The world didn't just tilt; it started screaming in a language of static and heat.
I was strapped into a bucket seat in the back of what felt like an armored coffin, my wrists locked into heavy magnetic cuffs. They hummed with a low, vibrating frequency that kept my arms pinned, but the cold metal was the least of my concerns. The real problem was the black liquid currently tearing through my nervous system.
My vision was a jagged, flickering mess. Every time I drew a breath, the colors of the cabin shifted. One second, the walls were a bruised, sickly violet; the next, they flared into a neon orange that made my teeth ache. It felt like my body was trying to fight off an infection it didn't have a name for. My cells were reacting to the vial like it was a foreign poison, even though it had come from my own mother's hands.
"Look at his eyes," a voice muttered. It was sharp and clinical.
I forced my eyelids open. Through the prismatic haze, I saw a man in a gray coat leaning over a holographic display. His face was illuminated by scrolling blue data, and he didn't look at me like I was a person. He looked at me like a biological anomaly that refused to settle into a predictable pattern. That had to be Apauex.
"The readings are nonsensical," he continued, his fingers tapping the air as he swiped through graphs. "Whatever he injected is causing a massive systemic shock. His vitals are spiking in a way that suggests his body is trying to accommodate an energy source it doesn't have. If we don't stabilize whatever this reaction is, his heart is going to give out before we even reach the Spires."
"Then do your job and stabilize him," another voice commanded.
This one was different. It was heavy, resonant. It didn't just fill the room; it owned it. I turned my head slowly—the movement made the cabin spin like a top—and saw him. Mr. Magnetic sat across from me, his arms folded. He wasn't looking at the screens or the data. He was staring straight at me, his eyes dark and unblinking.
"You're a strange one, Kaleb Young," Magnetic said. His voice was a low rumble I felt in my chest. "Sentinel called you a Project. A success story. But you look like a mess to me. A kid who got desperate enough to play with things he clearly doesn't understand."
"I did... what I had to," I managed to choke out. The words felt like they were coated in sand.
Magnetic didn't get angry. He didn't even flinch. He just tilted his head, watching the way my skin rippled with that strange, dark energy. "Sentinel thinks they can cage the Nexus. They think they can turn a cosmic force into a battery. But they don't understand that without a host, the energy just... rots. It needs a heart to beat. And yours is currently failing. I want to know why you're so intent on destroying yourself."
"Then let me," I rasped. And in that moment, I meant it. I just wanted the noise to stop.
The transport slowed, the hum of the engines dropping to a low growl. The doors hissed open, and the air that rushed in was thick with the smell of hot metal, scorched earth, and ozone. They dragged me out, my legs feeling like they were made of wet cardboard.
We were in a place that shouldn't exist. Towers of dark, twisted alloy reached up into the smoggy sky like skeletal fingers. There were no right angles here; everything curved and leaned in ways that made my stomach turn.
A figure stepped out from behind a massive pillar. He didn't walk so much as he drifted. Vesper. He stopped a few feet away, his eyes completely hollow, staring at me with a hunger that made the hair on my neck stand up.
"He smells like a ghost," Vesper whispered. The voice didn't come from his throat; it just appeared in my head, cold and oily. "Hollow. Ready to be filled."
"Back off, Vesper," Magnetic snapped. "He's not a meal.
Vesper let out a dry, rattling chuckle and vanished back into the shadows.
They threw me onto a scanning bed in a lab that looked more like a temple to logic than a medical bay. Apauex was back over me in seconds, his fingers flying across his tablets.
"The Nexus Core at Northpoint is dying, Kaleb," Apauex said, his voice devoid of any emotion. "And since you were the one it chose, you're still the anchor. Even if the energy is gone from your body, the connection is quantum. If that Core blinks out, the feedback will likely fry your brain. You're a pair of failing batteries, and I intend to find out why your body is rejecting its own survival."
"Then why do you care?" I asked, my hands gripping the edges of the bed until my knuckles turned white.
Magnetic stepped into my line of sight, looming over me. "Because we don't believe in waste. Sentinel wants to study you. We want to use you. There is a difference."
He leaned in closer, his presence pressing down on me like a physical weight. "I don't know what was in that vial, and I don't care. But that power? It's trying to wake up. And if you want to live long enough to see the sun again, you're going to help us figure out how to make it behave."
He turned and walked out, the heavy metal door thudding shut with a magnetic snap that echoed through the room.
I was alone.
The rainbow shifts in my vision were finally starting to settle, but they didn't go back to normal. The room stayed gray, but it was a different kind of gray. It was… detailed.
I leaned my head back against the scanning bed, gasping as the heat in my veins began to cool into a dull, rhythmic throb. I looked at the ceiling. I didn't just see tiles and recessed lighting. I saw the hairline fractures in the concrete above the panels. I saw the way the copper wiring hummed with electricity, pulsing like a nervous system.
I looked at the door. I couldn't "feel" Booker. I couldn't "reach out" to the world. In fact, the world felt smaller than it ever had. I was trapped in a box, and for the first time, I could see every single screw holding that box together.
I looked at my own hand. The black energy from the vial wasn't glowing; it was vibrating. It was coiled around my bones like a shadow that had weight. It wasn't a weapon. Not yet. It was just a lens.
I tried to focus on the door lock again. My head flared with a sharp, stabbing pain—the vial's way of reminding me that I was still a guest in my own body. I couldn't just "think" the door open. I didn't have the strength to even stand up, let alone manipulate the lock.
I didn't have the Nexus. I didn't have a rescue party. All I had was this new, unwanted clarity.
My mother had hidden this from me to keep me "normal." But as I watched the energy crawl through the walls of my cell, I realized that "normal" was a luxury I had traded away a long time ago.
I closed my eyes to hide from the overwhelming detail of the room. I was alone, I was broken, and I was being watched.
But for the first time, I knew exactly how many bars were in my cage.