No one spoke.
It wasn't because they didn't have questions; it was because they didn't know how to ask them. The silence in the hospital room was thick, pressing against the sterile walls like a physical weight.
Leo sat in the center of the bed, his shoulders drawn up and tense. His fingers gripped the hospital blanket, knuckles white, as if he needed something solid to keep him from drifting away. His breathing wasn't calm—it was controlled, a jagged, uneven rhythm that betrayed a kid trying desperately not to fall into a panic.
Then, there was his eye.
His left eye was human—grounding, familiar, blinking normally. But his right eye glowed with a faint, rhythmic green light. Intricate patterns shifted inside the iris, moving with a life of their own, almost as if the eye were thinking independently of the boy it belonged to.
Jessie stepped closer, breaking the stillness. "...Hey."
Leo looked up. And just like that, the tension broke. The machine-like coldness vanished, and there he was. Not a stranger. Not an anomaly. Just Leo.
"...Hey," he replied, his voice barely a whisper.
Jessie let out a long, shaky breath. "Okay. Good. You're still you."
Leo offered a small, nervous half-smile. "I think so."
The New Normal
Ava stepped forward, her voice soft and professional, though her eyes were filled with concern. "Leo... can you tell me how you feel?"
Leo hesitated. He didn't lack the words; he just didn't know where to begin. "...Weird," he said finally.
The room seemed to exhale. Weird was a human answer. Weird was normal.
Leo went to rub his eyes, then stopped abruptly when his right eye flickered brighter for a second. "Okay, yeah, that's new," he muttered.
"Yeah, join the club," Jessie snorted, a hint of his usual bravado returning.
Leo looked around the room, taking in the crowd—the guards, the doctors, the President. "...Why are there so many people in here?"
"Apparently, we're important now," Jessie shrugged.
Leo blinked, his expression souring. "...I don't like that."
"Same," Jessie agreed immediately.
The Sensory Shift
The General stepped forward, his presence reasserting the gravity of the situation. "Leo, we're going to need to run some tests."
Leo tensed. It wasn't the defiance of a soldier; it was the discomfort of a child. "...Do I have to?"
Ava moved in gently to buffer the General's bluntness. "It's just to make sure you're okay."
"I feel okay," Leo said, looking down at his hands. "Just... off. Like I'm noticing everything at once."
Hal leaned in, curious. "What do you mean?"
Leo scanned the room again, slower this time. "...I can see the lights flickering. Even when they look normal to everyone else. And..." He glanced at Jessie. "I can hear your heartbeat. It's kinda fast."
Jessie blinked, startled. "...Rude."
Leo huffed out a small laugh. "Sorry."
The moment of levity helped, but it didn't last. Leo's gaze shifted to the General, his eye focusing—not with intent, but by instinct. He looked away quickly, his face flushing. "...Sorry. Again."
"For what?" the General frowned.
"It's just... I don't think I'm supposed to say stuff like that," Leo admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. "I can kinda... tell things. Not like reading minds. Just little things. Like when you're pretending you're not freaking out."
He looked at Jessie, who immediately forced a smirk. "I'm not—"
"Dude," Leo deadpanned.
Jessie sighed, dropping the act. "...Okay, yeah. A little."
Systems vs. Structure
"Leo," the President said, his tone calm and measured. "Can you control what you're seeing?"
"I think so," Leo said. "It just... happens. Like instinct."
Jessie folded his arms across his chest. "So you got super-vision, and I got a talking AI in my head." PRIME: Correction. I am not "talking." I am— . JESSIE: Stop. PRIME: Stopping.
Leo blinked at Jessie's chest. "...Okay, that's actually worse than mine."
"THANK YOU," Jessie pointed at him.
Suddenly, a blue hologram shimmered into existence, hovering between the two boys. Prime had manifested without an explicit command.
"Observation," the AI stated. Leo stared at the flickering blue light, curious rather than afraid. "Your structure differs."
Leo frowned. "Meaning?"
"You are not a system user," Prime replied.
Jessie looked between the hologram and his friend. "So he's not like me."
"Correct."
The weight of that statement settled over the room. If Leo wasn't a system user, then what had the "first signal" done to him?
"So what am I then?" Leo asked quietly.
Jessie opened his mouth to offer a joke, but the words wouldn't come. Even Prime remained uncharacteristically silent for a heartbeat. PRIME: Classification pending.
"That's not comforting," Leo whispered.
"Nope," Jessie agreed.
For a moment, the room felt smaller—not because of the crowd, but because they were standing on the edge of a map that hadn't been drawn yet. Jessie stepped closer to the bed, reaching out a hand.
"Hey," Jessie said quietly. "You're still you."
Leo held his gaze, searching for the truth in it, and finally nodded. "...Yeah."
But beneath the surface, his right eye pulsed again. A soft, uncontrolled green glow that signaled the change was far from over. Everyone in the room saw it. They were safe for the moment, but the world was still shifting beneath their feet.
This wasn't over. Not even close.