Chapter 1 — Clipboard
The flier shouldn't have looked that good.
A cheap black-and-white printout taped to a power pole usually peeled in the sun, edges curling like burnt paper — but this one gleamed. "FAST CASH – Paid Clinical Trials – No Experience Needed." The phone number glowed under the streetlight as if the ink remembered fire.
Marcus stared at it on his walk home from the grocery store, a single plastic bag hanging from his wrist, cap and gown still stuffed in his backpack from graduation morning. Two job rejections and an empty fridge had already followed the diploma home. His sneakers squished through a puddle that hadn't evaporated in weeks. Behind him, the laughter of kids echoing off cracked walls felt like a language he'd forgotten.
He took a picture of the flier anyway.
The apartment smelled like fried onions and lavender cleaner. Denise was stirring something on the stove, humming a tune that couldn't quite beat the rattle in the vent. The little ones were everywhere — coloring, chasing each other, arguing about homework that would be forgotten by morning.
"Marcus!" she said, brightening when she saw him. "Look at you, all grown up. My graduate!"
He smiled, half-embarrassed. "Yeah, Mom. Guess I am."
He kissed her cheek and slid onto a wobbly chair. The table was already cluttered with mail. One envelope had FINAL NOTICE in red across the front. He turned it face-down before she noticed.
"You hungry?" she asked.
"Always."
She scooped rice and beans into a bowl, the spoon scraping metal. "We'll get through this month. I've got a few extra shifts at the store."
"Mom…" He hesitated. "I can help. I'm looking."
"You just finished school. Let it breathe for one day."
Her voice was warm, but her shoulders were trembling. He saw it. He always saw it. The lightbulb above the stove flickered once, twice, and stayed dim. That little stutter matched the one in his chest.
After dinner, when the kids had drifted off and the hum of the refrigerator was the only sound, he gathered the bills. Denise rubbed her temples.
"How bad?" he asked quietly.
She exhaled through her nose. "Bad. But we'll manage. We always do."
Marcus traced a thumb along the paper edge until it nicked him. A single red bead welled up. He pressed it against the corner of a notice and watched it smear, disappearing into the ink.
We always do. He wished the words worked as magic instead of habit.
That night, his phone screen lit the small bedroom in blue. Job boards. Warehouse listings. No calls back. Rent due in ten days. He scrolled until the ad appeared again — FAST CASH. Paid Clinical Trials.
A number and an address.
He hesitated. His thumb hovered.
The reflection in the phone showed a tired nineteen-year-old kid who didn't look like a hero, or a failure — just someone out of time.
He hit call.
A smooth, genderless voice answered after one ring. "Montana Industries recruitment line. Are you inquiring about participation?"
"Yeah," Marcus said. "The flier said no experience needed?"
"Correct. Physicals provided. Compensation same day."
"How soon?"
"You may report tomorrow at nine a.m. Bring identification."
"Cool," he said, though his mouth had gone dry. "Cool."
When the call ended, he stared at the number still glowing on the screen. Out his window, the skyline pulsed with color from billboards and distant club lights. The city always looked alive at night — as if it didn't care who it drained to stay that way.
The building didn't look like much the next morning — a plain warehouse with a silver M painted on frosted glass. Inside, everything gleamed: white walls, silver chairs, a desk that floated on invisible legs. The air smelled like mint and ozone.
A receptionist smiled too wide. "Name?"
"Marcus Reed," he said, voice catching halfway through.
She handed him a clipboard. "Fill this out. Sign at the bottom."
The pages were thick, glossy, and full of words that meant nothing without a lawyer: liability waiver, experimental protocols, temporary amnesia risk. His hand paused halfway down.
"What kind of trial is this?" he asked.
"Neurological optimization," she said smoothly. "Low-impact, high-yield. Most participants feel energized."
He looked at the pen. Looked at the rent notice folded in his pocket. Then he signed.
They led him through a door into a smaller room, colder, humming with machines. The lights dimmed automatically as he entered. Wires dangled from a ceiling cradle. A medical chair sat in the center like a throne that forgot what comfort was.
A technician attached electrodes to his arms and temples, murmuring numbers. Another drew a single vial of blood and labeled it with a barcode instead of a name.
Marcus's pulse was racing. "So this… won't hurt?"
"Only if you fight it," said a voice from behind the glass wall.
He turned. A man in a dark suit stood on the other side, pale eyes unreadable. Next to him was someone older, softer, in a lab coat that hung a little too loose — Dr. Monroe, the badge said.
The man in the suit nodded to someone off-screen. "Begin."
The hum rose to a roar. Every light in the room condensed to a single point and then exploded outward in a halo. Marcus gasped. His veins lit beneath his skin, thin golden lines branching like lightning across his arms. He tried to move, but the restraints tightened.
