2025-10-17 08:00:16The first thing David noticed was the silence. Not the comforting kind, this was the sterile hush of a room that had heard too many confessions.
He was seated in a metal chair, wrists clamped to the arms. A faint blue glow traced the cuffs. The walls around him pulsed with the same light, like the room itself was breathing. A door hissed open.
Two people entered: a woman in a white tactical coat and a man in black armor marked with the insignia of a broken circle. “Major David Foreman,” the woman said evenly. “Welcome to Genesis Command.”
David squinted against the lights. “Welcome? Funny way to say ‘kidnapped.’ ”
“You were unconscious,” she replied. “Extraction, not abduction.”
“Extraction from what? My own life?”
The armored man snorted. “Still got jokes.”
“Still got a pulse,” David shot back. “Where’s my sword?”
The woman ignored him, sliding a tablet across the table. On it, footage from the night before. Blue fire tearing through the street. Cars lifted like toys. A silhouette at the center: Bruce.
David stared. “You filmed that?”
“We film everything,” she said. “Your ‘associate’ leveled six city blocks and erased three tracking satellites. Tell me again how he’s just a friend.”
“He saved people. That blast was”
“Collateral,” the man cut in. “He’s unstable, Major. You saw it.”
David’s jaw tightened. “He was scared. Wouldn’t you be, if your own blood started glowing?”
The woman tapped the screen again. Now it showed casualties, names scrolling endlessly. “You’re a soldier,” she said softly. “You understand numbers. 412 dead. 600 missing. The world is calling him the Healer’s Plague.”
David looked away. “He didn’t choose this.”
“That’s why you’re still alive,” she said. “We need you to bring him in before the public learns what he is.”
He laughed once, sharp. “So that’s it. You weaponize him or bury him.”
“If necessary,” she admitted. “You’ll command Operation Shadow Protocol.”
“I didn’t sign up for this.”
“You did when you joined the Defense Corps. Genesis funds it. You’ve always been ours.”
David’s pulse quickened. “I don’t take orders from ghosts.”
The armored man stepped closer. “You’ll take them from a commander.”
The door slid open again, and Commander Kane entered. Tall, silver hair, eyes like frostbite. He wore no armor, only a black coat lined with faint circuitry.
Kane stopped across the table. “Major Foreman. I read your file. Top of your class. Loyal, efficient… predictable.”
David met his gaze. “Then you know predictably, I’m not interested.”
Kane smiled thinly. “You will be.”
He placed a metallic chip on the table. It pulsed blue.
“What’s that?” David asked.
“Insurance,” Kane said. “You were exposed to the Healer’s energy. We removed the residue while you were unconscious, and replaced it with something more stable.”
David’s eyes narrowed. “Replaced?”
“A failsafe,” Kane said. “If your heart stops beating, it broadcasts your location. If you betray us, it stops your heart.”
Silence. David exhaled slowly. “You people really know how to make friends.”
Kane leaned closer. “We make survivors, Major. Help us find Miller before the world does. Or the next time that glow appears, we’ll treat you as part of the outbreak.”
He turned to leave. “Your partner will brief you in ten minutes.”
The door closed behind him. David stared at the flickering chip still pulsing on the table. “Bruce,” he murmured, “what did they turn us into?”
The corridor outside the interrogation room stretched like a vein of lightless glass. David followed the hum of servers until a voice broke the silence behind him. “Major Foreman?”
He turned. The woman was slender, uniform grey, her eyes a strange metallic green.
“Agent Rho,” she introduced, offering no hand. “I’m your assigned empath. I sense deception. Don’t try any.”
David managed a half-smile. “So you read minds?”
“Emotions,” she corrected. “Close enough to ruin poker night.”
They entered the briefing chamber, a dome of holographic screens suspended in air. A single feed showed Bruce’s energy signature still pulsing faintly over the east industrial district.
Kane’s voice crackled through the comm. “Rho will track residual patterns. Foreman provides tactical response. Capture protocol only. Understood?”
David folded his arms. “What happens if he resists?”
“Then we call it containment,” Kane replied.
The line cut. Rho studied him for a moment. “You’re angry.”
“Good guess.”
