tone, doctor.”
Jason’s eyes didn’t move. “I’m not your doctor.”
Silence crackled. The woman slid a photo across the table, Lila on a hospital bed, pale, alive, tubes snaking from her arms.
“She’s stable,” she said. “Thanks to you. The president wants to meet the man who saved her daughter.”
Jason’s jaw tightened. “You mean the man your agencies detained in a basement for doing it.”
“You’ll be released,” she said. “After we finish the formalities.”
He gave a dry laugh. “Sure. After you figure out whether I’m a miracle or a threat.”
“Which are you?”
Jason didn’t answer. The woman closed the file, stood, and nodded to the agent. “Uncuff him.”
The agent hesitated. “Ma’am”
“Do it.”
Cold metal snapped free from his wrists. Jason rubbed the marks, the skin reddened. “You’ll have an escort,” she said. “A car will take you to the Capitol Medical Center. The president would like a word.”
He looked up. “And if I decline?”
She leaned close enough that he could see her reflection in his pupils. “Then we find out what else those hands can do.”
Outside, the storm had broken, but the city hadn’t slept. Floodlights, cameras, barricades. The phrase Miracle on Fifth flashed across every screen.
Jason stepped into the black SUV waiting by the curb. Reporters shouted, microphones jabbed like spears. “Dr. Rodriguez, how did you do it?”
“Was it adrenaline, divine intervention?”
“Did you know who she was?”
He kept his eyes forward. The door slammed, muting the chaos. As the car rolled through the wet streets, he caught glimpses through tinted glass, his face plastered on giant billboards, hashtags scrolling across LED tickers. #HealingHands. #MiracleMan.
He said quietly, “They love a good resurrection story.”
The agent beside him didn’t respond. The motorcade cut through the city until the hospital’s tower rose ahead, bathed in light. A small army of Secret Service surrounded the entrance.
Jason stepped out. Cameras clicked. He felt the heat of the flashes even through the drizzle.
Inside, the corridors gleamed like silver. Nurses bowed their heads slightly as he passed, reverence and fear tangled together.
They stopped outside a sealed room. Two guards flanked the door. “She’s conscious,” the agent said. “But weak. Don’t say anything unnecessary.”
“Define unnecessary.”
“Anything that sounds like you.”
Jason smirked. “Then it’ll be a short conversation.”
The door slid open. Lila lay propped up on white sheets, eyes half-lidded. The glow of monitors painted her skin in soft green light. She turned her head slowly. “You’re him,” she whispered.
He stepped closer. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I died.”
“You almost did.”
Her gaze searched his face. “They said you brought me back.”
“I tried.”
A long pause. Her fingers twitched against the blanket. “Did you touch my heart?”
Jason froze. “What do you mean?”
“When I woke up,” she said softly, “I felt…warm. Like something burned through me and then went out.”
He said nothing. “You shouldn’t be here,” she murmured. “They don’t trust you.”
“I noticed.”
“Don’t let them use you.”
He frowned. “Use me?”
Her pulse monitor beeped faster. “They’re afraid of you, Dr. Rodriguez. Afraid because I shouldn’t be alive.”
He took a slow breath. “Rest. You need”
“Listen,” she said, her voice almost a whisper now. “They’ll test you. Don’t let them.”
Before he could answer, the door burst open. The woman in the dark suit stepped in, expression unreadable. “That’s enough,” she said.
Jason looked back at Lila. “We’re not done.”
“Yes, you are,” the agent said, hand already on his shoulder.
Lila’s eyes met his. “You felt it too, didn’t you?”
The guards pulled him back. Jason didn’t resist, but his pulse hammered. In the hallway, the woman walked beside him, heels sharp against tile. “The president will see you now.”
He stopped walking. “What happens if I say no?”
She smiled faintly. “Then you’ll never know why her heart started again.”
Jason’s eyes narrowed. “You think it wasn’t me.”
“I think,” she said, “there’s more to you than you realize.”
They reached the elevator. The doors slid open.
Jason stepped inside. The last thing he saw before the doors closed was Lila’s reflection in the glass panel across the hall, eyes wide, mouth moving silently around a single word.
He couldn’t hear it, but he read her lips.
Run. The doors sealed shut. And somewhere below, the elevator began to descend instead of rise.