He wanted to scream — and couldn't.
The man's voice, calm and precise, filtered through the speaker. "Subject 38 responding well. Increase amplitude by point five."
The last thing Marcus saw before his eyes rolled back was Dr. Monroe stepping closer to the glass, his expression caught between wonder and horror.
When he woke, the room was dark again. The restraints were gone. A white envelope sat on the table beside him: Montana Industries – Compensation. He tore it open and counted six crisp hundreds. Enough to keep the lights on another month.
His arm still shimmered faintly under the skin. When he blinked, the light vanished.
A nurse smiled as she held the door open. "Congratulations. You're cleared. Remember to stay hydrated."
Marcus stepped into the hallway. For a moment, he thought he heard his own heartbeat echoing from the walls, perfectly in time with the building's low mechanical pulse.
He didn't look back.
Outside, the city air felt too thick. He sat on the bus bench, staring at his reflection in the shelter glass. Same face, same eyes — but for a second, when the headlights of a passing car swept across, his pupils flared gold.
He blinked, and it was gone.
He told himself it was nothing. A trick of the light. Stress. Hunger.
By the time he got home, Denise was waiting at the table. "You okay?" she asked.
He smiled and placed the envelope in her hands. "Yeah. Told you I'd figure it out."
Her relief was so pure it almost made him forget the smell of that mint-ozone room.
Almost.
When he turned away, the hallway light flickered again — once, twice — and stayed dim.
Chapter 2 — Dosage
The first morning after the trial, Marcus woke to birds and a headache that pulsed behind his eyes like a slow strobe. The alarm on his cracked phone said 6:02 a.m. He'd meant to wake at seven. He lay there, listening to the apartment breathe: the kettle rattling a little on the stove, the bathroom fan with its stubborn wheeze, the half-asleep shuffle of his youngest brother's feet along the hallway carpet.
He rolled out of bed and sat awhile, elbows on knees, palms pressed against his eyes until stars came and went. When he opened them again, his hands looked like normal hands—brown skin mapped with faint scars from the time he'd tried to fix the toaster, a thumbnail with a pale crescent from when he'd slammed it in the mailbox. Normal. Except when he rubbed his fingers together, something in the friction sang.
Maybe he was imagining it. He'd never had six hundred dollars in an envelope before. Money made weird things feel explainable.
He made breakfast. He helped two kids find their other shoes and a lost math worksheet that wasn't lost at all, just folded into a spaceship. Denise kissed the top of his head as if he were still ten and headed for another early shift. When the door shut behind her, the apartment exhaled and went still.
He pulled the envelope from the drawer and counted again. Five bills went back into the drawer under the dish towels—Denise's rule for anything good: put most of it where it won't be seen. One went into his pocket. Bus fare. Groceries. Maybe a new lightbulb for the kitchen that would actually stay bright.
The number on the flier stared up at him from where he'd scribbled it on the back of a receipt. He didn't need to call. The receptionist had booked him automatically. "Follow-up optimization tomorrow, same time."
"Optimization." Like he was an app that ran a little laggy.
He told himself it was just two sessions. Maybe three. What was a few headaches if the rent was paid?
Montana Industries looked different the second time only because he knew where to stare. The silver M in the glass was slightly misaligned. The white walls weren't white; they were a blue so pale you could only name it if you watched clouds for a living. The receptionist's smile was practiced, but her eyes were tired in a way that no concealer could make forgettable.
"Welcome back, Mr. Reed." Clipboard. Pen. The same stack of consent that meant you've agreed to be surprised.
In the procedure room, the air tasted like the memory of mint. The technician with the careful hands strapped him in, checking each cuff with a soft pat that was almost kind. Through the glass, the man in the suit stood farther back today, like a portrait that had learned to breathe. Dr. Monroe was closer. He gave Marcus the small, awkward nod of two men who didn't know if they were supposed to be allies.
"Any discomfort after your first session?" the tech asked.
"Headache." Marcus shrugged. "Faded."
"Good." The tech tapped a tablet. "We'll calibrate the dosage curve."
Dosage. The word snagged. He stuck it in his pocket to think about later.
The hum began softer this time, rising in a spiral that seemed to pass through him instead of around him. He felt the moment the charge caught—like a key turning somewhere in the meat of him. Light threaded under his skin, thin golden filaments mapping him from wrist to shoulder to jaw. He tried not to panic. The straps tightened anyway, as if guessing at panic's speed.
Behind the glass, the suit's voice came through the speaker: "Subject Thirty-Eight is demonstrating a consistent impedance profile. Advance one point."
Marcus didn't know what that meant. He understood the way the room bent a fraction, as if space had hiccupped. He understood his heart racing and then being told to slow down by a song he couldn't hear. He understood that something had started, and he didn't know the shape of it.
