He woke to the sound of breathing machines.Not mechanical noise — actual breath, slow and metered, drawn through filters somewhere in the walls. The rhythm was too even to be human, a ghostly inhale and exhale that made the air itself seem alive.
White light filled everything. Not bright — just total. There were no corners, no shadows. The air was cold enough to sting the inside of his nose. It smelled of antiseptic and static, the way lightning smells when it dies. Every breath left a faint chemical burn at the back of his throat, sharp as alcohol and metal.
Kahn lay strapped to a reclined metal bed. Thin copper bands looped around his wrists and temples, humming with low frequency. Each pulse echoed faintly in his teeth, like distant thunder rolling through bone. The bed beneath him was cool and slightly sticky where condensation met skin. A thin cable fed into his right arm, dripping translucent liquid that tasted metallic when it hit his veins — faintly sweet at first, then bitter as rust.
His throat hurt. His mouth was dry, tongue rough against the roof of his mouth.The last thing he remembered was the heat — the tanks bursting, the smell of rust and electricity — and the whisper under the alarms. Welcome home.
He turned his head slowly. The motion scraped against the stiff pillow; it sounded too loud in the sterile quiet. On the far wall, a glass partition shimmered faintly. Behind it, shadows moved — people in containment coats, faces half-hidden behind mirrored masks. Their movements were slow, deliberate, the gestures of technicians who didn't want to make noise in the presence of something alive. Their footsteps made soft, padded clicks that echoed once, then vanished.
A speaker clicked.Selene's voice filled the room — calm, flat, but closer than the walls made sense of. It carried that faint distortion of recycled air, like sound stretched through water.
"You're in Medical Isolation B. The field stabilized twenty minutes ago. Do you know your name?"
"Kahn." His voice came out rough, like gravel through a filter. The word tasted dry and foreign, as if it had been stored too long before use.
"And what happened?"
He blinked against the light. The copper bands pressed tighter when his pulse jumped. Sweat formed under the metal cuffs, warm against the cold air."The tanks broke. The Aberrants got out. I—"He stopped. The memory split halfway through. He saw flashes of white fire, shards of glass hanging in the air like stars. His reflection smiling when he wasn't.
"You what?" Selene's tone sharpened.
"I don't know," he said. "I tried to contain it, but something—"He looked at his arm. The skin beneath the drip line was pale, almost translucent. Faint veins of light ran under it — thin filaments pulsing in slow sync with the cuff at his wrist. When he flexed his fingers, they felt foreign — heavier, like the bones hummed with a hidden current.
Selene's voice softened. "You burned through containment. The fragment breached its housing."
Kahn's stomach tightened. The air seemed to thicken, tasting faintly of copper and ozone. "Then why am I still alive?"
Silence. Then the faintest sigh of static through the speaker — a whisper like dust sliding over glass."You adapted," she said. "Most hosts rupture when the fragment expands under stress. You didn't. You changed shape around it."
Her words landed like a blade pressed gently against skin — not enough to cut, but enough to warn. The thought left a taste of iron on his tongue.
He turned his head toward the glass. He couldn't see her face behind the reflection, only the faint outline of her coat and hair. The light off the glass made her look like an afterimage, half erased. The glass itself gave off a cold scent, like dry metal and recycled air.
"What does that mean?" he asked.
Selene didn't answer right away. The hum from the copper bands deepened until he could feel it in his jaw. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter, almost like she was speaking to herself.
"It means the fragment is writing you back."
The words hung in the sterile air, heavy and unreal.He felt cold spread through his chest — not fear, exactly, but recognition. His skin prickled with static. The dream, the whisper, the command: Align or break.
Selene's reflection shifted slightly. "Do you remember the message?"
He nodded once. "It said align or break. It keeps saying it."
The hum spiked. One of the monitors to his right flickered — lines of static cutting through the clean interface. The smell of ozone rose again, sharp enough to sting his eyes and make the air taste electric.
Selene moved closer behind the glass. "If it's speaking, then it's watching through you."
A pause. Then her voice lost its control for the first time — just a tremor, quick and gone."That's how it starts."
The light above him dimmed suddenly. For half a heartbeat, the room went black. In that blink, he saw something reflected in the glass — not Selene, not the technicians, but himself, standing behind his own bed. Eyes open. Mouth closed. Watching.He could feel its breath — his breath — ghosting against the back of his neck, colder than the air.
The lights came back.The reflection was gone.
Selene's tone snapped back to command. "You'll stay under observation for forty-eight hours. No fragment access. No sleep triggers. You'll tell me everything you see."
Then the speaker clicked off.
The bands around his wrists relaxed by a fraction. The silence that followed wasn't silence at all — it was the faint pulse of the walls breathing, the soft electronic exhale that made the air move just enough to feel alive. He could smell coolant in the vents, hear distant footsteps echoing somewhere beyond the sealed doors.
Kahn closed his eyes. The smell of copper hadn't left. It was under his skin now — faint, metallic warmth rising with every heartbeat.And somewhere deep beneath that sterile hum, the whisper returned, soft as thought, brushing the inside of his skull like a second pulse:
You're not in isolation. You're in alignment.