The afternoon light bled through the classroom windows, thick and golden, turning the dust motes into drifting embers. Kai sat through his final lectures in a haze of half-attention, his body present while his mind wandered somewhere far beyond the Institute's walls. The parasite was quiet—unnervingly so. Its silence wasn't peaceful; it was the stillness of a predator waiting in tall grass.
---
First Visit: The Doctor's Office
Dr. Lorentz's office smelled like antiseptic and old paper. The neural scanner hummed softly as it traced the lines of Kai's brain activity, casting jagged blue patterns across the monitor.
"Nothing critical," Lorentz murmured, though his lips pressed into a thin line. "But your stress response is spiking more than usual."
Kai smiled—the practiced, easy curve of lips he'd perfected over years of hiding. "Just pressure from classes," he said, shrugging. "Midterms."
Lorentz's eyes flicked up, skeptical. "You've never stressed about exams before."
"Maybe I'm turning over a new leaf."
The lie was smooth and the smile held.
Second Visit: The Genetics Ward
He came back later, unannounced, lingering in the sterile white hallway outside the genetics lab. The air here was cold, filtered, scrubbed clean of anything organic.
Kai didn't move, just breathed in the artificial chill, the hum of machines, the faint tang of disinfectant. Here, surrounded by vials of altered DNA and rows of preserved specimens, his own secret felt smaller.
---
As evening settled over the Institute, Kai found himself drawn to the abandoned auditorium—a relic of a time when Wolfram had hosted symphonies instead of soldiers. The doors creaked as he pushed them open, revealing the cavernous space within.
The band was already there, their presence fracturing the silence into patches of sound and shadow.
Sylvie perched on the edge of the stage, one boot propped on an amp as she tuned her synth-guitar. The instrument whined under her fingers, a sound like a dying star. She didn't look up as Kai entered, but her smirk deepened.
Marin sat cross-legged in the front row, her wrist-mounted interface glowing as she typed rapidly. Data streams flickered across the holographic display, equations Kai couldn't begin to decipher. She nodded once when she saw him—the barest acknowledgment.
Grin lurked near the curtains, their cracked theater mask catching the dim light. No greeting. No movement.
Kai scanned the room. "Where's—?"
"Ash is off-campus for gene therapy," Sylvie said, plucking a discordant note. "Lune's in New Berlin filming her very important holo-series." She rolled her eyes. "So it's just us rejects tonight."
Marin finally looked up. "You're late."
Kai shoved his hands into his pockets, fingers brushing the strawberry sweet he'd found in his locker. "Didn't realize I was on a schedule."
Sylvie's grin was all teeth. "Oh, sweetheart, you are now."
Sylvie crooked a finger at him, the motion lazy, predatory. Kai approached like a stray dog—slow steps, weight balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to bolt at the first wrong move.
The synth-guitar whined as she plucked a string absently. "So," she said, tilting her head. "How's it feel?"
Kai stopped just out of arm's reach. "How does what feel?"
"The thing inside you." Her grin was all teeth. "Does it bite? Or does it whisper?"
The parasite stirred at the base of his spine, a slow, interested uncoiling. Kai's fingers twitched at his sides. He didn't answer.
Sylvie leaned back with a scoff. "Christ, you're boring. You're going to need to toughen up, pretty boy." She flicked a switch on her guitar; the amp hissed like a live thing. "Because tonight, you're coming with us."
Huh?
A hologram flickered to life above Marin's wrist interface—a jagged tear in reality hovering just beyond the northern hills. The Rift pulsed faintly, its edges shimmering like heat distortion.
"E+ classification," Marin said, adjusting her glasses. "Scheduled for Vanguard cleansing tomorrow at 03:00 AM."
Kai's throat went dry. "You want to jump it?"
Sylvie snorted. "We're not suicidal. Just skimming the edges." She tapped the hologram, zooming in on the Rift's unstable corona. "There's something in there worth grabbing before the GCC scrubs it clean."
"What does 'E+ Classification' even mean?" Kai asked, confused.
Marin's voice took on the detached cadence of a lecture:
"F-Class: Harmless fluctuations and light shows with no substance."
The hologram shifted—a harmless shimmer in the air.
"E through D: Contain lesser spawn and unstable terrain. The kind that gives you extra fingers if you're lucky, tumors if you're not."
The image twisted into a warped forest, trees bent at impossible angles.
"C to B: Mid-range threats. Mutation zones, where the Vanguard starts losing people."