Then the hum cut off, bright as a door slamming.
"Hydrate," the tech said, unbuckling straps. He held out a squat plastic bottle with a white label that had no logo, just a lot number and a date. "Slow sips."
Marcus drank. The water tasted like nothing. The absence of taste was so complete it felt engineered.
Monroe's voice crackled in through a small grill near Marcus's shoulder. "How are you feeling, Marcus?"
"Like I took a nap with my eyes open," he said. "Like I missed something."
Monroe glanced at the suit and then back. "Dizziness? Nausea?"
"Just… sharp." He groped for the word. "Everything's sharp."
The suit leaned forward a centimeter, as if drawn by the sound of data arriving. "Excellent."
Marcus's mouth was dry again. He didn't ask "Excellent for who?"
By the third appointment, the nurse knew his name. By the fourth, the guards at the side door gave a half-salute because he always arrived two minutes early and never asked questions. By the fifth, they stopped calling him Mr. Reed and started saying Thirty-Eight whenever they thought he couldn't hear.
"Side effects?" the tech asked each time.
"Headache."
"Dreams?"
"Don't remember." He didn't mean to lie. The dreams slipped away the way dishes went missing in the apartment—no blame, no drama, just the slow arithmetic of life subtracting pieces of itself. He woke a few mornings with the after-taste of burning sugar in his mouth. Once he woke with the name Kendra on his tongue and couldn't place the face. He decided it was a name from a movie. He decided the apartment had always had that scratch on the front door. He decided the kids had always called him Marc instead of Mar when they were hurrying.
He decided because deciding was faster than being afraid.
When the sixth session ended, the tech offered him a small white capsule in a paper cup and a second cup with two inches of water. "Stabilizer," the tech said.
"For what?"
"Post-stimulation jitters. Standard protocol."
Marcus rolled the capsule on his tongue before swallowing, like the taste might confess something. It didn't. He felt normal twenty minutes later. So normal that he forgot to look at the clock while waiting for the bus and missed it by a minute. The next one wheezed up, and an old man with a cane tried to stand even though the sign said PRIORITY SEATING. Marcus caught his elbow by instinct. For a second—just a second—the bones under the man's thin skin glowed like a map. The world snapped back. The driver said, "You getting on or marrying the door?" and the entire bus laughed.
He got on.
That night, he helped his brother with fractions and didn't notice that he couldn't remember the teacher's name to blame for them. The light in the kitchen burned bright for an hour and then dimmed, and he didn't notice that, either.
"Phase Two," the suit said a week later.
The words floated through the glass as the door to a different room zipped open. This one didn't smell like mint. This room smelled like oil and chalk dust and the cold side of batteries. Targets lined one wall: silhouettes with circles for hearts, circles for heads, circles for knees. Dummies — padded, upright, jointed — stood in a loose cluster in the middle of a rubberized floor. A mirrored wall reflected them back twice as many.
Marcus stood barefoot on the textured surface and felt every ridge like it meant something. The technician wasn't there; a woman in gray fatigues was, a tablet holstered to her forearm. She didn't introduce herself.
"Hands up," she said.
He lifted them.
"Wider stance. Relax your breath."
He did.
"On my count: three, two—"
The world snapped.
He was kneeling on the mat, heart slamming, arms humming as if they belonged to a generator. Six targets lay on the ground with neat holes in their centers, smoke curling up from polymer flesh. The mirrored wall wore a constellation of tiny impact stars. Someone clapped once from behind the glass, the sound more metronome than praise.
"What—" Marcus swallowed. His throat tasted like coins. "What did I—did I miss the count?"
The woman's face didn't change. "You were adequate. Again."
He shook his hands out. Sparks danced invisibly along the tendons and were gone.
"Three," she said, "two—"
The snap came quicker, like a camera shutter closing on a blink. He was two strides forward, dummy on its back, his palm pressed to its sternum, rubber smoking under his fingers as if a stovetop had kissed it. He had the certainty that he had moved beautifully. He had no memory of moving at all.
Behind the glass, the suit: "Latency improved. Introduce variable."
The woman tossed a black shape. Instinct caught it. Pistol. Not a real one—an ugly polymer thing with a barrel that wasn't a barrel but a mouth. It fit his hand like an apology.
She pointed without looking. "Left. Center. High."
He didn't hear "three, two." He heard a sound he hadn't known was music until it was inside his spine. The pistol braced on his opposite palm, and gold light flared where steel should have. Three shots—no recoil, just a vibration through knuckles and into marrow. Left target coughed smoke. Center target coughed more. High target turned its bullseye into a dark sun.
He almost smiled. Then the not-smile became fear so quickly that he didn't notice the moment between.
"I don't…" he began.
The woman nodded to the wall speaker. A tin voice said, "Administer."
