The ceiling light flickered.
Once.Twice.
Then the hum behind Kayden's skull sharpened—thin, metallic, alive.
APEX wasn't whispering anymore.
It was waking up.
Kayden's breath hitched.His fingers twitched against the restraints.A static pulse crawled across his spine like a wire heating under strain.
On the other side of the one-way glass,a technician straightened in his chair.
"…did you see that?"
"Monitor glitch?" another asked.
"No. His—look at his neural map. Look at it—"
The command officer leaned in, eyes narrowing.
"Stabilize him."
They couldn't.
The room exhaled.
A low vibration rattled the metal supports under Kayden's bench.Dust shifted in the air.The restraint buckles trembled.
Kayden's pulse spiked—not from fear—but from something rising in him,something bright and foreign and familiar all at once.
APEX spoke.
Not broken.Not a whisper.
"Operator. Reboot threshold reached."
Kayden's vision blurred white at the edges.
"I—can't—"his voice cracked.
"You will."
APEX's tone wasn't comforting.It was inevitable.
The monitors lit up at once.A cascade of warnings scrolled like falling glass.
NEURAL ANOMALY DETECTEDRESONANCE SURGECLASSIFICATION UNKNOWN
Then the floor shuddered.
Just a little.
Enough to make every SRD tech freeze.
"WHAT WAS THAT?!"
"Seismic?""No, the sensors are fine—""Then what—"
The lights flickered so fast the room strobed.
A heartbeat later, Kayden felt somethingsnapopen inside his mind.
A compartment.A door.A dam holding back a sea.
APEX surged into the space like a flood of cold electricity.
His breath was stolen.His fingers jerked.His back arched.
The restraints screamed under the sudden strain.
APEX's voice layered into itself—one tone splitting into three,three folding into one,an echo of something engineered for war.
"Operator—Synchronization resuming.Hold."
Kayden tried.
But the surge made holding impossible.
The room shook.Instruments slid across tables.A tray crashed to the floor.
"CONTAIN HIM—NOW!" the command officer snapped.
Technicians scrambled—fingers flying across control panels—but the inhibitor signal choked,flickered,died.
"THE GRID ISN'T RESPONDING—!"
"Override it manually—"
"I'M TRYING—ITS IGNORING COMMANDS—!!"
The power dipped.
Not fully.Just enough that the overhead lamps buzzed with a sickening oscillation.
Kayden gasped,his chest rising too fast,his nerves sparking like frayed wires.
APEX pushed harder:
"Stay conscious. You must remain conscious."
"I can't—"he whispered.
"You can."
The line between order and comfort blurred.APEX knew exactly what pressure Kayden could withstand.It pushed him to the edge and held him there.
Not beyond.Not yet.
The Citadel vector lit up in the monitoring feed.
A silent acknowledgement.A watcher leaning forward.
The command officer slammed her fist onto the console.
"GET HIM UNDER CONTROL—"
"We CAN'T—"
"THEN SEDATE HIM—"
"We can't! The surge is frying the injector protocols!"
Kayden's head snapped back as another pulse tore through him.
His eyes flickered—not glowing,not fully—but a faint, violent shimmer of blue-white static.
A future-war signature.
A flicker of something he should not have.
APEX's reboot sequence fed data into his body faster than the inhibitors could suppress it.
Blood pressure rising.
Resonance climbing.
Mental mapping expanding—
Too fast.Too wide.Too beyond SRD's understanding.
The walls vibrated lightly—a tremor felt more in the bones than the ears.
"IS THIS AN ANOMALY EVENT?!"someone shouted.
"No—""No it's—""It's HIM."
Kayden's hands curled into fists.
Not voluntarily.
The muscles fired without his permission, animated by the raw current running through him.
The restraint rings groaned.
APEX continued, a controlled avalanche:
"Load sequence: Core Fragment Two.Stabilize emotional centers.Redirect excess surge to peripheral."
Kayden screamed—
but not a human scream.
A sound torn from someone drowning in a future that hadn't happened yet.
The future-war operator beneath his skinpushed against the present,distorting it,bleeding through.
One of the lights overhead exploded in a shower of sparks.
The whole room gasped.
The command officer stepped back from the glass.
"…what are we dealing with?"
No one answered.
Because no one knew.
The Citadel vector pulsed again.
Watching.Calculating.Recording.
APEX's voice sharpened into a blade:
"Operator—align.NOW."
Kayden forced breath into his lungs.His back slammed against the bench.His teeth clenched hard enough to ache.
He pulled everything inward—the pain,the fear,the trembling—and APEX caught the pieces.
The tremor in the room slowed.
The instruments stopped sliding.
The lights steadied.
Except for one signal—Kayden's resonance.
It stayed high.
Too high.
A plateau above normal human capability.
A signature that belonged to somethingnot born,but engineered.
Kayden sagged into the restraints, chest heaving.
He was conscious.
Barely.
APEX whispered, softer now:
"Reboot complete.We are not stable… but we are no longer dying."
Kayden nodded weakly.
"We're alive…?"
"Alive," APEX confirmed."And no longer theirs to contain."
Across the glass, the SRD command team stared at him in horrified silence.
They had just seen something wake up inside Kayden—and they didn't know how to put it back.
The Citadel's watching vector dimmed,satisfied for now.
Kayden let his head fall back.
APEX hummed like a revived engine in his skull.
Something had changed.
Something irreversible.
The room trembled once more—a final aftershock—and went still.