Kade woke up drowning.
Not in water—in *something else*. His mind was somewhere his body wasn't, suspended in a space that had no right to exist. He could think, but couldn't feel his limbs. Could perceive light, but had no eyes to see it with.
Panic clawed at the edges of his consciousness.
This is wrong this is wrong this is wrong—
Fragments of memory flickered through the void:
His mother's hands, younger, steadier, assembling something in a dim workshop—
His father's voice, rough with worry: "You're gambling with our son's life—"
"I'm giving him a chance to survive what's coming—"
Fire. Screaming. A Rift tearing open above a convoy—
Blood on snow. Two bodies. Neither moving—
The memories shattered like glass.
Reality slammed back.
Kade gasped, his body convulsing on the floor of his apartment. His lungs burned. His heart hammered erratically before suddenly—too suddenly—falling into a rhythm that felt mechanical. Controlled.
Wrong.
He rolled onto his side, retching, but nothing came up. His hands pressed against cold floor tiles, and even that felt *different*. More texture. More information flooding his nervous system than should be possible from touching a floor.
"What—" His voice came out hoarse, shredded. "What did you do?"
Silver text blazed across his vision:
[INTEGRATION COMPLETE]
[NEURAL RESTRUCTURING: 89% SUCCESSFUL]
[PHYSICAL OPTIMIZATION: 100% COMPLETE]
[CONSCIOUSNESS RESTORED]
[ELAPSED TIME: 11 HOURS, 34 MINUTES]
Eleven hours. Kade's thoughts immediately jumped to deployment. He was supposed to report to Outpost Seven at dawn.
He looked at the window. Sunlight—mid-morning light—streamed through at an angle that meant it was probably nine or ten in the morning.
"Shit." He tried to stand and his legs betrayed him. Not weak—*too responsive*. He shot upright faster than he intended and stumbled into his desk.
[MOTOR CONTROL RECALIBRATION REQUIRED]
[ESTIMATED ADAPTATION TIME: 6-8 HOURS]
"Adaptation?" Kade's laugh came out sharp, almost hysterical. "You rewrote my nervous system and I need to *adapt*? What the fuck are you?"
[PRIME CALIBRATION MATRIX]
[VEYRON LEGACY SYSTEM]
[BONDED TO: KADE VEYRON]
[STATUS: IRREVERSIBLE]
That last word hit like a fist to the chest.
"Irreversible." Kade's hands started shaking—except the tremor was different now. Faster. Smaller oscillations. "I can't—you can't just—I didn't agree to this—"
[BLOODLINE AUTHENTICATION REGISTERED AS CONSENT]
[GENETIC MARKERS VERIFIED AT MOMENT OF CONTACT]
[ALTERNATIVE: SYSTEM REJECTION]
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY OF REJECTION: 0%]
"So I never had a choice." Kade pressed his palms against his eyes. The pressure felt wrong—too much sensory information. He could feel the ridges of his fingerprints against his eyelids. "You just... took me. Rewrote me. And now I'm supposed to—what? Be grateful?"
[GRATITUDE: NOT REQUIRED]
[SURVIVAL: REQUIRED]
Kade wanted to scream. To rage. To rip this thing out of himself even though he knew—knew—it would kill him.
But that cold, pragmatic part of his mind—the part that had learned to take beatings without fighting back because fighting back only made things worse—was already doing the math.
He was alive. Enhanced. And he'd missed deployment.
"Where was I? Just now, before I woke up—I wasn't here. I was somewhere else."
[NEURAL PROJECTION DURING FINAL INTEGRATION PHASE]
[CONSCIOUSNESS TEMPORARILY ISOLATED TO PREVENT PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE]
[PHYSICAL BODY REMAINED IN APARTMENT]
[DURATION: 4 HOURS, 12 MINUTES]
Four hours of his mind being somewhere else while his body lay unconscious and vulnerable on his apartment floor.
Kade looked down. He'd collapsed right next to his desk, probably where he'd been standing when the integration finished. The tablet was completely gone—not a trace remained.
"You're inside me now."
[CORRECT]
[INTEGRATION COMPLETE]
[REMOVAL WOULD RESULT IN CASCADE NEURAL FAILURE]
[ESTIMATED TIME TO DEATH: 4.7 SECONDS]
Kade stood carefully, testing his balance. It was getting easier—his body learning the new parameters of how it worked.
He walked to the mirror mounted on the wall.
Same dark hair. Same angular features. Same grey eyes that marked him as worthless to every scanner in the world.
Except—
"You changed my face." It was subtle, but he could see it. The slight asymmetry in his jaw from a break at twelve—gone. The scar above his left eyebrow—faded to almost nothing.