She reached into her pocket and handed him a paper cup with another white capsule. "Stabilizer."
"I don't feel—" He did. The fear had been big and now was small, and the capsule was the requirement to keep it that way. He swallowed.
"You'll be evaluated tomorrow," the woman said. "Rest. Hydrate. No alcohol."
"I don't drink."
"Excellent," she said, the word built from nothing but flat air.
He tried to tell Denise something that night. He didn't know the shape of the thing until the words left him, and even then, they weren't the right ones.
"It's good work," he said. "Easy. Like… like they figured out what I'm good at."
She smiled, real as the day she'd brought him home from the hospital. "You're good at everything if you decide to be."
He wished he could explain that there was a difference between deciding and having your decision made for you.
Instead, he washed the dishes and stared at his reflected face in soapy water. For a moment the reflection didn't blink when he did. The moment passed. He told himself it hadn't happened.
Later, he woke to the socket of the smoke detector peering down at him from the ceiling like an unblinking eye. The apartment was quiet except for the refrigerator's old hymn. He rolled over, and when he rolled back, it was morning.
He had the sensation of a dream ending with a slammed door.
He had the sensation that someone else had been standing where the smoke detector was, watching him sleep.
He made coffee so strong it trembled.
Days slid into each other the way cards slide in a cheap deck—corners bent, numbers rubbed a little thinner with each shuffle. He went to Montana. He stood on the mat. He didn't always remember the three. He always remembered the two.
He learned to breathe without feeling winded. He learned to move without thinking about moving. He learned that the name Marcus sounded softer each time someone used Thirty-Eight instead. The woman in gray fatigues told him once, in a rare sentence with extra syllables, "Your grouping is exceptional." He wanted to ask, "Grouping of what?" She said, "Targets," and he nodded like he'd known.
Dr. Monroe began meeting him near the exit rather than behind the glass. "Any… confusion?" he asked one afternoon, the word landing carefully between them.
"I had a dream," Marcus said.
"About?"
He opened his mouth and closed it. The shape of a girl's laugh slid away. The name Kendra came and went. The smell of laundry detergent—his mother's brand—rose and broke. He shrugged. "I don't remember."
Monroe's face did something small and pained. "Keep a notebook," he said. "Write down whatever you can, even if it's just one word."
"Why?"
"It will help," Monroe said. He did not say with what.
The suit walked by and placed a hand on Monroe's shoulder with the absent familiarity of ownership. "Subject Thirty-Eight has a briefing," he said. "Don't let him be late."
Late for what? Briefing? Marcus glanced at the wall clock and was briefly certain it had three hands.
"Don't worry," Monroe said, stepping aside. "Just one more evaluation today."
"Then I go home?"
"Of course."
He did go home. He put the notebook on his dresser and wrote Kendra on the first page even though the letters felt like strangers to each other. He helped the little ones brush their teeth and double-knot their shoes for the morning. He counted the remaining bills and decided that, if he could just do four more sessions, they'd be okay until the start of school, when maybe the warehouse would call back. He turned off the bedroom light.
He blinked.
He was under a different light—brighter, colder—metal shelf at his shoulder, the smell of disinfectant and copper so strong his eyes watered. His hands were strapped to a chair. A white line ran from the crook of his elbow to a bag that dripped something that looked like molasses if molasses were the color of lightning.
"Vitals are steady," said a voice.
"Begin phase two-dash-B," said another.
Panic came late, as if it had to travel farther than usual. "Wait," Marcus said, or tried to; the word slurred like it had been held too long in the mouth. "I didn't—this isn't—"
The world flexed like a muscle. Everything doubled: two rooms, two suits, two Monroes layered a half-inch apart and vibrating. The straps bit his wrists and then felt like velvet. The light poured into his eyes and out the back of his head.
"Subject Thirty-Eight is adapting," the suit said. "Administer."
A pill pressed to his lips. He didn't want it. He swallowed it anyway.
The double world clicked into one.
"Excellent," the suit said.
The hum returned, and then, blessedly, there was nothing at all.
He woke in his bed at home with the ceiling fan whispering and the notebook open on his chest. His hand had written something in crooked letters, ink wet enough to smear when he touched it, don't let them take the names. He read it twice and then three more times. He couldn't remember writing it. He couldn't remember what names it meant. He closed the notebook very carefully, as if loud paper could wake something that had only just decided to fall asleep. The kitchen light flickered once in the next room and then steadied.
For now.
Chapter 3 — Ghost Hours
Marcus stopped checking the calendar after the third week.
Days still happened, technically — but they slid across each other like tracing paper. When he woke, it was either too early or too late. Sometimes the sky outside the bus window was morning. Sometimes it was already dark again, as if time had been cut into convenient pieces and served out of order.
