Something heavy struck the center of the darkness—a sudden, violent jolt of static electricity. The consciousness reacted instantly, its awareness snapping back into a sharp, narrow focus.
A pale light appeared in the vacuum. A screen. A strange, translucent interface was floating directly ahead in the space. The mind stared at the lines of light, but there was absolutely no understanding of what the visuals meant.
The voice returned, clearer now, cutting through the ringing sound. “Boss! Can you hear me?”
It was significantly louder by the second. The consciousness tried to form a syllable, to move a jaw, but nothing came out of the dark.
The screen flickered twice. Rows of unfamiliar, blocky symbols appeared across the display sheet. The voice continued through the channel. “Boss, please respond to the prompt.”
The mind stared at the text. Something about the frequency of the sound felt old, familiar, and deep. It wasn’t the literal sound of the words, but something underlying it—like a long-buried memory that wasn’t supposed to exist.
A single word slowly surfaced from the black depths. System.
The consciousness didn’t understand why the word had appeared. It didn’t know; it simply recognized it as an absolute fact.
Its lips moved in the dark. “...System?”
The translucent screen went completely still. For three long seconds, the symbols stopped rolling.
Then—
“Boss?” The voice sounded entirely different now, the synthesized tone dropping into a stunned, broken register. “You... you actually remember me?”
The mind stared at the light, preparing to ask who it belonged to. It wanted to ask where its body was currently staying. It wanted to ask what had happened to the road and the red sky. But none of the questions could reach the surface. The deep darkness behind its eyes remained solid.
Then, somewhere far away beyond the void, a machine began screaming with a frantic, metallic alarm.
The connection hitched. The translucent screen flickered violently, the edges blurring into white noise. The voice became heavily distorted, clipping through the interface.
B_Boss... listen to me... $## need to wake up... ### They’re trying to extract the—
A heavy wave of static swallowed the rest of the sentence. The translucent screen shattered into glowing particles and disappeared from the vacuum. The heavy darkness returned to space.
But this time, the consciousness did not drift away into the rest. Something fundamental had changed under the skin. A single word remained anchored to the center of the mind, burning through the blackness.
System.
The voice remained inside the darkness.
“Boss?”
Something moved. Not around the body, but deep within the marrow. A cold, distinct ripple passed through the vast vacuum of his consciousness. It wasn’t the searing agony of the current, nor was it the thick warmth of the nutrient fluid. He couldn’t define the sensation. Something seemed to be shifting somewhere entirely beyond his conscious reach. He tried to lock his awareness onto it, straining against the dark.
Nothing.
The weight disappeared. Then it came back, noticeably harder this time, pressing against his ribs. He had no concept of what it was, nor did he know if the energy even belonged to his own flesh.
“Boss?”
The voice sounded distant again, fading out into white noise. Before his mind could formulate a response, a pale point of light fractured the dark. White. At first, it was little more than a needle prick in the vacuum. Then it began to expand.
He stared straight into the light. The glare continued to swell until it completely swallowed the darkness around his shoulders. It was too bright, cutting behind his eyelids. He tried to twist his head away, but there was nowhere to turn in the emptiness. He raised an arm instinctively to block the line of sight, but even his own hand was entirely invisible through the blinding intensity.
The white light reached him, rolling over his chest. For a split second, nothing altered.
Then everything disappeared.
Inside the concrete laboratory, one of the techs suddenly jarred backward, his metal stool screeching against the floorboards. “What the—”
The biopod was glowing. Blinding white light leaked through the thick plexiglass visor, growing brighter by the millisecond until the amber error warnings on the console were completely washed out.
“Shut the system down!” the director commanded, his coat swinging as he lunged forward.
“I can’t! The terminal override isn’t accepting the input!”
“Cut the primary breakers!”
“I already pulled them! The grid is completely dead!”
The overhead fluorescent bulbs throughout the room flickered violently, buzzed, and shattered, showering the floor with glass dust. Someone slammed his forearm over his eyes, cursing as the glare burned straight through his lids. Another researcher stumbled sideways into an iron table, sending a tray of surgical instruments crashing to the pavement.
The director standing near the frame stared into the core of the brightness, the skin of his face burning from the sheer thermal energy radiating through the steel casing. “What’s happening to the biomass readout?”
Nobody answered him. The white light had completely encased the subject, expanding until the fluid in the tank began to violently cycle. For one brief, heavy second, the dark silhouette of the figure could still be tracked inside the core.
Then—
Gone.
The light vanished instantly, leaving the laboratory in absolute pitch-blackness, save for the weak amber strips of the emergency batteries. The room fell dead silent.
The tech turned on his handheld torch, the beam shaking violently as he aimed it at the glass panel. “No...”
He stepped closer, the light bouncing off the empty pod. The heavy hydraulic restraints were still fastened, locked tight against the rubberized backing. The silicone lines were still connected, pumping empty nutrient fluid into a bare berth. There was absolutely nothing inside the tank.
“Where did the mass go?” the tech whispered, his voice cracking. “The vitals ground out to zero.”
Nobody knew. The director stared at the empty wrist cuffs, his face graying under the emergency lights. He looked around the ruined room, his fingers tightening.
“Seal the entire facility. Lock the perimeter gates.”
One of the junior researchers turned toward him, his eyes wide in the torchlight. “Sir?”
“Now!”
The shout finally broke the paralysis holding the staff. People began moving frantically down the dark line. Heavy reinforced doors slammed shut down the corridor, their iron bolts locking with a dull thud. Alarms started sounding across the complex—a high-pitched mechanical wail. But none of them noticed that something had already left the coordinates of the facility entirely.
Something had left much farther than the boundaries of the sector.