2025-10-17 05:31:20The rain hadn’t stopped; it only changed tempo, slower now, heavier, as if the city itself was tired of warning him
David reached the warehouse district just before sunrise. Rows of corrugated steel buildings glimmered in puddles and streetlight haze.
He stopped in front of one with a faded sign that read “Aegis Medical Supply Co.” The shutters were half-closed. “Great,” he muttered. “Nothing says trustworthy mentor like an abandoned warehouse.”
A metallic click answered him. The shutter lifted a foot. “Inside,” said Elias Morrow’s voice.
David ducked beneath and stepped into the dim light. The smell of antiseptic mingled with old machine oil.
What should have been empty storage space had been converted into something between a dojo and a trauma ward: steel tables, wooden dummies, and diagnostic monitors humming quietly.
Elias stood near the center, sleeves rolled up, holding a tablet. His presence filled the room, not by size, but gravity. “You ran,” Elias said without looking up.
“Yeah,” David replied, catching his breath. “Turns out people shooting at me really motivates cardio.”
A flicker of a smile crossed the older man’s face. “You handled yourself better than most. Sit.”
David hesitated, then dropped onto a medical cot. “So, are you going to explain why masked psychos know my name?”
“They don’t know your name,” Elias said. “They know your energy. You left a mark when you healed that man.”
“I left a mark?”
“Every action leaves resonance. Yours is unusually loud.”
David leaned back, eyes narrowed. “You make it sound like I’m a walking Wi-Fi signal for trouble.”
“That’s an accurate analogy.” Elias powered down the tablet. “Which is why you need training, fast.”
The word should have inspired confidence. Instead, David watched Elias roll a cart of surgical tools toward him and felt the first tug of regret. “Tell me,” Elias began, “what’s the difference between a healer and a surgeon?”
“One fixes,” David said, “the other… fixes by cutting.”
“Exactly. Sometimes repair requires damage first.”
“That’s poetic, but terrifying.”
Elias gestured to a small pulse monitor. “I need you to find your resonance again. Focus on your breathing, picture the rhythm that saved that man’s life.”
David obeyed, shutting his eyes. He tried to remember the warmth, the hum beneath his skin. Nothing happened. “Relax,” Elias said. “It’s like remembering a song, not forcing it.”
After a moment, a faint tremor filled David’s palms, soft, almost like static. “There,” Elias murmured. “You feel it?”
“Barely.”
“It’s enough.”
Elias reached into a drawer and pulled out a small metal sphere. “I built this to mimic a heartbeat. Touch it.”
David did. The moment his skin brushed the surface, the sphere pulsed, fast, erratic then steadied, matching his own rhythm. “That’s impossible,” he breathed.
“Possible,” Elias corrected, “just rare.”
He tapped the device. It flickered off. “Now you understand why The Black Vein wanted your father’s research. He discovered the body could store external energy like a battery. You’re the proof.”
David’s throat tightened. “So I’m… a science project with anxiety.”
Elias chuckled quietly. “You’re more than that. But we don’t have time for self-pity. They’ll come again.”
David stood. “Then teach me something useful. Healing’s great, but I’d prefer not to need it every five minutes.”
Elias studied him for a long moment. “Very well. Your first lesson isn’t about power, it’s about restraint.”
The older man motioned toward a sparring circle marked on the floor. From a side door, a figure stepped in, a woman with close-cropped hair and the confident stance of someone who’d been in too many fights to count. “This is Lena Cruz,” Elias said. “Street medic. My other student.”
Lena smirked. “So this is the miracle intern.”
David blinked. “You were expecting someone taller?”
“Someone conscious after five minutes would be nice.”
“Good to know optimism’s dead,” he shot back.
Elias raised a hand. “You’ll work together. She’ll test your reflexes; you’ll practice channel control. Stop her without harming her.”
Lena cracked her knuckles. “Sure. I’ll be gentle.”
“Define gentle,” David muttered.
They circled. Rain drummed on the roof. The air between them buzzed, part tension, part something else.
David barely dodged, stumbling back with his heart in his throat. “Faster,” Elias called. “Use your awareness, not strength!”
Another sweep. David caught her wrist instinctively. The faint warmth surged again, energy flaring without command. Lena yelped, jerked away, shaking her hand. “You zap me, Foreman?”
“I didn’t mean to!”
“Next time, mean it less!”
Elias intervened before tempers could rise. “Enough. You both learned something, he can channel under stress; she can survive it.”
David exhaled, rubbing his temples. “Does every lesson involve me nearly dying?”
Elias smiled faintly. “Only the effective ones.”
Hours later, the warehouse was quiet again. Lena patched a bruise on her arm while David stared at the rain streaking the skylight. “So,” she said, “you really brought someone back from the dead?”
He shrugged. “I brought him back from mostly dead. Science might argue the details.”
“That’s wild. You know what people would pay for that?”
“I’m still figuring out what it’s costing me.”
Lena looked at him, less teasing now, more curious. “You didn’t ask for any of this, did you?”
“Not exactly on my career plan.”
She nodded slowly. “Welcome to the fun side of medicine.”
They shared a tired laugh that felt almost human. Then the power flickered. Once. Twice. Elias looked up sharply. “Stay still.”
A low hum filled the room, same pitch as the sphere from earlier, but deeper, crawling through the floor.
David frowned. “What is that?”
Elias’s face drained of color. “They found us faster than I thought.”
“Who”
The lights cut out. Total darkness. Then, from somewhere behind the walls, a voice, metallic, distorted, familiar. “Good evening, Doctor Morrow. The experiment resumes now.”
A beam of cold blue light flooded the room, outlining three figures where the door had been, shadows rimmed in electricity.
