Consciousness returned slowly, like surfacing from deep water.
Leon became aware of sensations one at a time. Softness beneath him. A blanket over his body. Warmth. The steady beep of machinery nearby. Antiseptic smell.
Hospital. He was in a hospital.
The memories came flooding back. The run. The construction site. The collapse. The crushing weight. The pain. The breathing. The breakthrough. The vision of his DNA transforming. The golden ring around his heart.
What had happened to him?
Leon's eyes fluttered open. White ceiling tiles. Fluorescent lights, currently dimmed. A window to his right showing darkness outside—nighttime. How long had he been unconscious?
He turned his head, looking around the room. Empty. A chair beside the bed had a jacket draped over it—Maya's jacket. She'd been here. Where was she now?
Leon tried to sit up, and stopped in surprise.
He felt... good. Really good. The weight that had pressed down on him his entire life—the constant low-level fatigue that came with just existing—was gone. His body felt light. Strong. Like he could jump out of bed and run a marathon.
He pushed himself up to sitting position, reaching for the bed rail to steady himself.
The metal bent.
Leon stared at his hand. The steel rail had crumpled under his grip like aluminum foil. He hadn't even been trying to squeeze hard.
"What the hell?"
He looked at his hands, really looked at them. They were his hands. Same size, same shape. But leaner. More defined. The tendons stood out in sharp relief. When he flexed his fingers, he could see every muscle moving beneath his skin with perfect clarity.
How strong was he now?
Leon carefully released the bent rail, making a mental note to be more gentle. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, half expecting pain from his broken femur.
Nothing. His leg worked perfectly. He stood up, tested his weight. Both legs held him easily. There was no pain and he felt no weakness. Just perfect function.
This was impossible. He'd felt his femur shatter. Felt the bone fragments grinding. That kind of injury took months to heal, not... wait how long had he been unconscious? Based on the darkness outside, maybe six or eight hours? OR maybe six or eight hours 6 months later.
Memory. Test the memory.
Leon thought back to the ambulance ride. He'd been in and out of consciousness during it, but now he could remember it. Every detail. The paramedics' faces. Sarah and Jake, their name tags had said. Sarah's concern about his vitals. Jake's confusion about the blood at the scene. The inside of the ambulance. The equipment. The sound of the siren. Everything.
He'd been unconscious, but somehow his brain had still been recording.
Go further. Random memory. Pick something.
Intro to Algorithms textbook, sophomore year. Page 247. Leon closed his eyes and could see it perfectly. The page layout. The diagram of a binary search tree. Every word of text. The example code in the margin. Professor Singh's coffee stain in the bottom corner because he'd borrowed Leon's book during office hours.
Perfect recall.
He opened his eyes, and more started happening.
Ideas bloomed in his mind like flowers opening. AI architectures he'd read about suddenly made more sense. He could see their flaws, see ways to improve them. The neural network design from Professor Chen's lecture—he could optimize it right now, sketch out improvements that would make it twice as efficient.
And math problems. The Riemann Hypothesis. P versus NP. The Collatz Conjecture. His mind was already playing with approaches, seeing patterns he'd never noticed before, making connections between different areas of mathematics that might lead to solutions.
It was exhilarating. Overwhelming. His brain was working at a speed he'd never experienced. Thoughts came faster than he could process them, ideas building on ideas, cascading through his consciousness like an avalanche.
And then the headache hit.
"Gah!" Leon grabbed his head, the sound escaping before he could stop it. The pain was sudden and intense, like someone had driven a spike through his skull.
His supercharged brain was demanding energy. Resources. Fuel to sustain this level of activity. And his body didn't have enough to give.
Energy conservation. Even his enhanced body followed the basic laws of physics. You couldn't get something from nothing. His accelerated healing, his improved brain function, his increased strength—all of it required energy. And he'd been unconscious for hours without eating.
The headache faded to a dull throb, but the need remained. His body was hungry on a cellular level.
Leon took a breath to steady himself and felt something strange. His heartbeat. He could feel it clearly, each powerful contraction pumping blood through his body. And not just feel it—he could sense the blood moving. Flowing through arteries and veins, carrying oxygen to his tissues.
He focused on the sensation, and his awareness expanded.
His neurons. He could feel them firing, electrical signals racing through his brain at incredible speed. New connections forming. Neural pathways being reinforced. His mind was literally rewiring itself as he stood there.
His vision shifted.
The hospital room faded. Suddenly Leon could see inside himself. His own body laid out before his awareness in perfect detail.
His heart pumped steadily in his chest. Four chambers working in rhythm, valves opening and closing. Blood flowed through vessels—arteries bright with oxygen, veins darker as they carried it away. His lungs expanded and contracted, exchanging carbon dioxide for fresh oxygen.
Deeper. He could see individual cells. Red blood cells tumbling through capillaries. White blood cells patrolling like tiny sentries, searching for threats. Platelets clustering around the few remaining injuries, sealing the last of his wounds.
His organs. Stomach empty and demanding fuel. Liver working to process the IV fluids he'd been given. Kidneys filtering blood. Everything functioning perfectly, better than perfectly.
His bones. The femur that had been shattered was completely healed. He could see the new bone tissue, denser and stronger than the original. Every bone in his body looked reinforced, hardened beyond normal human limits.
And then he saw it.
The golden ring.
It circled his heart, rotating slowly in a perfect orbit. Ethereal and beautiful, made of that same energy that had transformed him. Thin tendrils extended from the ring, dozens of them, connecting to his heart like roots to a tree.
Energy pulsed through the ring with each heartbeat. Down through the tendrils, into his heart, then out through his bloodstream to every cell in his body. A circulation system for this strange new energy. Evolyx, some part of his mind whispered. That's what it was called.
The ring was hollow at its center. Empty space waiting to be filled. But with what?
"What is that?" Leon whispered, staring at the impossible organ that had formed inside his chest.
The question hung in the air unanswered.
And then a new sensation hit him. Urgent. Undeniable. His body was expelling something. Needed to expel something right now.
Waste. All the damaged tissue his body had broken down during healing. Dead cells. Toxins. Impurities. Everything that had been purged during his transformation was demanding to be expelled.
Leon's eyes widened. "Oh no."
He needed a bathroom. Immediately.
He stood up from the bed, legs steady despite hours of unconsciousness. The hospital gown hung loose on his thinner frame. He looked around frantically and spotted the bathroom door in the corner of the room.
A single steps and he was there. He grabbed the door handle—carefully this time, conscious of his strength—and pulled it open.
Made it. Just barely.