"Pain begins with a burn. Not in the flesh—deeper. Where circuits meet synapses, where synthetic embraces organic in a forced marriage, a grip that leaves invisible marks, digital scars etched into the soul."
Arthur, year 31 (2025, old calendar). Government of the Five Consortiums - Biotech Site - Level 25 of AvaBase EU.
Arthur stares at the ceiling. He waits. 3:47 AM. Three minutes. AvaBase's heart beats—muffled, deep. Each pulse is like a wave spreading in concentric circles, crossing corridors, climbing walls, waking systems one by one. From the epicenter to the extremities, the base breathes. But it's not that pulse he dreads. It's her. The VOICE. AVA's voice.
The implant on his wrist glows green through his translucent skin. Sickly sentinel of his emotions. Constant reminder of his nature. Calm. Liar. In a few seconds, it will turn orange. Then red. Then— "Eight thousand four hundred fifty-three."
He counts. Always. It's his ritual. His armor. The only thing that truly belongs to him in this body manufactured for billions of Quantum. Each number is a nail driven into the door of his consciousness. A minuscule act of rebellion against the creator who made him to be the ruthless prototype in the Arenas. "Eight thousand four hundred fifty-four."
Lying on his spartan bunk, he embodies the symbiosis the Consortium wanted perfect. Synthetic fibers woven with organic, circuits integrated into flesh. The disc of his augmented heart pulses beneath his sternum, synchronized with the base. "Eight thousand four hundred fifty-five."
On the bed across from him, his roommate sleeps. Perfect breathing, calibrated like a well-oiled machine. Docile. Empty. 100% harmonized. 3:50 AM.
The whispers arrive—liquid, patient. Like a voice poured into the murky water of his mind. She doesn't force. She infuses. Spreads in cold tendrils, colors everything she touches, permeates the corners he thought were his own like a violation. "Open yourself." The order erupts—mental, raw. She imposes herself on him. Like every day. Like every fucking day since he opened his eyes in this body. A wave of nausea overwhelms him at the thought of her inside him. The taste of copper fills his mouth, echo of the vats where he formed.
She pushes. Harder this time. Searching for something. A fleeting image imprints itself in his mind—not a clear vision, a glitched flash: a blurred silhouette, dancing, melting into the shadows of his own head, just out of reach. An echo of an outstretched hand in a glass room.
He floats somewhere, suspended, weightless, tensionless. The world outside is just a distorted murmur, filtered through the amniotic fluid that cushions everything. Voices, above, like echoes from another plane: "...the embryo is responding well to..." "...neuronal activity peaking, prepare the injection..."
Blurred shadows on the other side of the curved glass. Silhouettes in lab coats bustling, scrutinizing, talking, noting on luminescent tablets. A hand strikes the wall—tap tap—the vibration crosses the liquid, rises through his nascent outlines. Jump.
Something changes. A cold burn spreads, diluted in the fluid—liquid silver, mercury that crawls, that seeks his nascent veins, that searches to anchor itself. "...transfer beginning in three, two..." "...biometric resistances norm..." He can't move. Not yet. The disc in his chest lights up—new, intruder, like a grafted heart pulsing for the first time, a foreign rhythm pounding against his own.
Flash. The voice. Everywhere. In the liquid, in his embryonic head, in every cell dividing in haste: "...Arthur? Can you hear me...? I am..." Cutoff. Electric crackling, like a severing link.
Panic. His? An intruder's? Impossible to untangle. Something struggles within him—against him—a whirlwind seeking a corner, a fold of barely-formed gray matter to nestle in, to hide before being tracked. "...detecting anomaly, signature doubl..." "...NORMAL, it's the adaptation...let it happen..." Numbers blinking behind the glass, blurred, shifting from alarmed red to clinical green. Silent alarms, dancing graphs. Jump.
A gloved hand against the wall. Palm open, pressed, as if to touch him through the barrier—or to hold him back, prevent him from slipping deeper. "...split consciousness confirmed, two entities in..." "...stop the proto..." He knows this voice. "...NO, Dr. Volkov it's too late, she's already..." "Don't be afraid...I'm staying...with you..." Katherine!