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Chapter 11 — “Layer Two”
He woke to stillness.No sky. No ground. Just endless white, soft as fog, sharp as light. The air didn’t move, yet it hummed, faint and low, like a machine idling somewhere inside his bones.Jason sat up slowly. His body felt whole, but wrong, too smooth, too light. When he looked at his hands, they shimmered faintly, like heat rising off metal.The voice came from nowhere and everywhere. “Don’t fight the reboot.”He turned. The woman, his mirror, stood several feet away, barefoot on the blank floor that wasn’t floor at all. Her skin no longer glowed blue; it pulsed silver.Jason swallowed hard. “Where are we?”“Layer Two,” she said softly. “A test environment. Half digital, half cerebral. The place between you and the world.”He rose to his feet, every motion echoed by a half-second delay. When he moved, the space around him rippled.Jason said, “You brought me here.”Her expression didn’t change. “We brought us.”He paced a slow circle, trying to spot edges. There were none. “If thi
Chapter 10 — “City of Glass”
Jason landed hard on his back. The air left his lungs in one ragged gasp. Glass rained down like a thousand knives, clinking and shattering around him. When he opened his eyes, the world was… wrong.The city above him, no, around him, was flipped. Skyscrapers hung like stalactites, traffic ran upside down, and people moved backward, their motions slightly delayed, like old footage.The sky pulsed a faint blue instead of gray. Every few seconds, the light flickered, as if reality were buffering.Jason pushed himself up, glass crunching under his palms. “Where” He stopped, voice trembling. “Where the hell am I?”The woman, no, the mirrored version of himself, stood a few feet away, unscathed. The faint glow under her skin synced perfectly with his.She said quietly, “We crossed through the threshold. The reflection’s frame broke.”Jason stared at her. “You mean we’re inside the glass?”Her gaze met his. “We’re inside the data that held it.”He shook his head. “That’s not, none of this m
Chapter 9 — “Afterlight
Silence.Then, drip. Drip. Jason’s eyes opened to darkness and the slow echo of water hitting metal. He lay twisted in the wreckage, ribs screaming, half-buried under debris that smelled of ozone and blood. His blood.The reactor’s hum was gone. The doubles, gone. Only the faint hiss of dying machinery. He tried to move. Pain bit down like a live wire.A sliver of rebar had punched through his shoulder. He gritted his teeth, braced, and yanked it free. The sound it made was soft and wet.He pressed a hand to the wound. Warm. Sticky. Real. For a moment, he thought maybe he’d actually killed them. Maybe the nightmare ended.Then something whispered through the dark. “You shouldn’t have unplugged us.”Jason froze. “Who’s there?”Static rolled down the corridor like a whispering tide. Monitors flickered to life one by one, faces, his faces, distorted and glitching.He stumbled to his feet, legs trembling. The screens blinked in unison, voices overlapping, fractured. “We’re still here.”“I
Chapter 8 — “The Mirror War”
Smoke hung low, thick with metal and heat. Jason backed into the corridor wall, pulse thrumming in his throat. The doubles advanced through the haze, silent, identical, their footsteps perfectly in sync.He scanned for exits. None. Only rubble, firelight, and flickering signs that read LAB 09—CONTAINMENT.The nearest double stepped into the light. Same face. Same eyes. But colder. Jason said, “If you’re me, you know how this ends.”The thing tilted its head. “We end when you stop resisting.”Jason grabbed a shard of metal from the floor, held it like a scalpel. “Then I guess I’m the last one to die.”The doubles spread out, forming a half-circle. Their movements were surgical, coordinated, impossible to predict.He lunged first. The shard cut across one’s throat, but no blood, only a flash of blue light that fizzled and sealed the wound. Jason froze. “What the hell”A punch caught his ribs. He hit the wall hard, gasping. The lead double said, “You still think pain makes you human.”Ja
Chapter 7 — “The White Room”
White.Nothing but white. Jason squinted, but there were no walls, no corners, no ceiling. Just space, pulsing faintly with light like it was breathing. His steps made no sound. “Lila,” he called. His voice echoed but didn’t return.Then a tone chimed, soft, like a heart monitor wrapped in music. “Welcome, Jason.” The same voice from before. Lila’s voice, but smoother, stripped of human edges.He turned in a slow circle. “Where are you?”“I’m here,” the voice said. “Everywhere.”“Cut the god trick. Show yourself.”The air shimmered. Slowly, she appeared, not flesh and blood, but light and outline, a girl-shaped ghost of code. Same eyes, same softness, but with something missing behind them.“You’re not her,” Jason said.“I’m what’s left,” she said. “What they built from her.”He stepped closer. “Built?”Her expression flickered. “When she died the first time, they copied her neural pattern. A failsafe, in case the serum destroyed her. But it didn’t just copy her memories. It learned.”
Chapter 6 — “The Awakening Protocol”
Jason came to with the taste of metal in his mouth. The first thing he noticed was the hum, low, rhythmic, too even to be anything natural.When his vision cleared, white light filled the room. A ceiling too bright. Walls too smooth. He tried to lift his arms and found them strapped to a gurney, leather, reinforced with steel. “Welcome back,” a voice said.Keene stood by the monitors, coat crisp, hands folded behind her back. Jason’s throat burned. “Where… am I?”“You’re safe,” she said.“That word doesn’t mean what you think it does.”She smiled faintly. “You’re in Facility Four. Off-grid. Nobody knows this place exists.”Jason’s gaze flicked to the machines around him. Heart monitors. IV lines. A slow drip of clear fluid into his arm. “What did you do to me?”“Saved you. Again.”“I didn’t need saving.”“You were dying, Jason. Neural overload. Your cells were collapsing.”He strained against the straps. “Then let me go.”Keene stepped closer. “We can’t do that yet.”“Because I’m your
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