“No,” she said. “You’re guilty. That’s different.”
David met her gaze. “Let’s move before your empathy report gets me demoted.”
She almost smiled. “Finally, a soldier who talks like a human.”
Night settled over the city in bruised shades of violet. David parked two blocks from the field clinic, switching off the engine before the sensors could ping his tracker.
The chip Kane had implanted throbbed faintly under his skin. He slipped through the back alley, hood drawn low.
Inside, the clinic buzzed with quiet desperation, overworked medics, the scent of disinfectant, the faint hum of portable wards.
Lena Ward looked up from a stretcher, her hands glowing a soft green as she sealed a wound. Her tired eyes widened when she saw him. “David?”
He stepped closer, keeping his voice low. “I didn’t have much choice coming here.”
“You shouldn’t be here at all,” she whispered. “Genesis is everywhere. They’ll trace you.”
“Already did,” he said. “They made me one of them.”
Her expression hardened. “You’re hunting Bruce.”
“I’m trying to find him first.”
She stared at him, jaw tight. “Do you even know what they did to him?”
“That’s why I need you. Anything you’ve heard, any signal, sighting”
She shook her head. “You think he’ll let himself be found? After what happened? The energy inside him’s mutating, David. He’s not stable.”
“I know,” he said softly. “But he’s still Bruce.”
Lena’s glow dimmed. “If you find him… promise you won’t let them take him alive.”
He looked away. “Don’t ask me that.”
“I just did.”
The lights flickered. A low rumble rolled beneath the floor, too steady for thunder. Every monitor in the ward flashed blue static.
Rho’s voice burst through David’s earpiece. “Foreman! Residual Zone 7 just spiked. It’s here!”
Lena’s eyes widened. “What did you bring with you?”
He drew his sidearm, scanning the shadows. “Not what, who.”
The ground cracked. A pulse of blue light ripped through the hallway, throwing everyone backward. Patients screamed as equipment sparked.
Through the haze, a silhouette emerged, barefoot, shirt torn, eyes burning silver-white. “Bruce…” David whispered.
Bruce looked straight at him, voice layered and echoing. “They found me because of you.”
“Listen to me, we can fix this”
“You can’t fix what was made to break.”
The energy around him flared, rattling the walls. Glass shattered. Rho’s voice shouted through the comm again: “Foreman, stand down, containment team inbound!”
David took a single step forward, hand raised. “Bruce, please”
Bruce’s expression flickered between sorrow and rage. “Run, David. Before I forget who you are.”
The lights exploded to white.
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Chapter 10 – The Fractured Signal
The world came back as silence. David’s breath hitched; air felt heavier now, static clinging to it like dust. He opened his eyes. Everything glowed faintly blue.The Tower was gone. All that remained was a glass crater stretching for miles, its center pulsing like a dying heart. Rho knelt beside him, face smeared with ash. “You’re alive.”He blinked, dazed. “Barely.”“Don’t move yet.” She checked his pulse, then froze as her fingers brushed his wrist, tiny sparks leapt between their skin. “You’re still charged.”“I told you… it’s the link,” he muttered. “It’s not gone.”Rho looked around. The sky itself shimmered, thin trails of light drifting like auroras. The air hummed faintly, resonating with their heartbeats. “David,” she said slowly, “what did you do?”“I broke the Tower’s core,” he answered. “I thought that would kill the signal.”“Yeah, well, you didn’t kill it. You spread it.”He followed her gaze. Figures moved along the crater’s edge, Genesis soldiers staggering from wreck
Chapter 9 – Resonance Break
The first thing David heard was the siren, low, broken, distant. Then came breath. His own.He opened his eyes to see the Tower’s core in ruin. Glass panels lay shattered, walls bleeding sparks. The hum of the energy field had shifted, slower, deeper, like a heartbeat syncing with his own.Bruce was gone. Rho lay a few meters away, unconscious but breathing. Kane’s body was nowhere in sight.David pushed himself upright. His hands shook, not from weakness, but from vibration. Blue light pulsed beneath his skin, tracing veins like circuitry. He whispered, “What did you do to me…”The Tower answered. Every remaining light in the chamber flickered once, then steadied, matching the rhythm of his pulse. “No,” he said softly. “No, that’s not”“You are the conduit now.”The voice was inside his head, smooth as static, impossible to shut out. David clenched his jaw. “Get out.”“You opened the channel. It cannot be closed.”He stumbled toward Rho, half dragging, half crawling, his reflection f