He'd written "don't let them take the names" at the top of the notebook every night, but new handwriting kept appearing beneath it — his, but smaller, hurried. Sometimes the sentences weren't finished. Sometimes they weren't English.
Once, he flipped a page and saw only a shaky drawing of a gun made of light. Montana Industries had moved him to another floor.
No receptionist this time. No clipboard. Just a coded door that recognized his eyes before he even blinked.
The new training room smelled of metal and heat — like someone had welded a gym to a furnace. Targets lined the walls in three dimensions, hovering in midair, flickering red and blue. He didn't ask what the colors meant anymore.
The woman in fatigues was still there, tablet strapped to her arm.
"Your pulse is steady," she said without looking at him.
He wasn't sure whether that was a compliment or an observation.
He flexed his hands. The veins lit faintly gold, like thin rivers under sand.
"Let's start with a low sequence," she said. "I want to see the sync rate."
He nodded automatically, though he didn't remember learning what that meant.
She gave a count.
Three. Two. One.
The world shifted.
He moved faster than his own thoughts.
Energy hummed in his arms and burst from his fingertips in clean arcs, slicing the hovering targets midair. Each one detonated in silence, their light collapsing inward. His heartbeat matched the rhythm, not racing — precise, measured.
Each time he exhaled, the air smelled faintly of ozone.
When the final target faded, he stood alone in the half-lit room, chest rising slow.
For a moment, there was peace in the precision.
It terrified him.
Behind the glass, Dr. Monroe was watching.
He mouthed something Marcus couldn't hear, but his eyes said stop.
The man in the suit, standing beside him, said something else into the mic:
"Again."
Marcus's body obeyed before his mind could say no.
By the time the session ended, the skin along his forearms was raw where the light had crawled out. He sat on the bench, breathing through a mouth that tasted like metal filings.
Monroe came in for the first time.
"Marcus," he said quietly, "how much of that do you remember?"
Marcus looked up. His voice rasped. "Enough."
Monroe crouched beside him, careful not to touch. "They're pushing too fast. You need rest."
"Rest doesn't stick," Marcus said.
Monroe's gaze sharpened. "What do you mean?"
"I fall asleep," he said, "and wake up in a different place. Different room. Different clothes. Sometimes… different blood on my hands."
The doctor froze.
"I think," Marcus added, "they're sending me on missions. And I don't know it."
Monroe's jaw tightened. "That shouldn't be possible."
Marcus laughed once — a dry, humorless thing. "Neither is this."
He raised his palm. A faint pulse of light flickered, no effort at all. The power had learned to breathe without asking permission.
Monroe swallowed. "If they find out you're aware—"
"I'm not," Marcus said quickly, voice low. "Not anymore."
The door hissed open. The woman in gray stepped in, her tone clipped.
"Phase Three clearance in thirty-six hours. He'll need the dosage increased."
Monroe started to protest, but the suit's voice came through the speaker overhead, calm and absolute.
"Proceed."
The next day, Marcus didn't go home.
He meant to. He even got as far as the bus stop, but when he blinked, he was already back inside the facility, staring at his own reflection in the locker-room mirror.
He didn't remember walking. He didn't remember unlocking the door. He only remembered the taste of that mint air — sharp and sweet — filling his lungs.
The reflection in the mirror didn't match his heartbeat. When he exhaled, it smiled half a second late.
He turned away and vomited into the sink.
The security alarm didn't even blink red. Whatever he was, the system already considered him inside.
That night, Dr. Monroe woke him in his bunk.
The man's face was pale, his eyes bloodshot and shaking. "Marcus. Listen to me."
He blinked himself awake. "What's happening?"
"They're altering the treatment. The dosage curves, the inhibitors… they're trying to erase independent thought. To streamline control." His voice cracked. "You need to know what they're doing."
Marcus sat up slowly. "Erase… me?"
Monroe nodded once. "Piece by piece."
Marcus clenched the sheets in his fists. "How long?"
"They started the moment you stopped asking questions." Monroe's voice trembled. "You have to hold onto whatever you can. A word, a smell, anything."
Marcus swallowed hard. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because I helped them," Monroe said softly. "And I can't keep pretending I don't know what it's costing."
The door alarm chirped. Red light bled into the room.
Monroe straightened, voice going cold. "Your next evaluation is in five minutes."
Two guards stepped into the doorway. "Thirty-Eight, on your feet."
Marcus stood automatically. He caught Monroe's eye for half a second — saw something like apology flicker there — and then the guards took him away.
He never saw the doctor again.
The next twenty-four hours blurred into heat, motion, and silence.
They moved him from test rooms to briefing rooms, from observation pods to glass-walled corridors where every step echoed like gunfire. He saw flashes of other people — men and women with that same hollow look — but no one spoke.
He lost count of the injections. Lost count of the times they said "stabilizer" and he swallowed before thinking.