Lena whispered, “You said we’d have time.”
Elias whispered back, “I lied.”
The figures moved as one. David reached for the warmth inside him, and the world went white.
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Chapter 11 – The Return
Cold air slammed into David’s lungs. Concrete. Street noise. The real world. He was standing in the middle of West 43rd again, same cracked asphalt, same morning light.Cars honked around him, drivers shouting. No Frequency Field, no mirrors. For a second, he almost convinced himself he’d hallucinated everything.Then he caught his reflection in a shop window. Gold veins shimmered faintly under his skin, pulsing in rhythm with the city’s electrical hum. He whispered, “Still me… right?”The reflection blinked later than he did. You asked which one of us stayed. The voice slid through his mind like static under skin. Softer now, patient.David staggered backward. “No. You’re gone.”If I were gone, you’d be empty. Feel that pulse? That’s me keeping you alive. He pressed his palms against his temples, forcing a breath. “You’re not real. You’re”“David?” He froze.Lena stood at the corner, wind whipping her hair across her face. She looked pale, exhausted, but alive. He almost smiled. “You
Chapter 10 – The Mirror War
The air in the Frequency Field shimmered like glass breathing. Every reflection of David moved a half second too slow, as if time itself lagged behind his thoughts.He turned slowly, scanning the endless mirrored horizon. Each version of himself watched back, some older, some broken, one smiling too wide. Welcome home, the echo whispered inside his skull.He spun toward the sound. The reflection nearest him stepped forward, peeling out of the glass like water shedding its shape.It was him, same face, same clothes, but the eyes burned gold. “Guessing introductions are redundant,” David said.The other smiled. “You can call me what you’re afraid to admit, completion.”“Completion?”“The version of you that doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t doubt. Doesn’t bleed for people who would cage him.”David shook his head. “You’re not me.”“Oh, I am.” The echo began circling him slowly. “I’m every decision you buried under guilt. Every second you looked at Elias and pretended not to see the knife in his
Chapter 9 – The Paradox
Darkness didn’t feel empty this time. It breathed. David stood still, listening to the echo of his own pulse fade into the black. The third heartbeat, the one he’d followed, was gone.Then came a sound: slow footsteps, water dripping, metal humming faintly in rhythm with the air. We shouldn’t be here, the inner voice whispered. This isn’t part of the map.David whispered back, “You said the conduit would choose.”Yes… but it wasn’t supposed to wake up.”A faint light flickered ahead. Not gold. Not blue. White. He started forward carefully, fingers brushing the damp wall for balance. The air thickened with static again, but colder this time, like memory turned physical.When he reached the source of the light, he froze. It was a person. Or at least, it looked like one.A young woman sat cross-legged in a shallow pool of water, her body translucent like glass, every vein glowing white.Her eyes were closed, and her breath came in steady, deliberate rhythm. When she spoke, her voice seem
Chapter 8 – The Conduit
Dawn bled pale light into the city, but the glow inside David’s chest was brighter. Every pulse felt doubled, one beat human, one something else.Each step he took sent a faint shimmer up his veins, like static chasing through water. He kept his hood low as he moved through the waking streets.Every public screen still blinked with brief flashes of his face before dissolving into static. He’d smashed three already. Didn’t help. The reflection just found new glass.He stopped under a bridge near the river, leaned against the damp stone, and forced his breathing into rhythm. “Okay,” he muttered, “you want to talk? Let’s talk.”You can’t hide from yourself forever. The voice inside wasn’t taunting now, it sounded patient, almost curious. “Great pep talk,” he said aloud. “Who are you really? The duplicate? The host?”Both. The Vault opened two paths. You just walked the brighter one first.He clenched his fists. “Meaning?”Meaning you’re incomplete. The conduit connects what was divided.
Chapter 7 – Half-Light
The silence after the flash wasn’t empty; it pulsed. Every second carried a faint echo, like a heartbeat that wasn’t his.David blinked, trying to force the world back into focus. The walls of the Vault chamber rippled faintly, metal breathing in and out. His hands glowed a dull amber before fading to normal skin again.“Lena?” His voice sounded wrongm lower, blurred, as if it came from two throats at once.No answer. Only the whisper of cooling machinery. He checked the capsule, empty. The chair, the second vial, everything else: gone. “Okay,” he muttered. “Either I’m hallucinating, or Dad just Houdini’d with my friend.”He turned toward the staircase. A faint blue haze blocked the exit like mist made of static. He reached out, his fingers passed through, and for a moment the hum in his blood surged, answering the field.The mist parted. That shouldn’t have worked, he thought. That was keyed to Elias’s tech.He stepped through, the hum subsiding again. Upstairs, the clinic’s upper le
Chapter 6 – Reflections of the Living
Blue light washed the chamber like underwater moonlight. David’s pulse matched the low hum that filled the air, his rhythm answering the stranger’s.Lena’s hand brushed his sleeve. “Tell me you’re seeing this too.”He couldn’t speak. The man before him, taller, leaner, older, wore a lab coat identical to Elias’s, but the lines on his face were sharper, the eyes burning faint gold.Every childhood photograph David had ever seen suddenly felt like a rough sketch of this living echo. “Dad?” The word scraped out of him.The man smiled faintly. “You look like your mother. Same disbelief in your eyes.”“That’s impossible,” David whispered. “You died when I was twelve.”“I died,” the man said, “on paper.” He spread his hands. “The Black Vein needed a ghost. Elias helped them make one.”Lena’s whisper was sharp. “Morrow helped them?”David shook his head, unable to process. “You’re saying he lied?”“He lied to save himself,” the man replied evenly. “And to hide me until you were ready.”David
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