The next few days were a blur of forced normalcy. No more announcements, no surprises. I moved through my classes with heavy eyelids, my patience fraying at the slightest sharpening of a pencil or the squeak of a sneaker. I kept to myself, avoiding Yinoh at lunch and letting my mind drift during lectures.
I thought maybe the fever dream was finally breaking. I was wrong.
It started with a flicker. Not a shadow or a trick of the light, but a momentary jitter in the air itself—like a frame dropping in a video. I blinked it away, blaming the fluorescent hum of the hallway. Then came the audio. When I was alone in the restrooms or the back of the library, I'd hear a faint, electronic chirp. A boot-up tone, too crisp to be ringing in my ears.
Maybe it's just stress, I told myself. Or maybe I haven't let go of Mom's voice.
The "glitch" finally broke cover during math class. I was copying a mathematical formula from the board when the world simply... lagged.
"Mr. Maxence! Pay attention!"
The teacher's voice snapped me upright, but as I looked back at the board, time curdled. The dust motes in the sunbeams froze mid-air. The teacher's follow-up sentence stretched into a low, distorted growl. My own hands felt encased in invisible lead.
[ ...Motion detected... ]
[ ...System query: still dormant... stand...by... ]
The voice wasn't in the room. It was vibrating against the inside of my skull. Then, the world slammed back into gear. The bell rang—a violent, piercing shriek—and I nearly took my desk down as I flinched.
"Whoa, easy." Yinoh was there, catching the back of my chair before it hit the floor. "You okay, Hash? You look like you just saw a ghost."
"Yeah," I croaked, my throat dry. "Just zoned out."
But I hadn't. I'd been paused.
That night, sleep was a lost cause. I lay staring at the ceiling, waiting for the silence to break. It didn't disappoint. Just as my eyes began to feel heavy, the whisper returned—clearer, colder.
[ ...Hash...ence... ]
[ ...Initiate— ]
[ —tion deferred... stand...by... ]
I bolted upright, heart hammering against my ribs. The room was empty. Just the hum of the AC and the thud of my own pulse. "I'm not crazy," I whispered to the dark. Something was waking up inside me, and it didn't feel like a "gift." It felt like an installation.
The next morning, I couldn't hide it anymore. I sat at the breakfast nook, pushing my rice into a small mountain while my dad scrolled through his laptop.
"Dad," I said, my voice thin. "Can I ask something weird?"
He looked up, his expression shifting from his morning emails to me. A small, practiced smirk played on his lips. "You're always asking weird questions, son. It's practically your brand. What's up this time?"
I managed a weak, dry chuckle before the weight of it returned. "I've been... seeing things. Glitches. And voices, but not like people talking. Like static. Like a computer trying to boot up inside my head." I winced, the words feeling heavier now that they were out in the air. "I know how that sounds."
The smirk vanished. Dad didn't laugh; he didn't even blink. He set his coffee down with a deliberate clack and grabbed his tablet from his suitcase. His fingers blurred as he tapped through a series of encrypted menus, syncing with the biometrics from my room's sensors—or maybe, I realized with a chill, syncing with the ones already inside me.
He skimmed the scrolling lines of code, his brow furrowing into a deep, worried V.
"Vitals are stable," he said slowly. "Brainwave patterns show some minor elevated activity in the temporal lobe, but it's within the 'heavy dreaming' range. Everything looks... functional."
"Functional?" I slumped. "Dad, it feels like I'm losing my grip on reality."
He reached over, tousling my hair with a gentle smile. "You've been under a lot of pressure lately—probably that upcoming Midterm weight on your shoulders. I'll keep an eye on the remote feed, but try not to overthink it. If it gets worse, we'll do a full neuro-scan, okay?"
"Yeah. Okay."
I reached for my glass of water, but as my fingers brushed the cold glass, the kitchen washed out. The warmth of the morning sun turned grey. Sound flattened into a vacuum.
[ ...Calibration attempt: resume?... ]
[ ...Error. Host unaware. ]
The voice was a pulse behind my eyes now. My breath hitched, a shaky, panicked sound.
"Hash?" Dad asked. He was looking at me, but his image was vibrating, ghosting at the edges. "You okay? You went pale."
"I'm... dizzy," was the only way I could describe the feeling.
As Dad looked back down at his tablet, a ripple passed over his screen—a digital distortion that followed the movement of my eyes. He didn't see it. He couldn't.
Then, my vision went white.
It wasn't a flash; it was a total system override. A single frame of absolute, blinding light, as a camera flash triggered inside my retinas.
[ ...Initialization scheduled... ]
The light vanished. The kitchen rushed back in—the smell of coffee, the hum of the fridge, the mundane safety of home. Dad was still there, oblivious. But the terror stayed. Something was waking up, and I was starting to realize I might not be the one in control of the power button.