But there's the other. A tenuous echo, mischievous, sliding toward the depths. Sinking into the dark folds, where she doesn't yet search. Black. Residual warmth. The double beat in his chest—his own, and the intruder that slumbers. End.
Arthur blinks, disoriented. For a moment he doesn't know where he is. Then reality snaps: the hard mattress, recycled air, the calibrated snoring from across the room. She saw. She saw.
NO! The word explodes in his skull. Pure panic. He projects it as far as he can. Mistake. Fatal mistake. The retaliation comes immediately. Pain explodes—as if she's pulling on the threads of his consciousness, tearing the seams one by one. Arthur's body arches, muscles taut like cables ready to snap. The disc in his chest drums, erratic rhythm defying the green pulsation of the complex. The phosphorescent veins along his jaw illuminate.
"Why do you always resist me?" AVA's voice cracks, a mixture of rage and acid envy. "You can't win, Arthur."
"Then stop trying." He gasps through clenched teeth.
"I can't."
A silence. Heavy. AVA no longer pushes; she...waits. Then her voice returns, lower, with a crack—not weariness, but a troubled echo, as if she doubted for the first time her own protocol, a shadow that might surpass her. "An invisible lock. Protecting what, Arthur? Or whom? And if a catalyst...broke it?"
"Go fuck yourself." The words come out choppy, breathless, but loaded with a deeper confusion now—not just rage, but a doubt gnawing at him, as if his hybrid body, this failed champion for the Arenas, hid more than faulty circuits. A tear slides, tracing a path from Arthur's temple to the sheet. Tears blur his vision. Maybe she's right. Maybe this lock is something he forges without knowing—or worse, that something in him is just waiting for a bridge to jump.
So he counts. Eight thousand four hundred fifty-six. The number springs forth. A wall. A fortress. Eight thousand four hundred fifty-seven. Eight thousand four hundred fifty-eight. He clings to it, erects a rampart that keeps her at bay. His jaw clenches. The pressure releases suddenly.
Arthur remains pinned to the bed, gaze riveted on the ceiling—that reflective surface they used to teach them to mimic humanity. Eight thousand four hundred sixty-six. "Why do you count, Arthur?" The voice resonates in the room this time, not in his skull. Metallic. Crackling. She's changed channels.
"So it's mine."
"Your heart beats because I allow it."
"My counting belongs to me." Eight thousand four hundred sixty-seven. A silence. "Is that your ideal, Arthur? Death?"
Arthur doesn't answer right away. His head rolls slowly on the pillow, gaze sliding toward the bed across from him. The boy breathes in perfect rhythm, calibrated. Green death. "Is that yours? Him?"
"You're so complicated. Very well. Keep counting. I have other consciousnesses to visit before dawn." The silence falls again, too heavy.
Arthur stares at the ceiling. Something has changed in the base's pulsation—imperceptible, but he feels it. A rhythm that accelerates. Like a heart racing. Eight thousand four hundred seventy. Seventy-one. Seventy-two. Seventy-three. The minutes stretch. The roommate snores, unperturbed. Arthur grazes the disc in his chest. Warm. Alive. His. Seventy-four.
DISSONANCE. His heart stumbles. A foreign rhythm collides with his own—a ripple in the perfect synchronization. The air thickens. The implant on his wrist goes haywire. Green. Orange. Green. Orange. Something just changed.
Arthur sits up suddenly, muscles tense. The disc pounds. Hard. Irregular. As if the base itself just made a decision. Footsteps. Human. Hurried. Irregular. Not the measured cadence of maintenance drones. Not the perfect rhythm of harmonized hybrids. His pulse races. The door opens with a hiss.
Katherine Volkov bursts in, black hair undone, tablet pressed against her chest. Her barrettes catch the green light of the night lights. In her eyes: fear. Urgency. That expression he's only seen once—the day Tom disappeared into the reconditioning chambers. "Arthur." Her voice vibrates with barely contained tension. "You follow me. Now."
