---
The bracelet wouldn't come off.
I tried for hours—tugging, twisting, even scraping it against the rusted corner of a shelf until the metal bit into my skin. Nothing. It held like it had fused to my arm, like it was never meant to be removed once worn.
Celeste—if that was even her name—watched me with a face carved from stone.
"You're not going to get it off," she said.
I didn't look at her. "You said it would help me. Not *become* me."
"It's part of you now. Always was."
That sentence rang louder than it should have.
Always was.
I sat down hard on a broken milk crate in the corner of her warehouse hideout, barely lit by a few flickering overheads and a half-melted neon sign buzzing outside the windows. The bracelet still pulsed faint blue on my wrist, like a heartbeat not my own.
Celeste walked over and placed something in front of me: a cup of water. A single tablet floated in it, fizzing. "Electrolytes. You're going to need them."
I ignored the cup.
"What is it?" I asked instead. "Really."
She hesitated. Not because she was trying to figure out *what* to say—but *how much*.
"Think of it as a bootloader," she said eventually. "Your body was dormant. The bracelet woke it up."
"My body?"
She pointed at my chest. "You were born with dormant specs. Abilities, enhancements, bio-sequences seeded into your system before you could even talk. Project Specter did that. The bracelet is just the match to light the fuse."
"So, I'm some kind of weapon."
"You're a result," she corrected.
---
That night, I didn't sleep.
The warehouse creaked with the weight of a city above it. Pipes groaned. Wind howled through broken windowpanes. But I couldn't stop staring at my arm—at the band that was now embedded into my skin, grafted at a molecular level.
Celeste sat nearby, sharpening a combat knife in slow, precise strokes.
"You could've told me all this before," I said finally.
"You wouldn't have believed me."
"I don't believe you now."
"But the bracelet's on, isn't it?"
Touché.
---
I started to feel it the next morning.
Not just pain—*change*.
I woke up faster than I ever had. My vision was sharper. My hearing had expanded—like I could distinguish between footsteps on the sidewalk outside and the murmur of tires rolling past six stories up.
My reflection in a broken shard of mirror showed something else too.
My eyes.
The edges of the iris had begun to flicker faint blue.
It looked almost like circuitry.
---
Celeste called it *syncing*. "Your nervous system is finally realigning. You were locked down for most of your life. Now your body is adapting."
"Adapting to what?"
She handed me a file. Same kind of folder she threw at me last night—but thicker. Older.
Inside were medical logs, DNA reports, memory logs—most of it redacted. On the cover was a stamp: **SPECTER PROTOCOL 07A – SUBJECT: NULL.**
Null.
Me.
A forgotten name for a forgotten project.
---
"You were created in one of the last Specter cells before the collapse," Celeste said. "Designed for fieldwork. Infiltration. Neutralization. But something went wrong. The city's underground factions revolted. Your mother and the others who worked on the Specter framework tried to defect. Most of them were hunted down."
She lit another cigarette. The tip glowed bright in the dark.
"But not before she managed to smuggle you out."
I was silent.
"You don't remember, do you?"
"I… I dream sometimes," I admitted. "Bright lights. Silver rooms. A woman screaming."
"That was the night the lab fell."
---
I asked her then, the question I hadn't dared say out loud:
"Why now? Why wake me now?"
She looked at me like she had been expecting that since the day we met.
"Because they found you."
---
Later that day, I caught her on a secure call. She'd locked the back room, but her voice carried through the rusted vents.
"No, the reactivation is incomplete… The sync rate is lower than expected… Yes, he's stable, but not responsive to higher-tier triggers."
A pause.
Then her voice dropped lower.
"If the Trace Units reach him before phase two initiates, everything falls apart."
Trace Units?
She didn't mention those before.
---
When she came out, she acted like nothing happened. Tossed me a sandwich wrapped in greasy foil.
"Eat up. You'll need your strength."
"For what?"
"For training."
She took me outside—into the alley behind the warehouse. Trash bins. Brick walls. The city looming above us.
"You're faster now. Stronger. But raw. We need to change that."
"Celeste—"
"Not my name."
I blinked.
She tied her hair back, revealing a tattoo behind her ear. A barcode with faded lettering underneath: **TX-02-Shadowline**.
"You were part of Specter," I said.
She nodded. "And I paid for it."
---
We trained for hours.
She started with combat drills. Close-quarters, no weapons. I held my own at first, but every time she moved, it was like trying to fight smoke.
"Use your instincts," she said after knocking me flat for the third time. "Your body already knows the moves. Trust it."
"How can I trust something I didn't choose?"
"Because it's the only thing keeping you alive now."
---
That night, I sat alone on the warehouse roof.
The city stretched out before me—grimy, electric, beautiful and broken.
I remembered the old rooftops I used to sleep on. The Verge. Back before any of this started. Before the bracelet. Before I had a past worth killing for.
I wasn't that kid anymore.
Didn't know who I *was* now.
Only that something inside me had shifted. Unlocked.
And I could feel it.
Watching.
Waiting.
---
I dreamed again.
But this time, it wasn't in flashes.
I saw her.
Storm-gray eyes. Hair pulled back in a tight braid. A scar across her cheek.
> "If you're seeing this, it means I failed. They found you too soon."
She stood in front of a whiteboard, covered in equations I didn't understand.
> "Your name is Noah Vale. But it wasn't always. Your designation is Null. The seventh iteration of Project Specter. And you're the last one left."
She leaned in closer.
> "They'll call you a weapon. They'll call you a mistake. Don't believe them. You are *the key*."
> "Remember the words: Protocol Prime. That's your unlock command. When the time comes…"
> "Run."
I jolted awake.
And then the warehouse exploded.
---
It happened in a blink.
Flames tore through the floor beneath me. The roof buckled. Sirens blared. Smoke filled my lungs.
I stumbled to the edge and saw them.
Black uniforms. Red visors. Moving with surgical precision. Guns up. No hesitation.
Celeste was already on the move.
She barked: "TRACE UNIT! MOVE!"
Then she threw me a backpack.
"*Go!* Out the fire escape!"
"I'm not leaving you!"
She turned to me, and for the first time since I met her, I saw fear.
"This is bigger than me now," she said. "You're activated. That means they'll never stop hunting you. So run. And live."
And then she turned and disappeared into the smoke.
---
I ran.
Heart hammering. Ears ringing.
Bullets clipped the bricks beside me. A red beam of light sizzled past my cheek. I leapt rooftops, took a roll that nearly shattered my shoulder, and kept going.
The Trace Units followed—relentless, inhuman.
But then something… shifted.
My vision sharpened. My muscles surged.
The bracelet glowed.
And the voice returned.
**TACTICAL MODE ENGAGED.**
**THREAT RESPONSE INITIATED.**
**SPECTER PRIME PROTOCOL ACCEPTED.**
---
It was like someone took the wheel inside my head.
My hands moved faster than I could think. I ducked under a strike. Disarmed one. Shot the knee joint of another. Every motion calculated, smooth, exact.
I didn't just survive.
I dominated.
By the time I reached the edge of District 9, three Trace Units lay broken behind me. One still twitched. The others didn't move.
I dropped to my knees, panting. Shaking.
Then the voice spoke one last time:
> "Welcome back, Subject 7-A."
---
And that was the moment I realized—
I was never meant to live a normal life.
They built me for war.
And it had just begun.
---