The city never truly slept. Neon lights flickered against rain-soaked streets, reflecting off puddles like fractured mirrors. The air carried a faint hum, a low resonance only perceptible to those sensitive enough to feel the emotions coursing through the crowd. Cécile Moreau walked briskly, her coat pulled tight around her shoulders, eyes scanning every passerby. The hum of their feelings pressed against her senses like a tide, a constant wave she had learned to navigate with care. Fear, hope, desire—each pulse told a story, and she read them all without effort.
Her office was tucked between an old bookstore and a shuttered café, a narrow space whose walls had seen decades of whispered confessions. She stepped inside, the faint scent of coffee and old paper mingling with the antiseptic smell of her instruments. Machines lined the wall, small devices that could measure subtle fluctuations in emotional energy, frequencies invisible to the untrained eye.
"Another restless night?" asked Marc, her assistant, looking up from the console.
"Always," Cécile murmured, not taking her eyes off the latest readings. "The city's pulse hasn't settled. People are… agitated."
Marc nodded, typing rapidly. "You're more sensitive than anyone I've ever worked with. You'll burn out if you don't pace yourself."
Cécile forced a faint smile, but it didn't reach her eyes. "I've paced myself my whole life. I can manage."
The door opened, and a chill swept across the room. Cécile's gaze flicked toward the entrance, expecting another client or a courier. But it was him.
He stood in the doorway, tall, sharply dressed, with an aura that seemed to swallow light around him. His eyes, dark and unreadable, met hers, and for the first time, Cécile felt nothing. No hum, no flicker, no resonance. It was as if he existed outside the emotional spectrum she so carefully navigated.
"Can I help you?" she asked, her voice steady despite the shock tightening her chest.
"I don't think so," he replied evenly. His voice was calm, measured, and yet it carried a weight that made her instinctively take a step back.
Cécile instinctively scanned the readings. The devices displayed empty lines, as if her instruments themselves were confused. It was impossible. Everyone left a trace. Everyone had a frequency.
"You're… unusual," she said carefully.
"Most people are," he said, stepping inside, ignoring her implied caution. "But you… you notice it."
The hum of the city outside seemed to fade, leaving a hollow silence that pressed against her ears. Cécile felt a flicker of unease. She had never encountered anyone whose emotions she could not trace. Not fully. Not ever.
"I need a session," he said finally, removing his coat and letting it fall to the floor with deliberate casualness. "I need to… understand something."
Cécile hesitated. "Most clients… I can usually help them manage their emotions. Yours aren't showing up. There's nothing I can read."
"Exactly," he said, and there was a subtle edge in his tone, a challenge hidden beneath polite words. "That's why I need you."
She studied him, the way the streetlights glinted on his hair, the faint tension in his jaw, the subtle twitch of a hand that betrayed a controlled impatience. Every detail suggested composure, but the absence of emotional frequency unsettled her more than any visible sign of fear or anger ever could.
"Why now?" she asked, her fingers brushing over the console as if seeking answers from the machines. "Why come to me?"
He leaned slightly against the doorway, gaze unwavering. "Because you notice what no one else does. Because you feel what no one else can. And because… you might be the only one who can survive knowing the truth about me."
Cécile felt a shiver run down her spine, not from fear but from the awareness of proximity. Something about him demanded attention, demanded caution, and yet drew her in. The room felt smaller, charged with an invisible current that seemed to wrap around her like silk.
"Truth about you?" she echoed, trying to keep her voice calm. "And what exactly am I supposed to see?"
His eyes held hers, unyielding, as if daring her to challenge the statement. "That I'm dangerous. That I am not like anyone else. That your perception is your only weapon—and your only risk."
She drew a breath and stepped closer, her hands brushing against the edge of the desk. The instruments registered subtle, almost imperceptible changes. Her own heart began to race, a warning she could neither dismiss nor fully interpret.
"Sit," she instructed, gesturing to the chair across from her. "If you're serious about this… we'll start with a standard evaluation. You may be… unreadable, but we'll see what surfaces."
He complied, slow, deliberate, and unthreatening in appearance, yet every movement spoke of controlled strength. Cécile adjusted the sensors, trying to calibrate the instruments to a baseline, but they remained stubbornly inert.
Minutes passed. She noted subtle microexpressions, tiny tics, anything to indicate internal emotion. There was… almost nothing. A blink here, a subtle purse of the lips there, but no resonance in the energy readings, no trace in the instruments. It was as if he existed in a void she could not penetrate.
"You're…" she began, hesitant, "completely silent. No frequency, no… pulse. Are you certain you're human?"
"I assure you," he said, his lips twitching in the faintest hint of a smirk, "I am very human. Perhaps more than anyone you've ever measured. I just… absorb what others carry."
Cécile froze, her fingers tightening around the sensors. Absorb? The concept was impossible. No human could take in the emotions of others without… consequences.
"You mean… you feel them? You take them?" Her voice rose slightly, disbelief tinged with apprehension.
"I survive by it," he said simply, as if stating a fact about the weather. "But it has a cost. A cost that you might find… challenging."
The air between them thickened. She felt her own heartbeat, once controlled and steady, beginning to sync with something that was almost imperceptible, almost alive within the room. A pull, subtle but undeniable, drew her attention to him, to his presence, to the impossible truth he claimed.
"You're dangerous," she whispered, more to herself than to him.
He leaned back, eyes dark but unblinking. "And you, Cécile Moreau, might be the only one capable of handling that danger… or succumbing to it."
Her pulse spiked. She had faced dangerous clients before. But this was different. Every instinct screamed caution, yet every fiber of her being urged her forward. The instruments remained blank, the silence unbroken, and yet she sensed a storm coiled in his chest, waiting.
"Very well," she said finally, voice low and measured. "We begin tomorrow. If you truly mean what you say… we'll see what surfaces."
He nodded once, almost imperceptibly, as if acknowledging a challenge issued and accepted. "I'll be here."
As he left, the hum of the city returned, but it felt muted, hollow. The emptiness he carried lingered, wrapping itself around her senses, leaving her both alarmed and enthralled. Cécile knew, deep in her core, that nothing about this encounter would be ordinary.
And she was right.