The light in corridor 7-C was flickering irregularly. Something in the current seemed to stutter—or perhaps suffocate. Leith walked slowly, trying to gather her thoughts after an extended session with the Mental Spectrum Committee.
This wasn't the first time she'd encountered an "unclassified consciousness," but it was certainly the strangest.
In her hand, a portable device displayed a graph of Kyle's latest wave recordings. The frequency repeated every 42 seconds, then shut off completely before restarting.
She whispered, "It's as if the mind itself is rebooting."
She reached the entrance of Lab E-4 and entered the access code. The doors slid open with a low hiss, revealing the familiar emptiness: a circular platform in the center, peripheral seating around it, everything coated in shades of gray.
But it wasn't entirely empty.
A man sat in the corner, his face obscured by a visual reader. His right hand was connected to wires feeding into an analysis unit.
Without lifting his head, he said, "He has come."
Leith replied, "Who do you mean?"
— "The voice. It's no longer just inside him. It's testing an exit."
She stepped closer, staring at the screen connected to his arm. The data was incomprehensible—symbols flashing rapidly, lines of a linguistic pattern she'd never seen before.
— "What is this?"
— "It… is writing itself."
❖
Elsewhere in the facility, Kyle wandered down a corridor he'd never entered before. He didn't know how he'd gotten there. He'd simply woken up and found himself there.
The walls here were smooth, stark white, but the light didn't come from any visible source. No lamps. No vents. Just a soft glow, as if space itself had decided to illuminate.
At the end of the hallway, something was waiting for him.
A massive device, resembling a metal coffin, rested on a glass pedestal. A blue light pulsed from its side vents, reflecting on the floor.
He approached it, then felt something inside him activate—a faint numbness at the base of his neck, a tremor in his fingers.
Then…
> "Enter."
He didn't hesitate.
❖
In the monitoring unit, Eliana shouted, "He's vanished from the tracking systems!"
Technicians rushed to reset the system, but Kyle's location didn't reappear.
— "Did he enter one of the secured labs?"
— "No gate crossings were logged. It's like he… evaporated."
❖
Inside, Kyle felt his body grow lighter. The walls disappeared. Everything turned ethereal. An expanding void surrounded him, then suddenly…
Voices.
Scattered words, yet familiar:
> "Nurem… Project Neosis… The Discourse… The Original Formula…"
Then, faces appeared—not clear, like specters of distant memories.
Then, in the midst of this thickening silence, the voice returned:
> "Do you know why you don't remember? Because they didn't program you to."
❖
In another corner of the world, untouched by human hands, a forgotten archive unit reactivated encrypted files.
File title:
> Helix_Protocol_0_N
Status: Reactivated
Access: GRANTED
Then, a window opened:
> "If you are reading this, know that the first iteration has been triggered. If not stopped, it will search for itself… in everyone like it."
❖
Back in the facility, Kyle suddenly regained consciousness—but not in his bed.
Instead, he was in a completely different room. Dark, its walls studded with black mirrors. Reflections that didn't show reality, but forgotten moments.
Suddenly, his reflection smiled. But Kyle hadn't.
Then, he heard the words:
> "The Discourse has begun. And it will continue until consciousness breaks."
On the floor, a spiral of digital symbols appeared… and a single word repeating:
> "Nurem" "Nurem" "Nurem"
❖
In the operations room, Leith stared at the mental map. The black void in Kyle's consciousness was no longer just a void.
It had become… an entity.
Pulsing. Expanding. Whispering her name.
Then… Kyle's face appeared on the screen, but he didn't speak. He simply stared straight at her, as if he knew she was watching.
Then, everything went dark