Ryu stared at the terminal. 'Vessel integrity at 0.1%. Awakening protocol initiated.' The words glowed for a moment, stark and green against the black screen, before vanishing as if they had never been there. The terminal went dark, its faint light extinguished completely. He blinked. Had he imagined it? It must have been a glitch, a final spasm from the dying machine.
He tried to dismiss it, to focus on the manual's instructions. But the phrase echoed in his mind. 'Vessel integrity.' 'Awakening protocol.' It sounded like the technical jargon of the Core, not something he'd find in a primer for academy rejects. He shook his head, forcing the thought away. It was a distraction. He had work to do.
For the next few days, he dedicated every spare moment to practicing. Before his grueling shifts at the docks, he would go to the archive and work on his stances. After his shift, bruised and exhausted, he would return and practice his breathing. He followed the manual with the devotion of a zealot. It was the only thing in his life that felt like a choice, the only path that wasn't dictated by his powerlessness.
Something began to change. It was subtle, almost imperceptible. His chronic aches seemed to lessen. He could hold a stance for a few seconds longer each day. His breathing, once shallow and ragged, became deeper, more controlled. These were small victories, but they were his, earned through sweat and discipline in the dusty silence.
One evening, he was practicing a simple blocking move, a parry described in the manual. He was moving slowly, focusing on the form, when his foot slipped on a patch of loose gravel. He stumbled, his balance gone, and instinctively threw his arm out to catch himself against a metal server rack. His hand slapped against the cold steel, and in that moment, it happened.
A jolt, sharp and electric, shot up his arm. It wasn't a static shock. It was a feeling of intense, overwhelming energy, both burning hot and freezing cold at the same time. The air around him seemed to crackle. The dormant lights on the server rack he'd touched flickered on for a single, brilliant second, illuminating the cavernous hall in a flash of unexpected light. Then, just as quickly, they died, plunging the room back into darkness.
Ryu scrambled back, his heart hammering against his ribs. He stared at his hand, which was trembling uncontrollably. It felt like he had touched a live power conduit, but the server racks hadn't held a charge in decades. The energy hadn't come from the rack; it had come from him.
Terror, pure and primal, washed over him. This wasn't the controlled 'internal energy' the manual described. This was wild, chaotic, and painful. A searing pain shot from his hand up to his shoulder, as if his muscles were being torn apart from the inside. He collapsed to the floor, gasping, his vision swimming with black spots. The feeling was of being an overflowing container, a vessel cracking under a pressure it was never meant to hold.
He thought of the message on the terminal. 'Vessel integrity at 0.1%.' Was this the 'awakening'? If it was, it felt less like a gift and more like a curse. It was a power his body was fundamentally unequipped to handle. The manual was supposed to make him stronger, but it seemed to have unlocked a self-destruct sequence. He lay on the cold floor of the archive, shaking, the ghost of that impossible energy coursing through him. He had spent his entire life lamenting his lack of power. Now, for the first time, he was terrified of what it might mean to have it.