[GENETIC OPTIMIZATION CORRECTED PHYSIOLOGICAL DEFICIENCIES]
[SKELETAL MISALIGNMENTS: CORRECTED]
[SCAR TISSUE: REDUCED 34%]
[VISUAL ACUITY: RESTORED]
Visual acuity. Kade blinked and realized with a jolt that everything was *sharp*. Clear. He'd had terrible vision since he was eight years old. Now—
He could see individual dust particles floating in the sunlight.
"You fixed my eyes." His voice came out quieter.
[CORRECTED GENETIC MARKERS ASSOCIATED WITH OPTICAL DEGENERATION]
[CURRENT VISUAL ACUITY: 20/10]
Better than perfect. Kade stared at his reflection, at the grey eyes that looked the same but *worked* completely differently now.
"Why keep them grey? You changed everything else."
[CONCEALMENT PROTOCOL]
[EYE COLORATION LINKED TO AWAKENED ABILITY EXPRESSION]
[MAINTAINING GREY DESIGNATION ENSURES F-RANK APPEARANCE]
[DEVIATION WOULD TRIGGER SUSPICION]
So it was intentional. The system had rebuilt him from the inside out but left the one thing that marked him as trash. The one thing everyone used to identify him as worthless.
Probably saved his life.
Kade turned away from the mirror and looked around his apartment. Nothing had changed—same cramped box, same flickering light crystal, same window overlooking the alley.
But he had changed. Fundamentally.
"Show me what you did. All of it."
[ACCESSING PERSONAL STATUS INTERFACE]
New text appeared, more structured:
***
[KADE VEYRON - PRIME SYSTEM USER]
[INTEGRATION LEVEL: STAGE 1 (FOUNDATIONAL)]
[BIOLOGICAL AGE: 16]
***
[PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES]
[VITALITY: 24] (+14 from baseline)
[STRENGTH: 18] (+8 from baseline)
[AGILITY: 21] (+11 from baseline)
[PERCEPTION: 27] (+17 from baseline)
[FOCUS: ERROR - MEASUREMENT EXCEEDS PARAMETERS]
***
[EXTERNAL CLASSIFICATION: F-RANK]
[ACTUAL COMBAT CAPABILITY: ESTIMATED C-RANK EQUIVALENT]
[SCALING POTENTIAL: UNKNOWN]
***
Kade stared at the Focus line. "What does 'measurement exceeds parameters' mean?"
[STANDARD AWAKENED FOCUS RANGE: 8-12 (F-RANK) TO 28-35 (C-RANK)]
[YOUR FOCUS ATTRIBUTE: ESTIMATED 45+]
[CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS CANNOT ACCURATELY MEASURE VALUES ABOVE THRESHOLD]
[EXTERNAL SCANNERS WILL REGISTER AS: MEASUREMENT FAILURE OR F-RANK DEFAULT]
Forty-five. The number felt impossible. Even C-Ranks rarely broke thirty.
"That's not—that can't be normal."
[YOUR MOTHER'S PRIMARY DESIGN OBJECTIVE: MAXIMIZE ABILITY EXPRESSION POTENTIAL]
[SIDE EFFECT: ABNORMAL FOCUS CAPACITY]
[WARNING: DETECTION RISK SEVERE]
Kade's stomach dropped. "What kind of detection risk?"
[INDIVIDUALS WITH ABNORMAL POTENTIAL ARE HIGH-VALUE TARGETS]
[MILITARY CONSCRIPTION: 0.3% SURVIVAL RATE]
[CORPORATE ACQUISITION: 89% EXPERIMENTATION PROBABILITY]
[RIVAL FACTION ELIMINATION: PREVENT FUTURE THREAT]
"So if anyone finds out what I actually am, I'm dead or worse."
[CORRECT]
[CONCEALMENT PROTOCOLS ACTIVE]
[EXTERNAL OBSERVATION WILL REGISTER: F-RANK]
[VIOLATION OF CONCEALMENT MAY RESULT IN TERMINATION]
Kade sat down hard on his bed. His legs felt weak—or maybe they felt normal and he just wasn't used to processing fear through a nervous system that worked this efficiently.
"I missed deployment." He said it out loud, testing the reality. "I was supposed to report to Outpost Seven at dawn. That was—" He checked the angle of sunlight. "—four hours ago. Maybe five."
[MILITARY DEPLOYMENT: CANCELED]
[METHOD: AUTOMATED MEDICAL DEFERRAL FILED AT 04:23]
[DIAGNOSIS: ACUTE NEURAL TRAUMA - NON-HOSPITALIZED OBSERVATION]
[DURATION: 72-HOUR HOME MONITORING PERIOD]
[RE-EVALUATION REQUIRED: THREE DAYS FROM NOW]
"You filed paperwork." Kade's voice came out flat. "You hacked military systems and committed fraud."
