Chapter 1 – The Final Birthday
The heart monitor beeped its slow, mechanical lullaby. Not panicked. Not urgent. Just there. Existing. Like him.
Michael didn't move. He hadn't moved in hours. Maybe longer.
The fluorescent light above his bed buzzed faintly, flickering in that off-white hospital glow that made everything feel distant and artificial. If he stared at the stains on the ceiling tiles long enough, they looked like ink blots. Or blood splatters. Or maybe they were.
Did it matter?
It was his birthday.
Thirty-two.
Not that birthdays meant much anymore. Not when you'd spent ten of them strapped to machines. Watching your veins fill with fluids and your body fall apart one inch at a time.
Michael let out a slow breath and tasted iron on his tongue.
His blood.
Always his blood.
They never figured out what it was. Not really. The doctors had names for symptoms. They always had names. But not for this. Not for what was killing him, and had killed everyone else.
Rare. Genetic. Lethal.
They said his blood was too thick, too corrosive. That it destroyed itself. That it attacked his marrow, his vessels, his organs.
But they didn't see the truth.
His blood didn't kill him quickly.
It starved him slowly.
His mother went first. She held on the longest. Always smiled when he was in the room, even when the blood took her hair, her skin, her voice. He remembered the way she squeezed his hand near the end. Her knuckles bone-white, her voice a whisper.
"You keep going, Mikey. No matter what. You hear me? You keep going."
She was the last.
The rest of his family dropped like dominoes before her. Uncle, cousins, older sister, father. One by one. Some in weeks. Others in months. All with the same symptoms. The same slow bleeding from the inside. And always the same expression when they realized what was coming.
Fear.
Because it wasn't just death.
It was isolation.
No one wanted to get too close. Not when your blood could be a curse.
Michael had been tested. Prodded. Studied. For years.
At first, it was doctors in white coats who believed they could fix it.
Later, it was doctors who stopped looking him in the eye.
Now, it was just him. Alone. Hooked up to machines because the hospital didn't know what else to do with him. Still technically alive. Still drawing breath. Still waiting.
His muscles had atrophied. His bones ached under the weight of time. He hadn't walked in almost a year.
But his mind never dulled.
It stayed sharp.
That was the real torture.
Michael remembered everything. Every visit. Every goodbye. Every promise that this treatment would be different.
He remembered the day they stopped coming.
The nurses. The specialists. Even the researchers who had once seen him as a medical miracle.
Gone.
Forgotten.
Michael, last of his bloodline. Final host of a disease that even science gave up on.
He coughed. It hurt. But it always hurt.
He swallowed thickly, and the taste of copper lingered.
Outside his room, voices passed. Laughter.
Someone had a birthday.
A kid. Maybe six. Family gathered around. Singing. Balloons.
Michael didn't smile. But something in his chest tightened.
He remembered birthdays like that. A long time ago. Before the disease. Before the funerals.
He remembered running. Playing. Laughing.
He remembered having a sister who teased him and a father who lifted him with one hand like he weighed nothing.
He remembered his mom's cake.
Chocolate. Always chocolate.
And now?
Now he couldn't even sit up on his own.
The machines kept his body alive. Barely. But nothing kept his soul from drifting further away.
Michael stared at the ceiling again. The same tile he'd counted a thousand times. The same flicker. The same stain that looked like blood.
He didn't want to die.
But he didn't want to exist like this either.
Not alone.
Not empty.
He let his eyes drift shut.
Midnight would come soon.
Another year. Another number. Another tick on a clock that had no meaning anymore.
But still, somewhere deep in the ache of his chest, a flicker of something remained.
Hope? Desperation? He couldn't tell.
Just one thing.
A wish.
He didn't whisper it. He didn't cry. He didn't scream to the heavens or pray to gods that had never answered.
He just thought it. Quiet. Honest.
Please. Let me have a family. Just once. Before I go. Let me belong to someone again.
The machines beeped.
Steady.
Then not.
The line went flat.
And for the first time in years, Michael felt… warm.
Not from the machines.
Not from his failing heart.
From inside his blood.
It pulsed.
Not like it used to.
Like something ancient had awakened.
And somewhere in that final moment, before death took him, he heard a voice.
Not in the room.
Not in his ears.
In his blood.
System Directive: Soul Link initializing… Welcome, Michael.
And then the pain began.