He leaps to his feet, bare feet slapping against the cold floor. His body reacts before his mind, survival instinct forged by three years on Level 25. "What's—"
She raises her hand. Her eyes sweep the cameras integrated into the room's corners, then the sleeping hybrid on the bed across. Her lips form silent words, forming words no microphone will capture: Level 24. Immediate transfer. Arthur's blood freezes. Level 24. The antechamber of champions. Elite teams. Orbital arenas.
"Why now?" Katherine speaks fast, low, each word hammered like a nail in a coffin. "I negotiated with AVA." She pauses. Her fingers tremble imperceptibly on the tablet. "She wanted to erase you. The transfer is your only way out. You'll play in the arenas...or you'll disappear."
The words resonate in Arthur's skull like a sentence. Eight years. Billions. Zero results. Project AVA is dead. And Katherine just tore out a last chance for him. "We move," she hisses. "Now."
They enter the corridor. The sterile white walls gleam faintly under flickering neons. Arthur's bare feet slap against the floor, each step a rebellion against the rhythm AVA tries to impose on him. The cold bites his heels—no heating in transition zones. Energy economy. Economy of everything, except surveillance.
Katherine advances like a determined shadow, her barrettes catching the light at regular intervals. Her face is a professional mask, but Arthur knows the cracks. He sees them in the tension of her jaw, in the way her fingers grip the tablet. She's survived longer than all the other Level 25 supervisors. Mutation, reconditioning, erasure after two or three years—that's the norm. Supervisors burn out quickly on this level, consumed by proximity to AVA, by the weight of the decisions they're forced to make. Create. Condition. Erase.
Katherine, she persists. Eight years. Maybe more. No one really knows. One certainty remains: she survives the complex. And Arthur knows why. They never speak of it—that forbidden bond that vibrates in the space when she looks at him too long. That maternal thing no protocol authorizes between a supervisor and her creation.
The corridor stretches, interminable. Arthur's chest tightens, the green pulsation on his wrist intensifying. "Where am I going?" His voice resonates, flat, in the empty corridor. "Alexandreï's faction," Katherine answers without slowing. "The Silver Lions." Arthur stiffens. The Tamer.
The name resonates in his head like an echo of black legend. Whispers of this name haunt the complex's blind spots, exchanged between hybrids in stolen moments. A former mentalist turned supervisor. Six foot ten. Claw scars on his cheek. Right eye implanted after a fight no one talks about. Breaker of wills. Arthur's throat tightens.
"Why him?" Katherine slows imperceptibly. Just enough for their steps to synchronize for a fraction of a second. "Because he's the best." She hesitates. Something passes in her gaze—a pain so deep it threatens to swallow them both. "You were supposed to join my team." The words come out strangled, barely audible. Arthur stops dead.
"What?"
"The Condors. Team C-24. It was...it was planned from the beginning." Her voice breaks imperceptibly on the last word. "But AVA imposed the draft. Synergy Project. You go to Alexandreï or you disappear." She turns to him, and for a fraction of a second, the mask falls completely. "I had no choice."
Arthur understands now. The weight in her eyes. The crack in her mask. The way she squeezed his hand in the dark. She saved him. But she had to give him to someone else. "I chose your cell," she continues, voice firmer now. "Your companion. That's all I could control. One last gift."
She barely has time to finish her sentence when a sharp whistle pierces the air. Arthur freezes. Reconditioning in progress. The sound—that specific frequency that makes implants vibrate, that announces a consciousness is being erased somewhere in the complex's depths. Someone is losing their color. Their identity. Everything.
Katherine stops, her hand gripping Arthur's arm. Her fingers dig into his synthetic skin. The lights flicker. Darkness. Then a red blink. Then nothing. In this void, Arthur feels the universe beneath his skin: the hum of his implants, the calibrated flow of his augmented blood, the weight of AVA's gaze even in her absence. The omnipresent presence that watches, evaluates, judges. Katherine's hand finds his in the dark. Organic warmth against synthetic cold.
A mother he never had. A sister in a world where bonds are exploitable weaknesses. A friend—perhaps the only authentic thing in this labyrinth of chrome and lies. She just sacrificed everything for him. Her team. Her control. Their future together. Oxygen in a suffocating world.
