The halls of Sector Twelve smelled like wet copper and recycled air.Voss had always hated that scent; it was the smell of failure scrubbed clean, of blood boiled down to data. The overhead lights were steady again, but their glow felt artificial—a pulse trying too hard to imitate morning. The air tasted faintly of static, dry against his tongue.
He walked with a limp from the containment blast. His left boot stuck faintly to the floor with every step, the sole half-melted and giving a small tearing sound each time it lifted. The corridor was quiet except for the distant, steady sigh of the ventilation system and the click of his lighter rolling between calloused fingers. The metal felt warm from habit, smoothed by use, edges dulled by countless nights like this.
He didn't light it.No smoking near isolation bays. Regulations.
The smell of antiseptic thickened as he reached the sealed door to Observation. The closer he got, the colder the air felt, like walking into a morgue. Through the glass, he saw Selene standing before the main display, face lit pale blue by the monitors. The light flattened her skin tone, made her look like a ghost caught between data streams. She didn't move when he keyed the access panel.
"Still watching him?" Voss asked as the door hissed open. His voice came out rougher than usual, scraping through a throat that tasted faintly of ash.
Selene didn't turn. "His vitals stabilized at 0400. Neural rhythm consistent with fragment resonance."
"That a good thing?"
"It's not a dead thing."
He eased down onto the edge of the console, the metal cold and a little sticky from condensation against his back. The hum of the monitors filled the room like a second kind of breathing—low, electrical, steady. The monitors whispered lines of red, green, and white scrolling endlessly, their glow reflecting off the polished floor like veins of light beneath glass. The whole room hummed at a frequency just below thought.
"You were in there," Voss said. Not accusation, not yet.
Selene finally looked at him. Her pupils had a faint red halo, the same color that bled through her veins when she worked the fragment. Her skin looked too pale under the blue light, veins almost visible beneath. "He needed calibration."
"You broke containment protocol."
"He would have broken it worse if I hadn't."
Voss rubbed a hand over his face. His palm smelled faintly of rust and old cigarette ash. His skin rasped against his stubble with a dry sound. "You keep crossing lines, Selene. One day the Federation's going to notice you're not playing their game anymore."
"They already noticed."
That stopped him. "Meaning?"
She turned one of the monitors toward him. It showed Kahn asleep under the sterile lights, chest rising slow, a faint glow beneath his skin that pulsed with each heartbeat. On a second screen, data from her own implant scrolled beside his—two waveforms nearly identical. The faint hum seemed to synchronize as she adjusted the feed, the pitch shifting just enough to vibrate in their bones.
Voss whistled under his breath. "Jesus. You linked him."
Selene's jaw tightened. "It wasn't a choice."
"You don't link to a recruit by accident."
"The Kernel chose him. I just followed the signal."
The hum in the room deepened, as though the building was listening. Voss's skin prickled. He glanced up at the ceiling vents, half-expecting to see dust spiraling in symmetrical currents. The air had that faintly charged feeling before a storm—ozone, cold metal, pressure building unseen.
"Selene," he said quietly, "you've got blood tech in you older than half the Federation. If they find out you've grafted it onto someone with live Asymmetry—"
"They'll erase us both." Her voice was calm, but the air quivered faintly around her. "Yes, I know."
He stared at her for a long moment. The light from the monitors painted her face in cold blue and red. Beneath the calm, he saw exhaustion—and fear. Her hands trembled once, a quick, involuntary flicker.
"You think he can handle it?" Voss asked finally.
Selene didn't answer right away. She touched the screen, watching the twin pulses of light flicker in unison. The faint contact made the glass fog slightly where her skin met it. The air smelled faintly of ozone again, as if her touch alone charged the room.
"He's the only one who might," she said softly. "And if he can't… then he'll become the warning the rest of us never were."
The intercom crackled overhead—a burst of static that raised the fine hairs along Voss's neck—followed by the mechanical calm of the system voice:
FIELD ALERT – DISTORTION ACTIVITY, SECTOR NINE. ALL UNITS STANDBY.
Voss slid off the console, joints popping in the heavy silence. His boot squeaked faintly on the polished floor. "Guess peace was too much to ask."
Selene keyed a sequence into the console. The screens blinked to black, leaving only Kahn's heartbeat on the smallest monitor—steady, patient, alive. The rhythmic pulse filled the room like a faint, steady drum.
"Prep the transport," she said. "He's coming with us."
Voss hesitated. "He's barely out of isolation."
"That's why we need him. The Kernel's moving again. I can feel it."
He looked at her, saw the faint tremor in her fingers again, and nodded. "Fine. But when this goes wrong—and it will—you tell the brass it was your idea."
Selene gave a thin, humorless smile. "It always is."
The door sealed behind them with a hiss. The isolation room lights brightened automatically, sensing motion that wasn't there.
Inside, Kahn stirred in his sleep. The faint glow under his skin pulsed faster, as if it had heard the call. A low hum threaded through the silence, and the air thickened—warm, alive, tasting faintly of copper.