Smoke, thick and acrid, clings to the corners of the room. The air stinks of ozone, burnt wiring, and cooked meat.
The walls are smeared with blood. Not his.
Not enough.
The alarms are gone, but the hum is back. Louder. Deeper. A resonant frequency that feels like it's vibrating in his teeth, a constant reminder of the cage he's in.
He's back on the slab. Strapped tighter.
The leather cuffs have no give, biting into the bone of his wrists. A new needle pulses rhythmically in his spine, a cold, blue fluid seeping into him. It isn't just a chemical; it feels alive, humming with a wrongness that answers the hum in his head.
The speaker above him crackles with static, then a voice. Vahr.
"Sedation holding. Neural aggression suppressed to baseline."
"Subject K displaying emergent compliance — 18% and climbing."
"Conscious stream… isolated. Cognitive pattern appears stable."
He watches the number on a nearby screen flicker. Compliance. A bitter fucking joke. He isn't complying. He is a coiled snake, playing dead. The rage isn't gone; it's just quiet. Waiting.
The doctors enter. Their usual arrogance is gone, replaced by a thin, brittle fear. Their gloves are stained.
"What the hell did he override?" one murmurs.
"No idea," Vahr snaps. "But it's dormant now. Increase the RX-9 load. Triple it."
"Doctor, we're already past recommended cellular tolerance—"
"Then add suppression enzymes! And prep the full aether cage. If he spikes again, we fry his goddamn soul."
Silence. Just the hum.
Kaizen doesn't move. He plays the broken thing.
But inside, where they can't see, the hum of his own fury gets louder.
Time blurs into a gray fog.
Then, the door hisses. Footsteps. Lighter. Quieter.
Elen.
His badge says "Non-medical sanitation." He enters with a rattling bag of tools, not looking at Kaizen. He starts wiping down a sink, his movements too quick.
Then he stops. His eyes dart to the neural monitor, where the green line of compliance ticks steadily upward.
"Compliance's rising again," Elen mutters, his voice a low breath. "24%... 25%... Shouldn't be that steady."
He leans closer to the console near the slab, pretending to wipe it down.
"If you can hear me," he whispers, "drop it by ten. Right now."
Kaizen hears. He focuses on the foreign network inside him, on the stream of data that reports his state of mind. He finds the signal and, with a surge of cold will, pushes against it. It's like trying to bend steel with a thought.
The screen pauses. Then:
Compliance: 26% → 16%.
Elen freezes, his breath catching in his throat.
"…Holy shit."
He forces himself to keep moving, wiping down a blood-stained surgical arm.
"Alright. Test again. Drop it five this time."
Kaizen pushes. Easier now.
Compliance: 16% → 11%.
A ragged, disbelieving smile touches Elen's lips.
"You're riding it. Faking the algorithm. Smart bastard."
"Listen," he says, his voice urgent. "I can't talk long. Just… keep pretending. Let them think they won."
He pauses. "And when you get out… make it messy."
He speaks to the ceiling, his voice suddenly cold and clinical. "Compliance stable. Cleanup complete."
The door hisses shut.
And somewhere beneath Kaizen's skin, a real smile touches something that has been dormant for a very long time.
They leave him in the hum for two days.
Then they bring the chair.
It's a skeletal thing of wires and blackened steel. It has arms that end in locking clamps and a crown of metal that hangs above the headrest.
They call it the Halo Rig.
"Time to see what he learned."
They lock him in. Steel-to-bone contact. The halo lowers, and a dozen needle-fine electrodes press against his skull. The hum becomes a swarm of hornets inside his head.
On the wall, a screen flashes.
OBEY.
A jolt of pain. His muscles seize.
KNEEL.
His mind screams NEVER, but the rig forces him into the pose. More pain.
He learns the patterns. The delay between word and agony. He begins to predict.
A command flashes. He twitches a finger—a calculated micro-movement of feigned compliance. The system logs it.
Compliance Confirmed. Response Time: 0.3s
The pain doesn't come. He beat it.
Then, the machine beeps. A new command.
DO NOT MOVE.
He hears it. A whisper, ghosted through the rig's audio.
Elen's voice.
The violation of it—using the one person who helped as a tool—sends a surge of pure, black rage through him. The monitors shriek, red lines spiking.
"Massive aggression spike!" a tech yells.
Kaizen clamps down on his fury, burying it under a layer of ice. He smooths the readings with sheer force of will. He will not give them the satisfaction. He will use this. This new, sharper rage. This weapon.
Somewhere below the labs...
Elen is scraping dried tissue from a scalpel when his private terminal hisses. The janky one wired into the maintenance feed.
> AUDIO LOG 48-B: "DO NOT MOVE"
> Source: StimCycle 3-A // Subject K // Voice ID: Unknown
He freezes. Plays it again.
His own voice, distorted. "I never recorded that."
He swipes through the logs. Then one stops him cold.
> COMPLIANCE OVERRIDE TRIGGER – SRC: ASSISTANT ELEN RANK-5 // NOT APPROVED
> TRIGGER LOG REQUESTED BY: L.PROTOCOL.ARCHIVE // Clearance Level: REDACTED
"No no no…" His hands go clammy. He's spoofing the system. He remembered my voice.
Back in the Rig
Kaizen breathes. The hum is his world. He is a ghost in the machine, waiting.
And then he feels it. A faint, almost undetectable query in the system. A ghost of a signal in a channel that should be silent.
It's not the doctors.
It's him. Elen.
Back in Cleanup
Elen's heart is pounding. He knows he shouldn't. He does it anyway.
He slides an access chip into an unauthorized jack, hooking into a shadow debugging channel.
His fingers tremble as he types.
> IF YOU CAN SEE THIS, DROP COMPLIANCE BY 10%
He waits. One second. Two. Nothing.
> DROP 10 IF YOU HEAR ME
He stares at the compliance feed from the main lab.
One beat.
Two.
Then:
Compliance: 54%.
Elen's breath hitches. He types again, faster.
> DROP 5
Compliance: 49%.
> UP 3
Compliance: 52%.
His hands are shaking. "Oh my god."
He's in there. They have a line.
He whispers the name, a prayer to a monster.
"Kaizen…"
In the Rig
Kaizen feels the name resonate through the connection. A whisper in the static.
His lip twitches. Barely a millimeter of movement.
The system logs it.
Response: Unregistered. Neural Artifact. Logging suppressed.
The doctors don't see it.
But Elen, watching the feed on his private terminal, does.
And Kaizen, a lone in the humming dark, feels the real smile return.
It's getting sharper.