---
The city was still dark.
Xion sat cross-legged in the middle of his cluttered room, surrounded by dismantled circuit boards, scorched wires, and torn notebook pages now filled with symbols he didn't remember writing.
His hands weren't shaking.
That's what scared him most.
He should've been panicking.
Instead, he felt calm — unnaturally so.
His vision still held the same razor-sharp clarity. The cracks in the ceiling looked like fractured constellations. The thin hum of streetlight batteries bleeding out was like music, layered in tones and patterns he somehow understood.
Every second, something new awakened inside him.
He saw connections — in light, movement, even thought.
And behind all of it, there was a noise.
Faint at first.
Static.
It wasn't coming from any device. It wasn't even external.
It was inside his mind.
A constant, low-frequency buzz — not random, not chaotic — but structured. Encoded.
He focused. The pattern pulsed like Morse code, but faster. A tight, digital whisper trying to break through.
Then, it happened.
"Signal Integrity: 72%. Feed Initiated."
The words didn't come from outside. They scrolled through his inner vision, just like before.
Xion grabbed the edge of the workbench as a fresh surge of information slammed into him — not violent, not painful, but overwhelming in its intensity.
A location.
A memory.
A file buried inside the broken headset's residual code.
He didn't download it. He absorbed it.
And for a split second, Xion wasn't in his room anymore.
He stood on a rooftop overlooking a city far older than his. A skyline of domes and thin crystalline towers. Voices echoed in a language he'd never heard — and yet, he knew what they were saying.
> "Not all awakenings are chosen. Some are triggered. Some... are tests."
Then—
He snapped back.
He gasped, clutched his chest, and stumbled toward the wall.
The memory — the place — it wasn't real.
It couldn't be.
But it felt more real than anything he'd ever experienced.
---
Xion gripped the edge of the window frame and looked down at the sleeping street. Nothing moved. Even the wind seemed to wait.
He tried to rationalize it.
Maybe this was a breakdown. A lucid hallucination.
But deep down, he already knew better.
He wasn't sick.
He was changing.
The noise returned — louder now. Not static anymore.
A pulse.
Like a beacon.
I think I'm being tracked…
---
Fifteen blocks away, in a high-rise surveillance post disguised as a telecom tower, Agent Raan stared at the monitor.
The feed showed nothing — no cameras, no drones — but the quantum signature ping was real. Faint, flickering, and rare.
The kind of signal they hadn't seen in years.
He narrowed his eyes at the blinking red dot centered on one name:
Xion Talek.
"We have another resonance spike," the technician beside him muttered.
Raan exhaled slowly. "Code-tag it under Theta Class. I want a shadow trace launched. No direct contact. Not yet."
"But sir, if he's breached the Veil—"
"Then we watch."
---
Back in his room, Xion was already working.
His hands moved on their own.
He built without hesitation.
A small, palm-sized device. Circular. Clean.
No wasted parts. No hesitation.
He didn't need instructions.
It's a scanner, he thought.
But not for machines. It reads fields. Cognitive frequencies. Residual thoughtforms.
He had no idea how he knew that.
But he did.
As soon as the device activated, the room shifted.
A faint grid overlay appeared in his vision — translucent, angular.
Shapes danced behind the walls. Echoes of past movement. Memory imprints.
And in the corner — something else.
A mark. A residual energy pattern that shouldn't exist.
Like something had been here — or had been watching.
He froze.
I didn't build a receiver…
But I just intercepted a signal.
Another line of code drifted across his mental HUD:
"Do not trust what you see. The silence has eyes."
---
Xion backed away from the table.
That line — it wasn't part of any system.
It wasn't code.
It felt like a warning.
He turned, grabbed a pen, and scribbled it down, hands finally shaking.
Do not trust what you see. The silence has eyes.
Who's sending these messages?
Was it from the headset? Or… beyond that?
He didn't know.
But he was sure of one thing now:
He wasn't alone.
Not in this room.
Not in this world.
And definitely not inside his own mind.
---
Later that night, just before sleep could reach him, Xion stood in front of his cracked mirror.
His reflection blinked.
But he didn't.
He leaned closer.
His pupils were glowing — faintly — like a reflection of stars in the distance.
And in the back of his mind, the static whispered again.
But this time…
It said his name.
---
End of Chapter Two.
Word Count: ~784
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