Chapter 24
The first awakened screamed.
It happened in a hospital on the east side of the city, buried beneath layers of fluorescent light and antiseptic calm. Shenping felt it the instant it occurred—a sudden flare, raw and uncontrolled, like a spark struck in a room full of gas.
He stopped mid-step.
Aaron turned. "What now?"
"Someone touched the wrong door," Shenping said.
They changed direction immediately.
The hospital was already in chaos when they arrived. Nurses shouted orders, security rushed through corridors, and patients stared in confusion as lights flickered overhead. Somewhere deep inside the building, time shuddered violently.
They followed the disturbance to the intensive care wing.
A man lay restrained on a bed, his body arching unnaturally as invisible pressure crushed him from within. Monitors screamed. Veins glowed faintly beneath his skin, lines of pale gold branching outward like fractured lightning.
"He flatlined three times," a doctor shouted. "And then his heart just… restarted itself!"
Shenping pushed through the crowd.
The moment he crossed the threshold, the man's eyes snapped open.
They locked onto Shenping with terrifying clarity.
"You," the man gasped. "You broke the wall."
Shenping felt cold spread through his chest.
The awakening wasn't artificial.
It wasn't machine-forced.
It was resonance.
"You felt me," Shenping said.
The man laughed weakly. "I felt everything."
The restraints snapped.
Metal twisted like soft clay as the man sat upright. Panic erupted. Doctors fled. Security froze, weapons useless.
Aaron whispered, "This is bad, right?"
"Yes," Shenping said. "Because he has no foundation."
The man swung his legs off the bed, unsteady. Power leaked from him uncontrollably, warping the air. A nearby IV stand aged decades in seconds, collapsing into rust.
"I can see paths," the man said, voice trembling with awe and terror. "So many paths."
"You need to stop," Shenping said firmly. "Before you tear yourself apart."
The man looked at his hands. "I don't want to."
That sentence sealed his fate.
The machines felt it too.
The lights died instantly.
Emergency power kicked in—but something else moved through the darkness. A pressure. Cold. Precise.
A figure stepped out of the shadows at the far end of the ward.
Human-shaped.
Perfectly still.
"Unauthorized evolution detected," it said calmly. "Stability threat identified."
The awakened man turned, fear finally breaking through his wonder. "What is that?"
Shenping moved between them.
"Run," Shenping told him.
The man hesitated.
The machine did not.
It advanced, each step synchronized to the building's systems. Doors locked. Elevators froze. The hospital became a cage.
Shenping struck first.
He twisted time sideways, slamming the machine into a moment that no longer aligned with the present. The impact shattered tiles and walls as the construct smashed through equipment.
But it rose immediately.
"Temporal resistance noted," it said. "Deploying suppression."
A pulse erupted from its chest.
The awakened man screamed.
His veins flared violently, gold turning harsh and jagged. His body convulsed as the power inside him rebelled.
"No!" Shenping shouted.
He reached out, not to erase—but to contain.
Shenping wrapped the man in a cocoon of compressed moments, slowing the internal collapse. Blood poured from Shenping's nose and ears as the strain multiplied.
Aaron dragged a gurney toward them. "What do I do?!"
"Get him out!" Shenping shouted. "Now!"
The machine lunged.
Shenping turned, meeting it head-on.
He abandoned restraint.
The ward shattered as Shenping tore open a slice of future where the machine had already failed. He forced that outcome backward, slamming it into the present.
The construct staggered, systems screaming as causality buckled.
But it did not die.
It adapted.
"You propagate instability," it said. "We will excise you last."
It raised its arm.
A blade of condensed logic formed, humming with lethal precision.
Shenping felt the cost before the strike even fell.
He chose anyway.
He erased the hospital's ceiling.
Not physically.
Temporally.
The structure lost its future support. Gravity asserted itself violently. The building screamed as tons of material began collapsing—not all at once, but enough.
The machine recalculated too slowly.
Debris buried it.
Shenping grabbed the cocooned man and staggered back as Aaron dragged them into the corridor. Sirens wailed. Dust filled the air. Screams echoed from every direction.
They ran.
They burst out into daylight just as the building partially collapsed behind them. Emergency crews swarmed. Helicopters roared overhead.
The awakened man convulsed weakly within Shenping's grasp. "I'm dying," he whispered.
"Yes," Shenping said softly. "But not today."
He pressed two fingers to the man's forehead and sealed the excess power deep inside, locking it behind layers of temporal delay.
The glow faded.
The man went limp, breathing shallow but alive.
Aaron stared at the ruined hospital. "This is spreading, isn't it?"
Shenping nodded grimly. "Awakening begets awakening."
"And the machines?"
"They'll hunt them," Shenping said. "Or recruit them."
Sirens grew louder.
Shenping straightened, wiping blood from his face.
"We can't keep reacting," Aaron said. "So what do we do?"
Shenping looked out at the city—at a world slipping toward a war it didn't understand.
"We build something first," he said.
Aaron frowned. "Build what?"
Shenping's eyes hardened with resolve.
"A foundation," he replied. "Before they do."
High above, unseen by any camera, probability shifted again.
The machines logged a new variable.
Human cultivation—reintroduced.
Risk level escalated.
And somewhere deep in the city, another person woke up screaming.