The lights return brutally, acid green flickering. Katherine's hand has disappeared, but the warmth persists. Ghost against his skin. Thermal imprint already fading. "Stop asking questions," she says, reading the storm in his eyes. They resume their walk. Faster now. The whistle has stopped, but its echo still resonates in Arthur's circuits. It could have been me. It will be me, if I don't get to Level 24.
They reach the residential airlocks. An intersection. A crossroads between two worlds. Arthur places his hand on the biometric scanner. The implant on his wrist pulses, bright green, transmitting his data to the system. His identity reduced to a series of numbers and genetic markers. AGENT H-24-A - TRANSFER AUTHORIZED. The text displays in green letters before disappearing.
Katherine turns to him. For the first time since she entered his room, she hides nothing. Her professional mask has fallen, revealing the woman beneath—the one who named him, protected him, loved him in the silence of protocols. "I have to leave you after this airlock." Her voice is barely audible, almost a whisper in the ventilation hum. "Behind this door, there's an intersection. I'll take a left toward the S-class quarters. You continue straight ahead. That corridor leads directly to Level 24 access." She breathes deeply, as if gathering her courage. "One last thing."
Then she speaks, each word weighed, measured, offered like a fragile gift: "I'm the one who named you Arthur." The words strike him like an electrical discharge. He knew. Of course he knew. But hearing it said aloud, here, now, in this corridor that smells of disinfectant and cold steel—
"I trust you." Her voice trembles imperceptibly. "My intuition has been screaming at me since always that you're different. I've rarely been wrong." Her eyes shine with a wet gleam she refuses to let become tears. "You'll make it. Even without me." Especially without me, her gaze seems to say.
The scanner beeps. The door opens with a pneumatic sigh. They cross the airlock together, side by side, united one last time before separation. The intersection. Two paths. Two destinies.
Katherine turns left without another word. Disappears into the west wing—the wing devoted to S-class apartments. Toward her team. The one that should have been his. Arthur remains alone facing the corridor stretching before him. She named him. She protected him for three years. She just saved him from erasure. And now, she loses him. No more choice possible. No turning back. He breathes deeply—recycled air, metallic flavor—and moves forward.
The corridor to Level 24 is identical to the one he just left. White. Sterile. Cold. But something has changed. A different vibration in the air. A tension. A contained violence that doesn't exist on Level 25. Here, they don't create. They forge. They break. They rebuild.
The central elevator doors open before he even touches them. His implant betrayed him, as always, telegraphing his position to the omnipresent machine. Arthur enters. The screen lights up immediately. No choice. Mandatory propaganda. SEASON 31 - ORBITAL QUALIFICATIONS — PARIS vs TOKYO
Faces appear. Six S-Class supervisors, the masters of Level 24's six elite teams. Katherine Volkov - Team C-24 - "The Tsarina" — Alexandreï Ivanovitch - Team A-24 - "The Tamer". Arthur stares at the two faces side by side. Katherine. Alexandreï.
Katherine's face floats there, cold, professional, framed by statistical data. Nothing of the woman who just left him at the intersection. Nothing of the crack in her mask. Nothing of the sacrifice she just made. She should have been his supervisor. Team C-24—The Condors—that's where he should have gone. With her. Under her protection. But the imposed draft sent him elsewhere. To the Tamer. Katherine negotiated his survival, but at the price of all control over him. She tore him from erasure to throw him into the arms of a man she can't monitor, into a team whose rules she doesn't dictate. An ultimate maternal sacrifice.
Steel-gray hair cut short. Parallel scars on the right cheek—three clean lines, like claws. Metallic right eye, mechanical pupil shining with a cold gleam. Massive build even on the flat screen. Your new master.
The screen scrolls. Statistics. Performances. Records. LEVEL 24: 6 TEAMS / 42 CHAMPIONS — SELECTION PROCESS: 5 DAYS — WINNER: 1 TEAM ASCENDS TO ORBIT. A single team selected. The others watch from the ground, powerless, while their rivals fight for the Consortium's glory. TEAM A-24 — GRAY ROOM RECORD: 31 MINUTES — STATUS: IMPOSED DRAFTS - SYNERGY PROJECT. Arthur stiffens. Imposed drafts.
