--
The morning after the library felt like a cruel trick of light. Michael Rivers woke with a start, chest rising and falling in shallow gasps as though he had been running for miles in his dreams. His heart thudded against his ribs, hammering so hard he half expected to see it burst through his chest.
The ceiling above his couch was a patchwork of cracks and water stains, shadows of the storm that had battered the city through the night. He stared at it, unsure if he was awake. For a long moment he couldn't separate dream from reality. The avalanche of words, the tidal wave of knowledge, the flood of images that had stormed into his brain at the library—they hadn't dissolved with sleep. They lingered, bright and cruelly sharp, as though carved into him. Every word. Every page. Every symbol and equation. They whispered now behind his eyes, insistent, demanding.
Michael shifted, every muscle aching as though he had been beaten. His joints cracked when he sat up, his back stiff, his temples throbbing with the ghost of last night's headache. His clothes clung damply to him, sweat and rain fused together into something sour. The air in his apartment was heavy, oppressive. Damp with mildew, stale with neglect. He rubbed his face, his palms trembling, then looked around.
The apartment felt unfamiliar. The sagging couch, the chipped table, the stacks of books along the wall—they seemed alien, like he was trespassing in another man's life. He blinked hard, but the feeling only grew stronger.
And then he heard it.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The watch. Always the watch.
His hand moved automatically to his coat pocket where the silver timepiece had slept all night. The casing was cold, almost wet against his fingers, and when he drew it out he saw the glass face fog with his touch. The sound was not loud, but it filled the room. Louder than the dripping faucet. Louder than his breath. Louder than his thoughts.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The sound rooted him. A cruel reminder that time had not slowed with his suffering. Six months. Maybe less.
Michael pressed the watch flat against his chest, as though he could muffle it with his heartbeat. It only ticked louder. The gears had no pity.
He staggered to his feet, swaying, and shuffled into the kitchen. The fridge's pale light revealed his poverty: a half-loaf of stale bread, a jar of mustard at the bottom, a shriveled apple. He tore off a piece of bread and chewed without tasting it. His body craved food, but his mind screamed for something else. His eyes drifted, almost unwillingly, to the bookshelf along the wall.
He left the bread half-eaten on the counter and crossed the room. His hand hovered, shaking, before he seized a book at random: A Concise History of Rome. The cover was cracked, the pages yellowing. He dropped it onto the table and then reached for another: Principles of Medicine. Another: Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson. Soon the stack was tall and teetering, a monument to obsession.
Michael sat. The books stared back at him like unopened doors. His hunger sharpened. He opened the first.
---
Rome unfolded before him. Not as words on a page, but as if he stood in its streets. He saw legions march in formation, shields flashing in sunlight, crimson banners snapping in the wind. He heard steel clash in the Punic Wars, the thunder of elephants against Roman lines. He smelled fire and blood in villages burning at the empire's edges. He walked through marble halls where emperors were crowned and murdered, through marketplaces thrumming with life, through arenas where men killed and died for spectacle.
Centuries raced past in minutes. Rome rose, expanded, decayed. Michael consumed it all, inscribing it into memory so vivid he could taste the dust of the Colosseum.
When he closed the book, the echoes lingered in his skull. He felt as though he had lived centuries in an hour.
He grabbed the medical text.
The diagrams of lungs and brains were not diagrams anymore. They pulsed with life. He saw air inflate and deflate in alveoli, blood pumping through vessels in endless circuits. He watched cancer cells multiply in silence, devouring healthy tissue. His throat tightened. He saw his own brain, shadowed by the tumor. A parasite nestled inside him, spreading minute by minute.
Michael shoved the book aside, sweat cold on his brow, and seized the poetry volume. Dickinson's verses curled in his mind like smoke, but smoke that suffocated.
Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me.
Her lines hummed in perfect rhythm with the ticking watch. He whispered them aloud, and for a moment he swore he heard Death's carriage rolling down his hallway.
He slammed the book shut. His chest heaved.
The hunger was not sated. It was sharpened. He dragged notebooks across the table and began to write. Not summaries, but visions: pages of Rome's history, diagrams of the human body, stanzas of poetry. His pen tore the paper as his hand cramped. Ink smeared across his palm. He plunged his hand into cold water, hissed at the pain, then resumed.