[ALTERNATIVE: DEPLOYMENT TO OUTPOST SEVEN WITH UNSTABLE INTEGRATION]
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 0.02%]
Fair point.
"And they won't check on me? Won't send someone to verify?"
[MEDICAL DEFERRAL CLASSIFIED AS: LOW PRIORITY]
[F-RANK PERSONNEL RECEIVE MINIMAL OVERSIGHT]
[PROBABILITY OF PHYSICAL CHECK: 12%]
[RECOMMENDED: REMAIN IN APARTMENT FOR 24 HOURS]
[AVOID CONTACT WITH AUTHORITIES]
Kade laughed—a broken, bitter sound. "Right. Because I'm worthless. Even when I'm supposedly injured, no one cares enough to check."
The system didn't respond.
Kade stood and walked to the window. The city sprawled in the distance, towers glowing with Rift-light. Somewhere out there, his deployment group was probably loading onto transports. Heading to Outpost Seven. Four-month life expectancy.
He should feel relieved.
He felt numb.
"My parents died for this." His voice came out quieter than he intended. "They died so you could... what? Turn me into a weapon?"
[ACCESSING ARCHIVED MESSAGE]
[ORIGIN: VEYRON, MIRA (DECEASED)]
[RECORDED: 12 YEARS AGO]
New text appeared, different formatting—like a transcript:
***
"Kade—if you're reading this, we're gone. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry we couldn't be there for you.
You need to understand: what's coming is worse than the Rifts. Worse than the war. The people in power know it. They're hoarding strength for themselves while everyone else is left to die.
This system—it's not perfect. It's dangerous. It might hurt you. But it's the only way I could give you a fighting chance.
Don't trust anyone. Don't reveal what you are. And whatever you do—survive. That's all that matters.
Survive."
***
The message faded.
Kade stood in silence.
Then he spoke, his voice hard: "She was wrong about one thing."
[QUERY?]
"Survival isn't all that matters." Kade turned away from the window. "If I'm going to carry this thing—if I'm stuck with it—then I'm going to *use* it. Not just to survive. To stop being stepped on."
[ACKNOWLEDGED]
[PROGRESSION AVAILABLE]
[CURRENT OBJECTIVE: ACQUIRE RIFT ESSENCE]
"Rift Essence. That comes from killing monsters."
[CORRECT]
[STANDARD CREATURES: 1-5 ESSENCE PER KILL]
[DUNGEON CORES: 50-200 ESSENCE]
[CURRENT ESSENCE: 0]
[REQUIRED FOR STAGE 2: 1000]
A thousand. That meant killing two hundred creatures minimum. Probably more.
Kade knew of one place: Hollowbreak Passage. Low-tier dungeon about an hour outside the city. Used for training military recruits. F and E-Rank creatures.
Dangerous for solo hunters.
Perfect for someone who needed to stay off the radar.
"One question." Kade looked at his hands. "This ability you gave me—Force Cascade. What happens if I actually use it? Full power?"
[CONCEALMENT PROTOCOLS WILL FAIL]
[ENERGY SIGNATURE: C-RANK]
[DETECTION PROBABILITY: 94% WITHIN 500-METER RADIUS]
[RECOMMENDED: LIMIT OUTPUT TO F-RANK LEVELS]
[RELY ON ENHANCED PHYSIOLOGY FOR COMBAT ADVANTAGE]
So he'd have to fight like an F-Rank while hoping his boosted stats were enough to keep him alive.
Kade smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes.
"Sounds about right. Nothing's ever easy."
He grabbed his jacket—worn synthetic, patched in three places—and headed for the door.
Behind him, text appeared:
[WARNING: PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS LEVELS ELEVATED]
[RECOMMENDATION: 24-HOUR RECOVERY PERIOD]
[QUERY: ARE YOU CERTAIN YOU WISH TO PROCEED?]
Kade didn't answer.
The door closed behind him.
In the empty apartment, silver text flickered once more before fading:
[USER PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE: UPDATE REQUIRED]
[EXPECTED BEHAVIOR: CAUTIOUS, FEARFUL, COMPLIANT]
[OBSERVED BEHAVIOR: RECKLESS, ANGRY, DEFIANT]
[CONCLUSION: INTEGRATION MAY HAVE AMPLIFIED PRE-EXISTING SELF-DESTRUCTIVE TENDENCIES]
[MONITORING RECOMMENDED]