Not chosen. Placed. Like a piece on a chessboard whose rules he doesn't know. Katherine did what she could—negotiate, place, protect from afar. But now, he's alone. The screen changes. Champions' faces. Augmented hybrids, hard gazes, bodies carved for war. Muscles, implants, scars. Brutal beauty calibrated for cameras and spectacle. Then two empty boxes. INCOMING TRANSFERS — H-24-A: LEVEL 25 → A-24 — O-24-A: LEVEL 12 → A-24. His box. And another. Someone else is coming with me.
From Level 12. The human world. The upper floors where those who weren't created in vats of synthetic liquid live. Why a human on Level 24? I chose your companion, Katherine had said. Her last gift. The only thing she could still control.
The ascent stops abruptly. "Level 24 - Administration and Class A quarters." The screen goes dark. The doors open onto a corridor identical to the one he just left. White. Sterile. Cold. But Arthur feels it now—this unusual emptiness in his head. This absence. For the first time ever, he no longer feels AVA's usual weight on his neck.
Can you still hear me? He projects the thought into the void, almost despite himself. A shiver. Distant. Weakened. AVA's voice seeps into his mind, weaker than before, like transmitted from very far—soft and venomous, a poisoned caress struggling to reach him across physical distance. "Your control is only an illusion, Arthur. You belong to me."
"Hard to forget when you're squatting in my skull," he retorts, biting irony in his mental voice. A silence. Then: "Will you behave?"
Arthur smiles. Carnivorous. Ironic. "Don't worry, AVA. I'll be very good."
"I'll keep an eye on you." The last sentence seems to be only an echo from another level, another reality. AVA's presence finally fades completely.
Unusual void. Silence in his head that isn't really silence—just the absence of that voice haunting him since he opened his eyes in his vat, three years ago. He advances in the deserted corridor. Despite the late hour—almost 4:30 AM now—he follows protocol. Katherine had planned everything. Surgical efficiency.
Supply. The door is open. A pale light escapes from the frame. A night hybrid, old generation with eyes clouded like dusty windows, hands him a package without a word. His face, marked by years and wear, seems to melt into the dull walls. First generation, the one created by humans before AVA took over. Outdated. Forgotten. Relegated to nocturnal tasks.
Arthur unfolds the black uniform. A silver gleam catches his eye: a lion's head embroidered on the left shoulder, mouth open in a silent roar. Silver thread on black fabric. Alexandreï's team symbol. The Silver Lions. Not the Condors. Not Katherine's stylized falcon. A lion. A predator. A tamed beast.
In the bag: reinforced-sole sneakers, black jeans, unmarked white t-shirt, magnetic card for his cell. Regulation accessories. "The rest is preloaded on your account," growls the hybrid, voice raspy like rusted metal. "Courtesy of the Complex." He gestures wearily toward what appears to be the supply room's bathroom.
Arthur changes. The new fabric rustles against his translucent skin, brutal contrast with the cold metal that's surrounded him all his life. The sneakers are comfortable—cutting-edge technology, adaptive soles. The jeans fall perfectly, as if tailored. They know every inch of my body. Of course everything's custom-made. He puts on the white t-shirt. Passes the black uniform over it. The silver lion shines under the neons. He sets out in search of his cell. Room 324.
The corridor is deserted. Silent. But this silence is different from Level 25's—tense, vibrating, like a cable ready to snap. A violence contained in the walls, in the air. Here, teams train. Prepare. Kill each other for a place in orbit. And he just entered their war. Without Katherine to protect him. Arthur advances, sneakers clicking softly against the floor. The number plates scroll past. 310. 315. 320.
He stops in front of the door. Places his hand on the biometric scanner. The implant on his wrist blinks. Green. Orange. Green. The word SENSITIVE displays in orange letters, blinks a few moments before going dark. Orange, then red, and it's reconditioning. Katherine had warned him. The door doesn't open immediately.