Chapter 8 – The Pulse Within
The world reassembled in silence. David floated in nothingness, weightless, surrounded by an endless field of shifting light.Each ripple moved like thought, not matter, colors bleeding through one another, forming fleeting shapes that dissolved before his eyes.He tried to speak, but no sound carried. Only the echo of his own heartbeat, louder than it should’ve been. Then came a whisper. “You shouldn’t be here.”“Bruce?”A figure stepped out of the light, half familiar, half fractured. Bruce’s face, but his eyes were pale mirrors, reflecting every color around them. “You opened the link,” Bruce said quietly. “Now it’s open both ways.”David steadied himself, as if ground might appear beneath his feet. “Where is this?”“The Tower’s core isn’t physical. It’s thought rendered real. Genesis used it to shape the Pulse into commands.”“And you’re stuck in it?”Bruce nodded once. “Along with everything it ever touched.”“What does that mean?”Bruce didn’t answer. His gaze shifted past David
Chapter 7 – The Tower’s Heart
Rain hammered the asphalt like static come alive. David moved through the ruins with the Tower pulsing ahead, its light cutting the skyline like a wound.Every few seconds, the pulse throbbed outward. Each wave made the back of his skull ache. “Bruce,” he whispered. “If you can hear me… keep talking.” Only the hum replied.He reached a checkpoint, two Genesis sentries at a barricade, half-distracted by their drones. David slid behind a burned-out car, drew his sidearm, and tossed a shard of glass down the opposite alley.The sound made them turn. Two silenced shots later, they dropped. He moved quick, stripped one of their access bands, and pressed it against the scanner. The gate hissed open.Inside, the Tower’s base was a labyrinth of mirrored corridors and humming generators. The air shimmered faintly, carrying a metallic tang that made his teeth buzz. He touched the wall, it vibrated, alive.A voice cut through the comm: “Foreman. You shouldn’t have come.”David froze. “Kane.”“Yo
Chapter 6 – The Tower Signal
The ceiling above the bunker cracked like thunder. Dust rained over flickering emergency lamps. Cipher snapped her wrist-com open. “Surface teams are breaching two levels up. We’ve got sixty seconds.”David tightened the straps on a borrowed tactical vest. “How do we get out?”“Same way we got in, through the drains.”“Romantic.”“Efficient,” she corrected. “Move.”They sprinted down the corridor, boots splashing through ankle-deep water. Sirens wailed somewhere overhead. “You said you could jam their scanners,” David shouted.“I said I could try.”“That’s comforting.”A wall section ahead exploded inward. Genesis troops poured through the smoke, visors glowing red. Cipher slammed a disc to the floor. “Flash!”Light detonated white. The soldiers reeled; David dragged her past them into the next passage. He glanced back. “You just blinded half your team.”“They’ll live. You won’t if you keep slowing down.”They burst into a service tunnel filled with cables and dripping pipes. The air
Chapter 5 – Echoes in the Static
The blast should have killed him. Instead, David woke to the slow drip of water and the hiss of cooling metal.His ears rang. The tunnel had collapsed into a jagged cavern of stone and twisted rail. Every surface pulsed faintly blue, as if the explosion had burned color into the air.He tried to move. Pain flared down his side; his left arm hung useless. “Rho?”Only the echo answered. “Rho!”Nothing, then a faint click through the comm still jammed in his ear. “vid—static—zone breached”Her voice. Broken, distant. Then silence. “Hold on, I’m coming,” he muttered, dragging himself upright.Something sparked near his boot, his sidearm, half-melted. He holstered it anyway. Above him, the ceiling groaned. Dust rained down. He stumbled toward the faint glow of an exit sign still flickering in the distance.That’s when the static changed. “…not Genesis…repeat…not Genesis…”He froze. The voice was crisp, deliberate, too calm for emergency chatter. “Identify yourself,” he said.No reply. Then
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