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(Bonus Chapter)
Dawn. The sun was barely up when Jake shook his brothers awake.
Marcus groaned. Dean didn't move. Jake shook harder.
"Experiment day. Get up."
They were dressed and out the door in twelve minutes. The Sullivan triplets emerged from the next room at the same time. The Petersons a minute later. Nine men, washed, fed, and wired with the particular tension of people who'd volunteered for something they didn't fully understand and were now walking toward it.
Breakfast was quiet. Nobody ate much. The cafeteria was already half-full with regular research staff, but the nine pilots sat together at one table, speaking in low voices.
"You think it'll feel weird?" Marcus asked.
"Everything about this has been weird," Dean said. "The mech was weird. The neural link was weird. This is going to be weird. Accept it."
Jake read through the participant handbook one more time. Most of the technical language was beyond him, but the safety section was clear: connection failure results in neural fatigue, not injury. Rest after fatigue resolves it completely. No lasting effects documented in any tested scenario.
The Sullivan eldest, a man named Paul, leaned over from the next seat. "You worried?"
"Not about safety," Jake said. "About the memory thing."
That was the part nobody could prepare for. During the drift, your memories could surface involuntarily. And the person connected to you would see them. Not everything. Not a complete biography. But fragments. The moments that had left the deepest marks on your nervous system.
Your happiest memory. Your most embarrassing moment. The thing you'd never told anyone.
All of it was potentially on the table.
"I made peace with it," Paul said. "My brothers know everything about me anyway. Triplets don't get secrets. We shared a womb."
Jake laughed. It was the right thing to say.
They walked to the laboratory together. The room was already full. The entire senior research team was present, stationed at monitoring positions, tablets and notebooks ready. Ryan stood at the central console, running final diagnostics on the drift device.
The machine hummed softly. The glass chambers on the central hub were filled with reaction solutions, some clear, some faintly tinted, one slowly bubbling as if heated from within. The sensor caps hung from their articulated arms, red and waiting.
"You three, wait outside for a moment," Reeves said, directing the triplets gently toward the door. "Final calibrations."
The pilots filed out. Through the door, they could see the research team moving with the precise, choreographed efficiency of people who'd rehearsed their positions.
"Does anyone else feel like a test subject in a science fiction movie?" Dean asked.
"We ARE test subjects in a science fiction movie," Marcus replied.
"Fair point."
The door opened. Ryan appeared.
"We're starting with a two-person connection today. Not three. We build up gradually." He looked at the nine pilots. "Which pair wants to go first?"
Jake and Dean exchanged a glance. The kind of glance that carried a full conversation in half a second. A triplet thing.
"Us," Jake said. Dean nodded.
Ryan led them inside. Two reclining chairs had been positioned in front of the drift device, angled for comfort, close enough to the sensor cap arms that the headpieces could reach without stretching the cables.
"Sit down. Get comfortable. The caps adjust automatically."
They sat. Jake felt the chair mold to his back. Surprisingly comfortable for a piece of laboratory furniture. Dean settled in beside him, rolling his shoulders.
Ryan lifted the first sensor cap and placed it on Jake's head. The cap contracted gently, conforming to his skull shape, the sensor nodes finding their positions against his scalp. The signal amplifiers pressed against his temples. The neck cradle settled into the curve at the base of his skull, and the recording module clicked into place behind it.
Dean received the same treatment.
"One more reminder," Ryan said, standing between them. "When the connection activates, you'll feel a shift. It's not painful. It's disorienting. Your brain will suddenly have access to neural data that isn't yours. Fragments of your brother's sensory experience, emotional state, and memories may surface. Don't fight it. Don't chase it. Let it happen."
"If you feel overwhelmed, raise your right hand. We'll disconnect immediately."
Jake nodded. Dean nodded.
Ryan walked to the console. The research team was locked in. Reeves at the monitoring station. Cross at the secondary display. Everyone else at their assigned observation posts.
The room was absolutely silent.
Ryan began the countdown.
"Three."
Jake closed his eyes. Felt his heartbeat. Felt the cap against his scalp, the cool pressure of the sensors, the faint hum of the machine.
"Two."
Dean's breathing steadied beside him. Jake could hear it. He'd been hearing his brother breathe his entire life.
"One."
Ryan pressed the activation key.
The drift device engaged.
The sensor caps flared to life. Green indicator lights on both headpieces, signaling active connection. The central hub's reaction chambers erupted into motion. Clear solutions began to foam. Tinted solutions shifted color, cycling through hues that had no name in common vocabulary. The metal chambers resonated with a low vibration that you felt in your sternum more than heard with your ears.
The signal processor's cooling system kicked on. Fans spinning. Heat being pushed out through ventilation slots. The machine was working. Processing. Integrating.
Jake felt it.
Not pain. Not pressure. Something else. Like a door opening in a room he'd always thought was sealed. A sudden awareness of... presence. Not a voice. Not a thought. Just the unmistakable sensation that someone else was there, inside the same mental space he'd occupied alone for his entire life.
Dean. He could feel Dean. Not his body. Not his thoughts, exactly. Something deeper. The rhythm of his brother's nervous system. The pattern of his neural activity. The texture of his consciousness.
It was the strangest thing he'd ever experienced. And it was the most natural thing he'd ever experienced. Both at the same time.
Their eyes were closed. But behind their eyelids, their eyes were moving rapidly. Scanning. Processing. Absorbing.
The room watched in breathless silence.
Ryan turned to the monitoring display.
Two brain models, rendered in holographic wireframe, were displayed side by side. As the connection deepened, the models began to drift toward each other. Overlapping. Merging. The neural activity patterns in each brain were synchronizing, their oscillation frequencies aligning, their signal architectures converging.
Below the brain models, a single number:
Neural Sync: 39%
It was climbing.
40%. 41%. 43%.
Reeves stared at the display. His mouth was slightly open. Beside him, Cross had stopped breathing.
The number kept rising.