By the end of the week, he couldn't remember what day it was.
By the end of the month, he couldn't remember the last time his mother's voice had sounded real.
One morning — or night — he woke up on a cot in the training hall. His muscles ached, but not from fatigue. They ached because they wanted to move.
He looked down at his hands.
The veins glowed steady gold, no longer flickering. Controlled. Alive.
He whispered, "What did they do to me?"
A voice behind him — the woman in gray — said, "They made you useful."
He turned. "For what?"
She smiled. "For whatever they tell you."
Outside, the first snow of winter began to fall.
It hissed against the steel roof, whispering a word Marcus almost recognized before it melted away.
He pressed his palms together, watching faint light bleed between them.
His notebook lay open beside the cot, one sentence written in small, frantic handwriting:
"They're teaching me to forget on purpose."
He stared at the words until they stopped making sense.
Then he closed the book, exhaled, and waited for whatever came next.
Chapter 4 — Subject 38
The man they called Subject 38 was awake long before he opened his eyes.
The hum of the facility vibrated through the bed frame — steady, mechanical, almost soothing. The lights came on automatically, timed with his heartbeat. He sat up before they finished brightening, his body moving before thought. His body always knew what to do now.
It didn't ask him anymore.
The voice over the intercom spoke like a prayer being repeated too often.
"Training readiness confirmed. Mission prep in twenty minutes."
Marcus — or what was left of him — stood and dressed in the uniform laid out across the bench. Gray tactical fatigues. No insignia. No name. The boots shined without ever having been cleaned.
He stared at his reflection in the mirror.
Same eyes. Same scars. Different soul.
When he blinked, the reflection didn't lag this time. It just looked back — calm, hollow, obedient.
Rows of identical soldiers stood at attention.
Each one had that same blank focus, pupils faintly glowing like circuitry buried beneath flesh. The hum of the room matched their breathing — synchronized, machine-like.
A voice spoke through a speaker at the far end.
"Objective: secure and extract."
"Target: black site Theta-12, north district perimeter."
"Secondary instruction: eliminate all resistance."
The voice belonged to the man in the suit — the one Marcus sometimes thought might not even have a name. Everyone simply called him Director.
He gestured to a digital projection hovering between them: an image of a facility under heavy guard, labeled MONTANA INDUSTRIES — R&D Division.
Marcus's pulse flickered once at the logo. R&D.
It was the same wing he remembered glimpsing through glass walls when his training first began. He didn't know why the image made his stomach twist.
"Team Alpha," the Director said, "you are go for insertion in forty."
Marcus's ID number flashed on the screen beside three others.
He nodded once. The others nodded too.
There was no conversation — just perfect compliant.
Inside the military transport, the world was rainy and silent. Marcus sat near the door, staring at his hands. They weren't trembling, but something beneath the skin pulsed with steady rhythm, like a second heartbeat trying to crawl free.
The hum of the engines faded into the hum that lived in his skull now — constant, like someone whispering a language he almost understood.
A voice crackled over the comms.
"Target range: two clicks. Prepare to drop."
The ramp opened. Cold air rushed in.
Rain streaked against the helmets of the other operatives, turning their visors into mirrors.
Marcus's reflection stared back from each one.
The squad leader's voice cut through: "On my mark."
Three. Two. One.
They jumped.
They landed like shadows.
Marcus's boots hit concrete, knees bending automatically to absorb the impact.
He raised his hand — light gathered, swirling, forming an energy pulse that condensed into a weapon: not metal, not fire, but both at once.
His hands remembered before his mind did.
Guards shouted from the gates, rifles raised.
Energy flared. The world went white for a heartbeat.
When color returned, the guards were on the ground — not moving.
The squad advanced. No one spoke. No one hesitated.
They were ghosts made of muscle and electricity.
Marcus moved through the corridors, every step perfect, every motion rehearsed.
He didn't remember training for this, but his body did.
When an alarm blared, he raised his hand and fired without thought — bolts of searing light cracking across the hall, burning through metal like paper.
Something inside him whispered: Good.
Something deeper whispered: Wrong.
They reached the main server chamber.
Marcus approached the console, placing his palm against the interface.
His veins lit gold, and the computer responded — metal folding open, data transferring in bursts of light.
"Download complete," said the squad leader.
Marcus nodded — but then the hum changed.
A flicker of sound cut through his head — not from the comms, but from inside.
A voice, faint and scared.
"Marcus."
He froze. The others didn't notice.
He turned his head, scanning the shadows.
Nothing. Just the red pulse of alarms, the hiss of cooling steel.
But he heard it again. Softer. Closer.
"Marcus, come home."
His breath caught. For a heartbeat, the world tilted — the room, the mission, the walls — all of it peeled back into fragments of an apartment he couldn't quite remember: peeling paint, a flickering lightbulb, a woman folding laundry.