Now the hologram showed something skeletal and too-many-limbed emerging from the tear.
"A-Class and above..." Marin's mouth thinned. "Blackout protocols and city-enders."
The display cut to static.
"E+ means potential deviation," she finished. "Not quite safe and not quite lethal. Just enough to matter."
Kai stared at them. "Why risk to go there?"
Sylvie's smile was a razor-cut. "Because the Vanguard?" She leaned in, close enough that he could smell the strawberry gum on her breath. "And you, little monster? You'll rot if you don't learn to use that thing inside you."
This is stupid or even insane...
Marin pressed something cold into Kai's palm—a neural-linked gene scanner, shaped like a tarnished medallion. As his fingers closed around it, the device whirred to life, projecting a helix in violent red and black above his wrist.
Parasite Designation: Unstable Class - Neural Spinal Leech
The display unfolded:
Base genetic profile (87.6% human, 12.4% other)
Slots for acquired genes (3/5 empty)
Instability readings (spiking)
Mutation probability charts (23.8% chance of critical corruption next event)
Marin adjusted her glasses. "This lets you monitor your own corruption." A pause. "And maybe...shape it."
---
The monorail hummed beneath them, a sleek silver bullet cutting through the twilight. Kai pressed his forehead against the cool glass, watching Wolfram Institute shrink into the distance—its pulse towers and barbed fences turning to toy-sized threats. Emil sprawled in the seat beside him, already halfway through some convoluted story about Yona's latest disaster.
Normal. This is normal.
Kai clung to that thought like a lifeline.
Heiligenstadt unfolded beneath them, a city caught between past and future. Neo-gothic spires pierced the skyline, their ancient stone wrapped in glowing holographic banners that flickered between advertisements and government warnings:
"RIFT DRILL SCHEDULED – 3rd DISTRICT SHELTERS ACTIVATE AT 2100
"GENE THERAPY WAITLISTS OPEN – GCC APPROVED ENHANCEMENTS ONLY"
"PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS TONIGHT: 'UNITED AGAINST THE TEARS'"
The train slid into the station with a hiss.
The streets were a sensory assault. Cybernetic mynah birds perched on neon-lit branches, their synthetic feathers shifting colors as they mimicked the chatter of pre-Rift songbirds. A vendor in a chrome-plated cart waved vials of "legal augment seeds"—genetic tweaks guaranteed to enhance memory or muscle density, all stamped with the GCC's double-helix seal of approval.
"No side effects!" the man called, winking at a group of passing students. "Well, no permanent side effects!"
A mother yanked her child away from a floating news drone, its screen flashing images of a North American Rift breach—smoke, screaming, something with too many legs emerging from the tear.
"—casualties estimated in the thousands as the 12th Vanguard Division—"
The mother covered her daughter's eyes.
Kai's stomach twisted.
This world is already cracking.
Emil, blissfully oblivious, kept up a steady stream of nonsense as they wove through the crowd.
"You ever notice everyone at school either looks like a soldier or a mannequin?" He gestured wildly at a passing group of Wolfram students, their uniforms crisp, their faces carefully blank. "Like, where's the in-between? Are we raising warriors or wax figures?"
Kai snorted despite himself.
"And Yona—god—she swears she saw a ghost in the dorm showers last week." Emil grinned. "I bet it was just Aria's skincare routine haunting her. You've seen that twelve-step nightmare she calls a 'routine,' right? That's not self-care, that's a séance."
Kai huffed a laugh, but it died in his throat as his gaze caught on the side of a building—its concrete facade split open like a wound, the cracks hastily sealed with something that glistened faintly.
Parasite bone.
The GCC's cheap fix for structural damage. It pulsed faintly, alive in a way concrete shouldn't be.
A few steps ahead, a child's toy lay abandoned, its plastic melted into grotesque shapes by old acid exposure.
And across the street, a security officer watched them. No—watched Kai. His hand hovered near the stun baton at his hip.
Kai forced his shoulders to relax, his pace to stay even.
Breathe. Just breathe.
They boarded the return train as the city lights flickered to life, bathing Heiligenstadt in an artificial glow. Emil slumped into his seat, finally quiet. Then—
"You've changed, man."
Kai froze.
Emil wasn't looking at him, just staring out the window. "Not in a bad way. But… something's different."
The gene device in Kai's pocket pulsed—soft, steady, hungry.
He said nothing.
Outside, the first drops of rain hit the glass, streaking the lights into bleeding colors.