Year 2700
Location: ?????, Terra A – Sector 6 (The Junk Sector)
The building had long since collapsed. A skeletal husk in a graveyard of metal and stone. The cryo pod sat deep in the corner of what remained, buried under beams, ash, and silence. Half-swallowed by the ground, its alloyed shell was coated in grime, rusted wiring, and soot. A faint glow pulsed once every few minutes from a tiny crack in the casing, the last breath of a power unit designed to last half a millennium.
A shaft of sunlight pierced through the broken roof as dust danced slowly in the still air, golden and quiet.
Beneath the rubble, unseen and untouched, something endured.
Year 2530
Location: Tena Lab, Terra A – Sector 6
I was strapped to a metal table. Arms locked. Legs cinched tight. Head bound so hard it hurt to blink. Everything smelled of metal and rot.
My eyes flickered everywhere. Left. Right. Up. Down. Back again. What the hell was this place?
I thought they were gonna save me.
They said they'd take me away from the cold.
This isn't safety. This isn't warmth.
This is hell.
Five men entered. White lab coats. Masks over their mouths. Cold eyes above them. No words. Just silence and the soft buzz of machines.
I tried to speak. Tried to cry out. But something was wrong. My mouth wouldn't move. My tongue wasn't there.
Panic gripped me like ice.
I thrashed what little I could, eyes bulging as my throat convulsed. No sound came out. Only air and pain.
My mouth burned like it had been torn out with pliers. It was just a pit of agony.
"Where's my tongue? Why can't I scream?"
"What is this place? Who are these people?"
"Am I gonna die here?"
A man leaned forward, glanced at a monitor, then back at me. He mumbled something about nanotech, then without hesitation stabbed a thick needle straight into my neck.
Liquid fire exploded in my veins. I could feel something moving. Crawling. Like tiny razors rushing through my bloodstream. They reached my face. My mouth.
And then the pain doubled. Tripled.
I tried to scream again. Still nothing. Only squeaks. Spasms. My body writhed as tears poured down my face.
Fifteen minutes passed. Maybe more. Maybe less. Time was a lie in pain like this.
But then I felt it.
Tissue rebuilding. Muscle forming. Something regrowing from within. I could feel the shape of a tongue pushing back into my mouth like a parasite returning home.
I let out a gasp. A ragged, wet scream finally clawed its way out of me.
Then a hand covered my mouth.
And the world fell quiet again.
Year 2700
Location: Demolished Tena Lab, Terra A – Sector 6
A slab of concrete shifted as three kids squeezed through a crack in the rubble.
They were laughing. Careless. Covered in grime and curiosity.
"Whoa! Look at this stuff!" one said, pointing at a rusted panel of buttons and levers scattered across the floor.
Another picked up a cracked visor and placed it over his eyes, pretending to be a soldier.
The third kicked a broken lab chair and grinned. "Think there's treasure in here?"
They had no idea what they stood above.
No idea what slept beneath their feet.
Year 2530
Location: Tena Lab, Terra A – Sector 6
I woke with a sharp breath, and instantly wished I hadn't.
Pain shot through every nerve in my body. I was covered in blood, mine or someone else's and it was no longer warm. My eyes were blurry, vision tainted red as blood seeped over my lashes.
They had tried something new this time. Something worse.
Void blood. Monster blood. I heard them talking about it. Something about "transfusion compatibility" and "lumen resistance."
I remembered that word. Lumen. I'd heard it on the streets once. Some older kid shouting about Kyber. The monster-killers. The elite.
I wasn't elite. I was meat. A broken kid from the alleys. And they were ripping me apart.
Again and again.
They kept using the same nanobots to rebuild me. Healing my body just enough to survive for the next round of torment.
I lost track of time. No windows. No clocks. Only pain. Only white light and steel walls.
What the hell is this place?
Who are these bastards?
Why me?
Tena.
The name burned in my mind.
Tena.
Over and over again.
TENA.
I was going to die here. I knew it. I felt it in my bones.
That same group of men returned. Same coats. Same dead eyes.
But this time they weren't alone.
They wheeled in a tall metal machine, something that looked like a server tower fused with a generator. Thick cables trailed behind it like metal snakes.
I'd seen something like it once, through the glass of a storefront. A computer shop. Back when people still used screens.
People with money didn't need them anymore. They had eye augments. Built-in displays.
I never had that luxury.
The men plugged the machine into a wall. It groaned to life with a mechanical whine, then was hooked to the monitor beside my table. I couldn't see it, but I saw the reflection in the man's eyes. Flickers of light.
He turned toward me. Black eyes met green.
No light in them. Just void.
He leaned in close.
"With the help of the nanotech inside you, we'll finally learn what happens when an AI finds itself in the environment of a human brain."
He removed his mask.
A clean-shaven man. Stubby nose. Perfect teeth. Too perfect.
His smile turned my blood cold.
"Truly, thank you," he said. "For being a weak piece of shit no one cares about. Perfect test subject to advance the knowledge of humanity."
He glanced back at the screen.
"Hmm… let's pick this self-improving prototype. It's a total failure anyway. Self-improving, my ass."
He clicked something.
Pain exploded in my head.
Worse than before. A splitting, brain-tearing agony that made everything spin. My vision cracked and broke apart into kaleidoscopes of darkness.
I heard alarms. Screams.
Voices outside the lab.
"Government inspection. We have reports!"
The scientists moved quickly. They unstrapped me but held me down. I couldn't even fight. My brain was melting.
Still, I tried.
I stumbled to my feet, barely standing as I was dragged through the corridor. My legs dragged behind me.
That's when I saw it.
Through a glass wall.
Dozens of kids.
Dozens of bodies.
White coats. Blood. Broken limbs. Guts on steel.
All of them strapped to tables just like mine. Some moving. Most not.
My mind spun.
What is this? What did they do to us?
Before I could see more, they shoved me down another hallway. Toward a sealed room. On the metal door, blurry through my blood-caked eyes, I saw a single word.
Maybe it said Preserve.
Maybe it said Potential.
Didn't matter. The world was collapsing into a tunnel now.
They forced me into a pod. Soft interior. Strange warmth.
The lid closed.
Darkness swallowed everything.
And I disappeared.