Denise.
The name hit him like a shockwave.
He staggered. His weapon flickered and died in his hand.
"Thirty-Eight," barked the squad leader, turning. "Status?"
Marcus blinked hard. The vision vanished. The apartment, the voice — gone.
Only the facility remained.
"Fine," he said hoarsely.
The leader stared for half a second too long, then nodded. "Move."
Back at base, the debriefing room glowed sterile white.
Marcus sat in the metal chair while technicians removed sensors from his arms and temples.
The Director's voice echoed from behind mirrored glass.
"Vitals: consistent. Response time: exceptional. Cognitive resistance: minimal."
Minimal.
The word lodged in Marcus's throat like a splinter.
When they dismissed him, he stood and caught his reflection in the one-way mirror.
For a flicker of a second, his eyes weren't gold — they were brown again. Human.
And scared.
Then the light changed, and the gold returned.
That night, he woke up in his cot — except it wasn't night.
There was no clock, no window, no proof of time.
He sat up, hand pressed to his chest. His pulse beat strong but uneven, like it had its own rhythm now.
His notebook was on the nightstand.
He opened it.
The last page was blank — until he blinked, and new words appeared, written in the same desperate handwriting as before:
"She called me by name."
He stared at it for a long time, throat dry.
Then, below it, another sentence began writing itself — his hand moving without his command:
"They can't erase everything."
The pen fell from his fingers.
The hum in his head grew louder, almost angry.
He pressed his palms to his temples, trying to drown it out.
Somewhere behind the walls, a voice whispered again — faint, echoing through memory, or maybe through wires:
"Come home, Marcus."
He didn't sleep again.
Absolutely—continuing right where we left off.
Chapter 5 — Break in the Loop
For 362 days, Marcus followed orders.
He woke when the lights told him to.
He ate what the tray gave him.
He fought when they said fight—and stopped when they said enough.
He didn't remember his name then.
He didn't remember that he once had one.
Tonight would change that.
The transport shuddered through the storm. Rain crawled down the windows like static alive. Across from Marcus, three masked operatives sat rigid, their armor polished to factory precision. He could have been one of them. Maybe he was.
"Alpha Team, execute on signal," the Director's voice crackled in his ear.
"Retrieve Dr. Elijah Monroe. Eliminate resistance."
Marcus adjusted the rifle across his lap, feeling the faint vibration in his hands—the hum that had lived under his skin since the experiments. Each pulse matched the rhythm of his heartbeat, the same rhythm the lab had programmed into every one of their "subjects."
But tonight, the pulse felt off. Like his body was trying to remember a song it used to know before the machines rewrote the melody.
"Thirty-Eight," the squad leader said, voice clipped through the comm. "You ready?"
He didn't answer right away. He stared out the window instead, watching the city lights smear through rain.
"Ready," he said finally, though it felt like a lie.
The transport touched down two blocks from the target. The night air hit like cold steel—sharp, electric. They moved through the alleys in formation, black shadows in a world that forgot how to look up.
Building 3B loomed ahead, its windows glowing faint amber. The lock on the rooftop door surrendered under Marcus's palm; energy flickered, tumblers liquefied, and the door swung open like it knew better than to resist.
Inside, the air was warm, smelling of coffee, dust, and printer ink.
Dr. Elijah Monroe stood by a cluttered desk, an old man swallowed by books and guilt.
He didn't flinch at the sight of armed soldiers in his apartment.
"You're late," Monroe said, voice calm but weary. "They sent you sooner than I expected."
"On your knees," the leader ordered.
Monroe's gaze slid past the rifles—straight to Marcus. He squinted, studying his face through the rain and the glow that pulsed faintly beneath his skin.
"You…" he murmured. "You were one of mine."
The words hit like static in Marcus's skull. He froze mid-step.
The leader turned. "Thirty-Eight, secure the room."
Marcus didn't move. His hand trembled. The hum in his veins roared to life.
"Subject Thirty-Eight," barked the leader. "Focus."
But the sound was drowned by something else—a memory. The crackle of a frying pan. Laughter from a smaller room. A woman's voice calling, Marcus, dinner's ready! The name detonated through him like a suppressed charge.
He dropped the rifle. It clattered against the floor, glowing gold from the energy seeping out of his fingers. The squad turned as one.
"Pick it up," the leader warned. "Now."
Marcus looked at his hands—light pulsing from the veins, electricity bleeding from skin like liquid sunlight.
"Marcus?" Monroe whispered, realization dawning in his tired eyes. "Oh, God. You remember."
The word remember twisted the world sideways.
Every lie, every blackout, every mission blurred into the image of that same logo burned behind his eyelids—Montana Industries—and the voices saying, We fixed you. You belong to us now.
