As soon as Youri opened his eyes, everything rushed back to him at once — not gently, but all in a single crushing wave, memory piling on memory faster than he could sort through it. He knew, despite whatever had happened to him, that if they were still crawling through his mind, they hadn't found what they were looking for. That much he was certain of. And he knew, with the same certainty, that he needed to get out of that pod immediately, before certainty became the only thing he had left.
He looked down at his own body, wrapped in a mess of tubes and sensors, and with one hand he tore the whole tangle free, yanking it loose limb by limb until he could finally move. He peeled the breathing mask away last, slowly, and clenched the freed hand into a fist in front of his face, studying it. A single thought surfaced, bitter and unbidden: Goddammit, even dying has become a luxury for me. He turned his gaze toward the people watching him from the other side of the glass. "To hell with this," he muttered. "Let's see where the fuck I am."
He slammed his fist into the thin wall of the pod. A crack spread out from the point of impact, and Youri kept hitting the same spot, again and again, until on the final blow the glass gave way entirely and the heavy green liquid poured out around him and across the floor. Drenched, fully naked, he looked down at himself for a moment before lifting his gaze to the researchers gathered on the other side of the observation window. He rolled his neck once, slicked his long, brown hair back from his face, and stepped out onto the cold metal floor.
The researchers could do nothing but stare as he approached, though from where Youri stood, he could barely see them — the glass reflected like a mirror, throwing his own reflection back at him instead. He reached up and touched his beard, startled to find it had grown long enough to brush against his chest. Then his eyes caught something else: a wide, unfamiliar scar tracing a line from his left leg all the way up to his chest.
"Weird," he murmured to himself. "That wasn't there the last time I looked."
A voice crackled from the other side of the glass. "This is Head Researcher Caleb Zigriad." The man cleared his throat before continuing. "Subject 105 — also known as Youri Kronos, or the late Duke Kaelthorn — I suggest you stay back and don't resist. Security will arrive shortly. For your own benefit, I'd advise you to surrender. We don't tolerate troublemakers here."
Youri studied him through the glass. Caleb did have the look of a career scientist — an average build tending toward heavy, cleanly shaven, a pair of black glasses hiding a round face and a pair of unremarkable brown eyes. The one feature that stood out at all was his hair, cropped short and pale blond, almost colorless under the lab's white light.
"Were you the one who went through my head?" Youri asked, his green eyes never leaving Caleb's.
Caleb kept his voice level, though something in his stance suggested the calm was costing him more effort than it appeared. "Yes. By the consul's order. Your execution was postponed until we'd siphoned every piece of information we could get from you."
Youri's tone sharpened. "And how much did you manage to find?"
Caleb hesitated. The silence stretched, thick enough that even the hum of the lab's ventilation seemed to quiet around it, and with every second of it Youri's stare seemed to grow heavier, until the researcher finally answered. "Enough to fundamentally change the way we understand the world."
A faint, humorless smile crossed Youri's face. He exhaled slowly, the sound almost a laugh, and lowered himself to sit on the cold floor, tipping his head back to look up at the artificial light set into the ceiling as though it might offer him something the room itself couldn't. "So you finally know what's out there, then." He let the words hang a moment before turning his gaze back to the glass, unhurried, almost pitying. "I hope you understand now — this empire is nothing more than a speck of dust in a very, very large hourglass."
The assistant sprinted the length of the corridor without slowing until he reached the Director's office, bursting through the automatic doors the instant they parted wide enough to let him through. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead. "Sir — Subject 105 has woken up!"
The Director of Khalil Fortress was Benjamin Dalvaren, a man whose name alone was enough to silence a room of prisoners. He had built the fortress's reputation on a simple, unbending principle: no one broke its rules and lived long enough to try twice. He stood tall and broad-shouldered, perpetually dressed in uniform, the cap he never removed hiding all but a few stray strands of red hair. His dark eyes lifted to the assistant the moment the words left the man's mouth. Dalvaren set the data pad he'd been reviewing down on the desk without a word, rose slowly to his feet, and fixed the assistant with a look cold enough to still whatever else the man might have wanted to say.
"Clear the team out of the lab. Send them to the waiting room," Dalvaren said. "I'll handle this myself from here."
The assistant didn't wait to be told twice. He was gone before the door had fully closed behind him, and Dalvaren turned back to his desk, picking up the data pad once more to place a call. He waited in silence for several long minutes until a holographic projection flickered to life above the desk — Prime Minister Alan, his expression already halfway to a smile before Dalvaren had said a single word.
"Seeing as you're the one calling," Alan said, "I can only assume it means one thing. He's awake."
Dalvaren gave a single, measured nod. "Yes."
Alan's smile widened just slightly, the expression not quite reaching the rest of his face. "Then I trust you already know what needs to happen next. Take care of everyone involved, and wait for my arrival."
"Preparations are already underway," Dalvaren replied, his voice as flat and controlled as ever. "We're simply waiting on you now."
Alan's smile spread fully then, satisfied. "Good work, Benjamin." He paused, letting the moment settle before adding one last line, almost gently. "The future waiting for us is going to be an enlightened one."