The sun climbed the sky and fell again. He didn't notice.
When he finally collapsed against the couch, the notebooks lay stacked like bricks—hundreds of pages filled with his scrawl. His body was wrecked, but his mind thrummed, alive, unstoppable.
The watch ticked on.
---
The knock came on the fourth morning.
At first, Michael didn't notice it. He was hunched at the table, scribbling feverishly into another notebook, his eyes darting across the page as if racing to outpace the ticking in his skull. His ears were tuned only to the scratch of pen against paper, the shuffle of pages, the relentless beat of the pocket watch.
The knock came again. Harder.
Michael flinched. His pen tore through the page. He blinked, dazed, as though waking from a trance. He stared at the door, chest rising and falling too fast.
"Michael." The voice was muffled but unmistakable. Arthur Caldwell.
Michael froze, his hand hovering over the next blank page.
"Michael, open the door."
Michael pressed his palms against the desk, nails digging into the wood. Part of him wanted to pretend he wasn't home, to let the silence stretch until Arthur went away. But the old man's voice carried weight, the kind that could wait outside all day if it had to.
Reluctantly, Michael stood. His legs trembled from days of neglect. He shuffled to the door, unlocked it, and pulled it open.
Arthur stood there in the hallway, leaning on his cane, his weathered face lined with concern. His sharp eyes swept over Michael, taking in the hollow cheeks, the bloodshot eyes, the ink-stained fingers.
"God help me," Arthur muttered, pushing past him into the apartment.
Michael closed the door slowly. "You shouldn't be here."
Arthur turned, his gaze stern. "Someone has to be."
Arthur set his cane by the wall and walked slowly through the wreckage of the apartment. Books lay in piles, spines broken, pages bent. Notebooks stacked haphazardly. Plates with scraps of uneaten food hardened into stone. The air was thick, stale with sweat and mildew.
Arthur picked up one of the notebooks. He flipped through page after page of immaculate recall: equations, passages of text, sketches of anatomy. He shook his head and set it down.
"You've been drowning yourself," Arthur said quietly.
Michael bristled. "No. I've been living. For the first time, I've been alive."
Arthur fixed him with a long look. Then he lowered himself carefully into a chair, removing his glasses. "Sit, Michael."
Michael hesitated but obeyed. He sat opposite, the table between them cluttered with open books.
Arthur folded his hands. "You think this gift is salvation. But it isn't. It's fire. Fire doesn't ask what you intend to do with it. It burns, no matter whose hands hold it."
Michael leaned forward, eyes fierce. "You don't understand. Six months. Maybe less. That's what they told me. Do you know what it feels like, Arthur? To wake every day with death whispering in your ear? If this is what I've been given, then I'll use it. I'll burn through every second. I won't waste it."
Arthur's voice hardened. "And what will be left of you when the fire consumes everything else? Ashes don't change the world."
Michael looked away, his fists clenching.
Arthur studied him a moment, then sighed and reached into his coat pocket. He pulled out a small, frayed photograph. He slid it across the table.
Michael glanced down. A girl, maybe twelve, smiling wide, her hair in messy braids. Arthur beside her, younger then, his arm draped over her shoulder.
"My daughter," Arthur said softly.
Michael blinked. "I didn't know—"
Arthur's eyes misted, though his voice remained steady. "You wouldn't. I never talk about her. Because I failed her."
Michael looked up, frowning.
Arthur leaned back, his gaze fixed on the photograph. "When my wife died, I thought knowledge could fill the hole. I buried myself in books, in study, in the endless pursuit of understanding. I told myself it was for her, for our daughter. That if I just learned enough, I could give her answers, protect her from the world. But knowledge is a jealous thing, Michael. It doesn't share your attention. It doesn't care who else you neglect while you chase it."
He paused, his throat tightening. "She grew up without me. Without a father who saw her. And when she left, she never came back. I can quote Plato and Aristotle until the day I die, but I couldn't tell you her favorite color. That is the weight I carry."
The room was silent except for the ticking watch.
Arthur looked at him, his eyes sharp again. "Don't make my mistake. Don't let knowledge strip you of what makes you human."
Michael swallowed hard. For a moment the hunger inside him faltered. He saw the loneliness etched into Arthur's face, the regret carved deep. He saw the photograph, edges worn soft by years of handling.