Something inside him cracked open.
He breathed once, slow and deep, and the floor shuddered beneath his boots.
The squad leader lifted his rifle.
"Stand down or be neutralized."
Marcus raised his head, gold light spilling from his eyes.
"Neutralize this."
He thrust out his hand.
The air folded inward—then exploded. A shockwave rippled through the room, sending furniture and men alike flying. Plaster shattered. Sparks rained from the ceiling. The squad hit the walls with bone-cracking force.
The tall operative scrambled up, firing.
The bullet stopped mid-flight, caught in an invisible pressure field inches from Marcus's face. It hung there, spinning lazily, before dropping harmlessly to the carpet.
Marcus exhaled. The kinetic energy surged outward again, an expanding ring of force that crushed the squad leader's rifle like it was made of tinfoil.
He felt everything: every vibration in the air, every heartbeat around him, every ounce of fear rippling through the room. It all fed the current running through him—hot, alive, uncontrollable.
The shorter operative lunged with a combat knife.
Marcus caught his wrist mid-swing.
Energy coiled from Marcus's palm into the man's arm, snapping bone like dry wood.
The operative screamed, body launching backward into the bookshelf.
Monroe ducked behind the couch, staring in awe. "You're controlling it—"
"I'm barely holding it," Marcus growled, voice layered with static.
The leader rose again, mask cracked, fury and fear fighting for space in his voice.
"You're compromised! We'll drag you back in pieces if we have to!"
He fired his sidearm. The bullet disintegrated before reaching Marcus.
Marcus moved faster than thought, his hands carving through the air. Waves of kinetic pressure slammed the leader backward, plastering him against the far wall. The drywall cratered around his body. Marcus stepped forward, each stride leaving deep cracks in the floorboards.
"Tell me the truth," he said quietly. "What did you do to me?"
The leader coughed blood, smirked through broken teeth. "We made you useful."
Marcus clenched his fists. The wall behind the man warped, groaned, and then crushed inward. The leader went still. The hum in Marcus's veins quieted. The gold light dimmed, fading back into skin. Silence fell.
Dr. Monroe rose slowly, trembling but composed. His glasses were broken, but his eyes burned clear. "You shouldn't be able to do that."
"I couldn't," Marcus said, voice hoarse. "Not until now."
"They'll send another team. A stronger one. You've just declared war on them."
"Then it's long overdue."
He turned toward the window. Rain hammered the glass. Neon light flickered off puddles below.
Monroe hesitated. "If you want to survive, we need to move. I know somewhere safe."
Marcus looked back at him, expression unreadable.
"You helped build this," he said. "You made people like me."
"I'm trying to fix it," Monroe replied. "But I can't without you."
Marcus studied him for a long moment. Then, finally, he nodded.
They stepped out into the night.
Rain hit their faces like sparks. The storm carried the scent of ozone and rebellion.
A security drone banked overhead, red light sweeping the street. Marcus lifted his hand, and the air bent. The drone's wings snapped inward, imploding silently before falling like ash.
Monroe flinched. "You're going to get us both killed!"
Marcus didn't slow. "Then stay behind me."
Down the street, a black SUV screeched around the corner—reinforcements. Two more drones locked onto their heat signatures. Marcus turned, eyes burning gold again. He spread his hands wide, gathering kinetic energy in his palms until the rain around him hung motionless. Then he slammed them together.
The shockwave tore through the street—cars flipped, windows shattered, lights exploded in a cascade of blue-white flame. The SUV was lifted clean off the ground and thrown sideways into a storefront.
Monroe ducked behind a mailbox, shouting over the roar, "You can't just blow up half the block!"
Marcus's voice cut through the thunder. "They took my life. I'm taking it back."
He grabbed Monroe by the wrist. "Move!"
They sprinted through the chaos until the city turned quiet again—until the sound of sirens faded and the rain softened to a whisper.
An old cathedral stood at the edge of the industrial sector, its cross half-broken but still standing. Marcus shoved the doors open. Inside, candles flickered weakly in glass jars, reflecting off wet tile floors.
Monroe leaned against a pew, catching his breath. "You need to rest. That power—you'll burn yourself alive."
Marcus stared at his hands. The glow still flickered beneath his skin, faint but constant.
"I don't feel burned," he said. "I feel awake."
Monroe looked at him with a strange mix of guilt and awe.
"You were supposed to be the perfect soldier. No memories. No fear. No name."
Marcus turned his gaze toward the altar, rain dripping from his hair.
"Guess they built me wrong."
He looked back at Monroe.
"We're not stopping. You know how to hurt them. I'll get you there."
Monroe hesitated. "And after that?"
Marcus's jaw tightened. "After that… I'll make sure no one ever calls me 'Thirty-Eight' again."