The lights flicker again. Once. Twice.A heartbeat in metal.The dampeners groan as if the air itself has grown too heavy for them to contain.
I sit still on the floor, eyes closed, listening. Not to the machines — to the rhythm beneath them.Every system hums at a frequency. Every cage sings to itself to stay alive.And once you know its song, you can change the tune.
I place my palm against the floor. The storm inside me pulses in response — faint, slow, steady. It matches the hum of the dampeners, riding its current instead of fighting it.Control isn't about force. It's about permission.
The hum stutters.I open my eyes.
A hiss fills the air — a vent releasing compressed gas somewhere behind the wall. The light above me shifts from white to amber, then dies.
A voice cuts through the dark."Test phase canceled. Subject containment breached."
The cell locks disengage with a sound like teeth snapping.
I stand.The storm doesn't surge; it expands. The air thickens, heavier, then lighter, as if the world can't decide how much it wants to weigh.
Time to decide, I think. Destroy or save.
The door slides open. Beyond it — a corridor of reinforced glass, dim blue lights pulsing down its length.Two guards stand at the far end. They see me. One raises a weapon.
I move first.
The wind doesn't roar; it folds. Pressure blooms behind my shoulder, invisible but precise. The guard's gun jerks upward, harmlessly. The second stumbles as air drains from his lungs. Both collapse, not injured — just asleep.
I step past them.
Every hallway looks the same — sterile white, numbers burned into walls, cameras following like insects with red eyes.I don't destroy them. Not yet.I let them watch. Let them see what control looks like when it isn't theirs.
A door to my right hisses open unexpectedly.A figure steps out — small, white-furred, eyes too intelligent for this place.
Nezu.
He blinks once, as if I'm the one breaking logic. "You move faster than they expected."
"You knew I was here."
"Knowing and intervening are different arts."
"You came for a reason."
He inclines his head. "To tell you the Commission activated transfer earlier than scheduled. You have seven minutes before the failsafes trigger."
"Failsafes?"
"Explosive decompression of the facility. They'd rather erase a problem than risk a headline."
"And you let them build this."
"I let them think they could," he says quietly. "You'll need to reach the upper deck — the main airlock. That's your way out."
"And you?"
He smiles faintly. "Someone has to shut the cameras off."
I hold his gaze for a moment. There's something almost human in it — a softness that doesn't belong to a creature like him.
"You're risking everything."
"Perhaps. But chaos sometimes restores balance."
He turns, padding toward a side corridor. "Hurry, Mr. Arashi. The sky won't wait forever."
The climb to the upper deck feels endless — narrow stairwells, alarms now screaming red, the metallic smell of burning circuits.Every level I pass holds fragments of the Commission's truth:Rooms filled with containment pods. Instruments humming with stolen energy.Names flashing on consoles — other subjects. Failed attempts.Some alive. Some not.
"So this is what they call safety."
I reach the final hatch. It's locked, sealed by code.The storm rises, patient but insistent.I press my hand to the panel.
The metal bends outward — not breaking, simply yielding. Air pressure shoves the mechanism aside, and the door sighs open.
Beyond it: the transport bay.
A massive platform stretches under a glass dome. Beyond that, the sky — gray and wild, clouds rolling like restless beasts.
And at the center of the room, waiting, is Director Rina Seido.
"You really thought you could walk out of here?" she asks, voice too calm for the alarms blaring around us.
"I didn't walk. I rose."
Her eyes narrow. "You don't understand what you're doing."
"No. I understand perfectly. You're afraid of what happens when I stop pretending to belong."
"You'll kill people."
"You already did. You just filled out the paperwork after."
She steps closer, palm hovering over the trigger on her wrist device. "You destroy this facility, you make yourself the villain they already think you are."
"Then I'll be an honest one."
Her thumb moves. The floor panels glow blue — containment seals reactivating.But the system hesitates. Failsafes flicker. The wind surges through the gaps like it's been waiting for the cue.
The alarms climb to a scream.
Rina shouts over the noise. "You could change everything if you just worked with us!"
"You don't want change. You want control."
"I want order!"
"Order is a cage!"
The dome above us shudders. The glass fractures in spiderwebs of light. Air rushes upward, hungry for open sky.
Rina stumbles, clutching a railing. I reach out instinctively, stopping her from falling into the void.
Her eyes meet mine, wide — confusion, fear, something almost like understanding.
"Why?" she manages. "Why save me?"
"Because I destroy roots, not branches."
Her grip tightens. "You're not what they say."
"Neither are you," I say, and let her go — to the floor, not the sky.
The glass above finally gives way.
The world explodes into light and wind.The air tastes like electricity and freedom and danger.
I step into the open, rising through the broken dome, surrounded by the pull of my own gravity. Clouds swirl, pressure folding into shape around me — a moving horizon.
Below, the facility crumbles inward, alarms fading into whispers.
From the sky, it looks small. Everything does.
I look down once more — at the wreckage, the people scrambling, the flashes of uniforms.Then I turn my eyes upward.
"You wanted to own the sky," I whisper. "Now you'll learn it belongs to no one."
The storm answers — not with sound, but with movement. The clouds open like a curtain, sunlight pouring through in violent streaks.
The pressure builds until it breaks, scattering the clouds across the horizon.Below, the airwaves crackle with static.Every screen, every transmission in Musutafu fills with one image:A figure rising through fractured light, wind swirling like living flame.
The world stares — and names me again, without permission.
The Storm That Escaped.
When the air settles, I hover in the space between sky and gravity, breath steady.Freedom isn't peace.It's motion.
And the world has just started to move again.