But then the voices of memory surged again—pages fluttering, formulas glowing, poetry whispering. The hunger screamed louder.
"I can't stop," Michael whispered.
Arthur's shoulders sagged. He replaced his glasses, polished them slowly with his handkerchief. The ritual was steady, calm, almost sad.
"Then I fear you're walking the same road I did," he said. "Only yours will end sooner."
Michael looked away, his jaw tight, his hands trembling.
Arthur rose, leaning on his cane again. He paused at the door. "Remember this, Michael. Prometheus stole fire from the gods. It gave mankind warmth, but it chained him to endless torment. You think you've stolen fire, but you've only borrowed it. And the gods always come to collect."
The door clicked shut behind him.
Michael sat alone in the dim apartment, the photograph still on the table. He stared at it until the lines blurred, then shoved it away and pulled another book close.
The hunger roared.
The watch ticked on.
---
The university lecture hall buzzed with energy. Students filtered in with backpacks slung low, notebooks open, pens poised. The air smelled faintly of coffee and wet jackets. Outside, rain slicked the windows, blurring the city into streaks of gray.
Michael sat at the back, hood drawn low, hands folded tightly in his lap. He hadn't planned to come. His body screamed for rest, but his mind demanded challenge. He wanted to test himself. To prove that the hunger wasn't madness.
The professor, tall and sure of himself, strode to the front and began. Equations sprawled across the board, chalk squealing in his hand. He spoke with practiced rhythm, voice deep and commanding.
Michael listened. Every error rang in his ears like a false note in a song. Every shortcut the professor took, every skipped step, every weak explanation—it was all glaringly obvious. Michael's pulse quickened. His hand rose.
The professor frowned, surprised. "Yes?"
Michael's voice was calm but carried an edge. "You've left out three variables in your second equation. The conclusion you're leading to collapses under its own weight."
The hall hushed. Heads turned. Pens froze.
The professor adjusted his glasses. "And you are?"
Michael ignored the question. He stood, his words spilling with precision. He dismantled the lecture point by point, citing sources, offering counter-examples, unraveling the argument before the stunned class. He moved with the confidence of someone who had not just read the material but lived it, digested it, reshaped it.
The silence afterward was suffocating. Students stared, wide-eyed. Some looked awed, others unsettled, as though they had witnessed something unnatural. The professor's face flushed crimson. His jaw tightened, but no rebuttal came.
Michael gathered his hood and walked out. The whispers followed him into the hall.
"Who is he?"
"He knew more than the professor…"
"Did you see his eyes?"
The words buzzed at his back, but Michael ignored them. He pushed through the doors into the rain.
Jason was waiting.
The sight of him stopped Michael cold. Jason's hair clung wet to his forehead, his clothes soaked through. His eyes carried the weight of sleepless nights.
"Michael," Jason said, stepping forward. His voice was hoarse. "Please. Let me explain."
Michael's jaw clenched. He turned to leave, but Jason grabbed his arm.
"Don't do this," Jason begged. "Don't shut me out. I made a mistake, a horrible mistake, but it wasn't—"
Michael spun, his eyes burning. "You didn't make a mistake, Jason. You made a choice."
Jason froze.
Michael's voice dropped, low and sharp. "You were my brother. And you killed that."
Jason's mouth opened, then closed. Rain pattered on his face, mixing with the tears he wouldn't shed.
Michael pulled free and walked into the storm. Jason remained under the awning, shoulders slumped, as if the rain itself had turned to stone upon his back.
That night, Michael stood before his mirror.
His reflection was pale, hollow-cheeked, eyes rimmed in red. He opened his mouth and flawless streams of knowledge poured out: equations in perfect sequence, poems recited without pause, languages spoken in flawless cadence. His voice was steady. His body shook.
The mirror fogged with his breath, cracks of condensation spreading like veins across the glass. His reflection's eyes didn't look like his anymore. They were fever-bright, alien, as though someone else had crawled inside his skin.
The ticking watch lay on the sink. Louder now. Louder than his voice. Louder than his heart.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Michael pressed his palm against the glass. His reflection mimicked the gesture, but the man staring back seemed a stranger—hungry, haunted, hollow.
The hunger roared inside him, vast and endless.
And he knew there was no going back.