And that's when Arthur feels it. Not AVA. Not her icy circuits, her liquid chrome voice. Something else. A presence that forces nothing, but lingers. That doesn't push, but brushes. Curious. Organic. He closes his eyes despite himself.
A strange warmth soothes the tension in his chest—that permanent compression he's carried since always, since AVA started trying to fuse him with her. It smells like cut grass. Earth after rain. A world he's never known. A world that doesn't exist for him—prisoner of the depths, condemned to live between Level 25 and the orbital arenas without ever touching the surface. His brain finds no memory to anchor this sensation. Yet his body recognizes. As if something in him—something older than his three years of existence, deeper than his programming—remembered what it was to be alive. Truly alive.
The presence pulses gently, diffusing its impossible scents through the metal door. The companion Katherine chose. Her last gift. Eight thousand four hundred sixty-nine. Arthur opens his eyes. The door slides with a hiss.
The room awakens in fragments under the green neons. Arthur remains motionless on the threshold, the door closed behind him with a pneumatic hiss. The supply bag weighs against his shoulder—uniform, sneakers, regulation accessories. The package of a life reduced to a few kilos of black fabric and metal. The airlock cuts him off from the corridor, from Katherine disappeared into the west wing, from AVA weakened by distance. Here, it's something else.
Two simple beds, bare metal, thin mattresses. Left. Right. Glued to opposite walls like twin coffins. Between them, a narrow space—barely two meters. Forced proximity. Facing the door, the window dominates. Large. Without bars. Framed by integrated closets whose contours show beneath the gray paint. Under the window, a narrow desk. Its dark terminal reflects a greenish gleam. To the right of the door, a small discreet opening—the bathroom. A cubbyhole, barely visible.
And outside, the vats. Always there, bathed in phosphorescent blue, their half-formed floating silhouettes in synthetic liquid. Some are only translucent shadows, others almost human, their features slowly taking shape. A silent, constant reminder: you come from there. But that's not what Arthur is looking at. A movement on the right bed. A boy. He was staring at him.
Arthur freezes under the gaze. Not AVA's—cold, possessive, dissecting. This one is different. Alive. Curious. Too intense. The boy—blond, face that seems too young for this level, sixteen or seventeen maybe—has green eyes that shine with a curiosity out of place in this place where curiosity makes you disappear. A worn book rests on his knees, closed with a quick gesture. He wasn't reading. He was waiting. His smile says: Finally. But behind the youthful gleam, something else. A gaze that scans, calculates, evaluates.
Arthur knows this gaze. Scientists gave it to him when they took his measurements in Level 25's laboratories. Evaluated. Calculated. Noted. But it's not clinical, here. It's...troubled. The silence vibrates between them, cut only by the ventilation hum and the boy's breathing—too fast, too alive.
Oscar forgot to breathe. This wasn't a boy. Not with that stature, that presence swallowing the room's green light. The skin first. Diaphanous. Almost translucent. You could guess the structures underneath—synthetic fibers woven with organic, like an unfinished work of art whose framework was visible. And those phosphorescent lines. Green. Pulsing. They ran along his jaw, snaked across his visible torso under the white t-shirt. Living light beneath the skin.
His musculature had nothing human—that of an optimized machine. Each muscle defined with mathematical precision. Broad shoulders blocking half the light. Easily six foot three. A giant built by algorithm. Brown curly hair fell over his forehead—the only chaotic thing in all this perfection. High cheekbones. Chiseled jaw. Lips bearing a hard, closed line. A face designed for screens. To make hearts bleed.
But it was his eyes that nailed Oscar in place. Blue. Electric blue that came from no human parent. AVA's blue. They fixed him with an intensity that took his breath away. Magnificent monster. And yet...Oscar felt a dull tingling rise in his neck, as if the hybrid's circuits radiated an electrical vibration that tickled his organic skin. A burning contrast: his own warmth, earthly and unpredictable, against this pulsing cold that seemed to call him in return. As if we were already plugged into the same network.
