HOURS LATER...
Dr. Alira Sen ushered the newcomer through the sliding doors of the diagnostics wing. He was tall, slightly stooped from a lifetime over microscopes, with salt-and-pepper hair swept back quickly. His badge flashed:
Dr. Marcus Halden—Neuro-Cognitive Research, Level Ω.
"Dr. Halden," Sen said, "our patient is Jayden Cole. These are the scans."
The moment Halden read the name, something tightened behind his eyes. He crossed to Jayden, offered a firm handshake, and—unlike most physicians—held it an extra beat, as though greeting an equal.
"Jayden… I believe I knew your father," he said quietly.
Jayden's breath caught. "You knew him?"
"Not well," Halden admitted, "but well enough to remember."
He glanced at Sen, and then she drew a stool close and spoke with a respect that felt almost ceremonial. "I was an assistant in your father's lab for a few weeks, just before… the accident."
The spark in Jayden's eyes flickered; the doctor pressed on, gently.
"Your dad was brilliant—infectiously so. Everyone loved his energy."
Then Halden straightened, business returning to his voice. "Let's see what we have here."
He swept a hand through the holo-screens. Layer upon layer of neural imagery spiraled outward—electric storms of data. Halden's murmur turned to rapid-fire curiosity; he scrolled, zoomed, and overlaid. The longer he watched, the more his fascination bent toward disbelief.
Abruptly, he froze.
"This… can't be possible."
Sen stepped closer. "Marcus?"
Halden's gaze stayed on the luminous patterns. "Back then, your father mentioned a side project—told no one. I stumbled over it by accident. He called it the Human SD chip: a micro-device designed to store human memories—archive them like files on a solid-state drive".
Jayden's pulse hammered. "You think that's what's inside me?"
"I know the signature," Halden said. "The waveform here is identical to his prototype schematics. Right down to the checksum spikes."
He exhaled, turning from scientist to storyteller. "A few days before he died, that side project vanished. Notes scrubbed, hardware gone. I never learned whether it worked." He tapped the scan. "Until now."
Halden's professional tone returned, crisp and grave. "Your hippocampal bursts show the chip has begun replaying childhood data—memories locked inside it. Our attempt to remove the device jolted that process."
He folded his arms. "Expect disorientation: vivid flashbacks, sensory overlap—maybe muscle responses tied to old reflexes. They should level out, but you must stay under observation."
Jayden stared at the shifting lights, mind racing:
His father's secret work—hidden in his chest.
Memories he might not even know were his.
And the haunting question—why him?
Halden offered a reassuring nod, unaware that deeper safeguards were already unraveling inside Jayden's mind—codes and shadows neither doctor had the clearance to imagine.
The room fell silent but for the soft whir of the scanners, charting a past that refused to stay buried—and a future about to awaken.
In a dimly lit operations center buried beneath the Novareum's southern wing, rows of analysts sat hunched behind curved digital interfaces—holographic displays flickering with data streams, retinal scans, and coded transcripts. The hum of servers blended with quiet keystrokes and the occasional murmur of cross-check confirmations. These were the silent watchers—the scouts tasked with locating anomalies, outliers, and potential assets.
One of them, a sharp-eyed operative named Kev, was buried in a pile of flagged profiles—candidates filtered through the Novareum's AI system based on genetic quirks, trauma markers, or simply unexplained survival patterns. Most files were uneventful—minor incidents, average abilities.
Then he paused.
A mugshot blinked onto his screen: a man in his late twenties, lean and stubbled, eyes sharp even through the low-resolution prison photo. Name: Luca Ferini. Location: Blackridge Maximum Security Penitentiary.
Kev raised a brow. "Blackridge? For petty theft?"
He skimmed the initial record—minor felonies, a few scrapes with the law. Nothing in the system justified incarceration at a facility that rivaled military fortresses. Curious, he dug deeper, fingers dancing over the console.
Then he found it.
Tarnell Military Academy—Graduated with Honors.
His brow furrowed. "What is a military-grade operative doing in Blackridge?"
The deeper he dug, the stranger it became. Most of Luca's post-academy history was missing—just… gone, a digital blackout. No address. No job. No service records. The name "Shadow Fox" surfaced across black-site forums—attached to urban legends and whispers. Some claimed he'd been absorbed by a classified intelligence wing. Others said he vanished into the criminal underworld, working as a ghost for hire.
Kev's screen pinged a warning: RESTRICTED FILE ACCESS. CLEARANCE LEVEL: OMEGA.
He leaned back and called out, "Sir?"
From the shadows behind them, a figure stepped forward with slow precision—hands folded behind his back, eyes always calculating.
Elric Vahn.
His presence alone straightened every analyst's spine.
Kev stood as Elric approached. "Sir, I've come across something odd. This man—Luca Ferini—doesn't belong in Blackridge. He's got a profile too clean for it… except for what isn't there."
Elric's sharp eyes locked onto the screen. As he read, his expression darkened—but only slightly. He recognized the photo. The face. The silence around it.
"The Shadow Fox," Elric said quietly. "His time after Tarnell is… classified. Above your access level."
Kev opened his mouth, then thought better of it. Elric placed a hand on his shoulder, firm but not unkind.
"I'll handle it from here," he said, then turned away without another word.
Kev exhaled and refocused on his console, switching feeds and scanning for other potentials. But in the back of his mind, the ghost of Luca Ferini lingered… and the feeling that this war was attracting more than just volunteers.