Niklas Tesla Yamato stared out the narrow window of the Institute's quantum lab, his breath fogging the glass. Beyond it, the city lights shimmered like constellations—an artificial sky made by people who never looked at the real one anymore.
He adjusted his hoodie and tucked a strand of inky black hair behind one ear. Beneath him, the lab buzzed with muted conversations and digital hums. It was almost midnight. His parents were downstairs finalizing the parameters of what was supposed to be the greatest breakthrough in quantum physics since the Copenhagen interpretation. Niklas, age 17, high-IQ, still a virgin, and possibly allergic to social interaction, was their "unofficial assistant."
Unofficial because no one was supposed to know he was smarter than half the PhDs in the room.
He touched the device in his pocket—an enhancement neural link he'd customized himself. Technically illegal, medically untested, but... effective. His mother never quite approved of it, but she didn't stop him either. Maybe she knew this was the only way he felt close to people—by racing far ahead of them.
The door to the observation deck slid open behind him.
"Staring at the city like a brooding anime character won't change the calculations," came his mother's voice. Dr. Yuko Yamato, world-renowned neurosurgeon, wore her surgical coat like armor. Beneath it, she was lean, poised, and dangerously brilliant.
Niklas didn't turn. "Just thinking. About probability fields."
"And girls, maybe?" she teased.
He snorted. "The only field I know is quantum."
Yuko chuckled and came to stand beside him. She rested a hand on his shoulder. "You could do something else, you know. Robotics, AI... dating."
"Pass."
"Still scared of people?"
"No," he lied.
She smiled faintly. "You've got a beautiful mind, Nik. You inherited the best from both of us. Just… promise me you'll live, not just think."
He didn't answer. Couldn't. Instead, he slipped away from her gaze and headed for the stairwell.
Below, the lab resembled a futuristic dungeon. Screens floated above consoles. Robotic arms whirred. Technicians moved like ghosts. In the center stood the prototype: QEM-7—Quantum Entanglement Manipulator, seventh iteration.
Niklas slipped into his station. His father, Dr. Anton Tesla, didn't look up from the command panel. "You're late. Calibration's off."
"Because your last sequence was 0.6 nanoseconds too fast," Niklas replied without emotion. He tapped in a correction.
Anton grunted. That was as close to praise as he ever got.
The other scientists murmured and watched as Niklas refined the entanglement matrices, threading coherence through probability curves. To them, this was science fiction. To him, it was chess. Just with atoms instead of pawns.
Yuko appeared beside Anton. "Phase lock achieved?"
Niklas nodded. "Stabilizing pair node in 3… 2…"
The core of the machine lit up—an impossible sphere of light floating mid-air, tethered to nothing. A visual representation of entangled qubits across impossible distances. Reality, blinking.
Yuko whispered, "Nik, are you sure you want to be this close to the core?"
He glanced at her. "I'm the only one who can interpret the changes fast enough if something destabilizes."
Anton looked worried. "Pull him out if there's flux."
"There won't be," Niklas said. "I accounted for—"
The sphere pulsed.
No one moved.
Then it shuddered, expanding like a breath, drawing in sound and light. A static field surged through the lab. Every screen scrambled. Sirens blared.
"Get back!" Anton shouted.
Yuko lunged for Niklas, but he was frozen, staring into the eye of the core. It was pulsing with him, each beat syncing to his heart.
Something cracked. The air. The room. His sense of self.
Then—
A scream—not his voice, but every voice. Male. Female. Mechanical. Animal. A thousand layers at once. It stabbed through him like glass in the brain.
He felt his feet lift off the ground. The world became starlight.
Niklas…
He saw flashes. A battlefield. A stone city. Blood on his hands. A woman's voice, soft, dangerous. Chains. Fire. His own face, older, broken.
Niklas Yamato has died.
The core burst open. He didn't fall. He didn't rise. He was pulled, torn from his body like a suit discarded.
As the quantum field collapsed in on itself, the last fragment of Niklas's soul fractured into pieces, scattering across the dimensions like shards of thought.