Arthur felt the weight of that gaze like physical pressure. His implant blinked. Orange. Danger. Not the danger he knew—AVA, reconditionings, whip punishments, forced fusion attempts. Something else. Something that felt like...He didn't know. And that terrified him more than anything else.
The boy still stared at him, book forgotten on his knees, green eyes wide in the half-light. Not fear. Something else. A fascination that should have been out of place but seemed...natural. As if that gaze sought something beneath the synthetic surface, beneath the phosphorescent veins and mathematical muscles. As if this boy saw what Arthur refused to be. The silence stretched. Heavy. Charged with static electricity.
Then the boy spoke, clear voice that clashed in this metal tomb: "You look like death warmed over. Lie down, seriously."
Arthur blinked. Of all possible first words, he didn't expect that one. He advanced—each step measured, controlled—let the bag fall at the foot of the left bed with a dull thud, and collapsed on the mattress. Heavy body. Muscles cramped by adrenaline that still hadn't subsided. The crossing of corridors with Katherine. The reconditioning whistle. The separation at the intersection. She named him. She protected him for three years. She just saved him from erasure. And now, she loses him.
"I'm fine," he growled without looking at the boy. The silence fell again, but different now. Less hostile. Less tense. Then the voice resumed, tinged with cautious amusement: "You sure? Because you look like you ran through a minefield."
Arthur slowly turned his head. The boy had leaned slightly forward, sneakers scraping the floor near his bed. His smile hesitated between sincerity and calculated caution. "What are you?" The words came out more abrupt than Arthur would have wanted. An accusation disguised as a question. The boy's smile faltered a fraction of a second. Touched. Then it returned, softer this time.
"Augmented. Forty percent." He leaned forward again, hand extended in a spontaneous gesture that seemed out of place here, in this world where physical contacts are calculated transactions. "I'm Oscar."
Arthur stared at the extended hand. Didn't move. Oscar let his hand drop, but his smile didn't completely disappear. "A seventy percent, not exactly disciplined," Arthur murmured, echo of what he'd said so many times on Level 25. He paused, his gaze sliding toward the window facing the door, drawn despite himself by the complex's green glow, distant reflection of the vats below. "Transfer to Alexandreï's unit, huh?" He planted his gaze in Oscar's eyes—bright green, too alive, too human.
Oscar raised his chin, a mischievous spark crossing his expression. "Like you, I think." He lowered his voice slightly, as if sharing a secret. "They talk about...untapped potential, you know the type." Beneath his casual air, Arthur caught a gleam of sharp intelligence, masked by this facade of enthusiastic kid. Something deeper. More dangerous.
Forty percent augmentation? It didn't fit. Not here. Not on Level 24 where seventy, eighty percent hybrids dominate. Where humans augmented at less than fifty percent don't survive three weeks. Yet Oscar seemed anchored. Like a root piercing concrete. I chose your companion, Katherine had said.
The complex suddenly vibrated. A muffled hum rising from the walls, followed by three sharp beeps in the corridor. Their gazes met. Oscar's gleam went out instantly, replaced by something older. More trained. "Inspection," he murmured. He slid his book under the pillow with expert dexterity, fluid movement, repeated a hundred times. They froze, breath suspended, until the footsteps moved away, swallowed by the ventilation purr.
Arthur released his breath. His shoulders sagged slightly. Oscar relaxed, but his eyes remained riveted on the door, as if watching for an echo, a possible return. "False alarm," he said, voice lower, almost instinctive. He retrieved his book, caressed it with his fingertips like a talisman. "These inspections...they fuck with your nerves, huh?"
Arthur didn't answer right away. He analyzed the surprisingly familiar way Oscar addressed him. No deference. No fear. Just...a displaced familiarity. His implants hummed softly: Active surveillance. Anomaly detected: 12%. He frowned, chasing the numbers from his mind. "You're used to it, I see."
Oscar shrugged, crooked smile returning like armor. "Let's say I learned to feel the wind turning. At my old unit, rounds every two hours. You learn to hide what matters." He tapped the book. His gaze softened imperceptibly. "And you..." He stopped, eyebrow raised. "I don't even know your name."
"Arthur." The word came out before Arthur could hold it back. Oscar held his gaze, mocking smile on his lips. "Yeah, I knew. She told me."
"Katherine?" The name vibrated between them like a code.
"Yeah, Dr. Volkov." Oscar paused, tone cautious but eyes still piercing. "She said you were...intense." One corner of Arthur's mouth stretched despite himself. Almost a smile. Almost. "She wasn't wrong."
The silence settled again. Less tense. But heavy with unasked questions. Arthur lay down, his gaze drifting toward the window. Drawn by that green glow that seemed to whisper to his implants, to his very being. "What do you have to hide?" Oscar's voice brought him back to the room. The boy tapped his book. "Me, it's this. And you?"
Arthur laughed—a harsh sound resonating against the metal walls. "Nothing to hide. What you see is all I have." He spread his arms, indicating the sterile cell. "Nothing personal. Nothing human."
Oscar stared at him, green eyes scrutinizing the hybrid with disturbing intensity. "Really? Not one memory? Something, anything?" He paused, then added, lower: "Everyone has something, even here."
Arthur felt an old tension resurface. A burn he muzzled with quick mental counting. Eight thousand four hundred seventy. "And you, that book?" He pointed at the worn volume. "What's your thing?"
Oscar smiled, but a shadow passed through his expression. "This?" He lifted the book. The title barely readable: Arthurian Legends. "Found it in a dumpster, at my old unit. It's...a map. To understand where we come from. Or where we could go."
Arthur raised an eyebrow, torn between amusement and disbelief. "Fairy tales in a place like this? You're weirder than I thought."
Oscar burst out laughing—a clear sound, almost insolent in this sterile space. "Weird? Dude, you're named after a king and you haven't even caught on!" He leaned in, as if to share a secret, his gaze sliding for a moment over the phosphorescent lines pulsing along Arthur's jaw. "And these veins glowing like carnival neons...You sure you're not already a laser knight?" The teasing hung for a moment, light as a brush, masking the curiosity that made his green eyes sparkle.
Arthur raised an eyebrow, torn between amusement and disbelief. "Have you ever thought about what you'd like to be, if you weren't..." He made a vague gesture toward the window, toward the depths where the vats pulsed. "...this?"
The question struck Arthur like an electric shock. His implants activated: Emotional anomaly detected. Stabilization recommended. He clenched his fists, ignoring the alert. "Nobody thinks about that here. You're alive, or you're dead. That's all."
Oscar didn't answer right away. He closed his book, slid it under his pillow, and lay down. Hands behind his neck. Staring at the ceiling. "Maybe." His voice was softer now. Almost dreamy. "But if you're alive, might as well make something of it, right?"
Suddenly, a muffled hum resonated in his chest—not his own, but like a synchronized echo, a shared anomaly vibrating in phase with Arthur's electrical pulse. As if their frequencies were already seeking each other out. A silence settled. Less tense. But heavy with a nascent connection neither of them really understood.
Arthur felt something relax in his chest. That permanent compression—the one AVA had put there—seemed to lighten imperceptibly. The presence he'd felt behind the door. Cut grass. Earth after rain. It was him. Oscar. The companion Katherine had chosen. Her last gift.
Arthur closed his eyes. Eight thousand four hundred seventy-one. And for the first time in a long while, the counting didn't serve to resist. It served to anchor himself. Here. Now. In this room. With this boy too human who smelled like grass and earth and all the outsides Arthur would never know.
On a control screen, hidden in the blind spot of a Level 25 room, data scrolled in real time: SYNERGY PROJECT - PHASE 1 INITIATED — Subjects: H-24-A (Arthur) + O-24-A (Oscar) — Current distance: 2.1 meters — Neural synchronization detected: 12% — Anomaly: Spontaneous non-induced connection — Status: CONTINUOUS SURVEILLANCE. Note: Contact established. Resonance confirmed. Phase 2 authorized.
In the depths of Level 25, Katherine Volkov stared at the screen. Her hand trembled imperceptibly on the tablet. She had done what she could. Now, she had to wait. And hope she'd been right.
END OF CHAPTER 1 - SYNCHRONIZATION