The link didn't sleep when I did.
I lay flat on my back in the dark quarters they had assigned me, staring up at the acoustic tiles of the ceiling. The facility's clock showed 03:14 AM. My body was exhausted, the muscles in my calves and shoulders aching from the sudden, violent bursts of speed in District 4 but my brain was screaming, trapped in a loop of foreign static.
Every time I drifted close to consciousness, a phantom sensation would drag me back.
It wasn't a memory of my parents or the blood on the warehouse floor. It was a cold, sharp spike of focus. A sudden mental image of a chemical equation drifting across a glass screen. A faint taste of black coffee and mint on the back of my tongue.
Elena was awake. Somewhere in the lower laboratories, she was working, and her concentration was leaking into my skull like a slow drip from a broken pipe.
I rolled onto my side, pressing my palms against my eyes until I saw stars. "Get out," I muttered into the empty room. "Get out of my head."
The Brand on my collarbone gave a low, mocking throb in response. It didn't burn anymore; it just existed, an organic surveillance camera sewn into my skin. I could feel her heartbeat—still steady, still distant—but the absolute lack of privacy was suffocating. I couldn't even hate her in peace because I was terrified she would feel the shape of my hatred through the connection.
I couldn't tell where my own mind ended and her influence began. When I thought about the harbor worker I had almost choked to death, the cold indifference that followed the memory—was that my survival instinct, or was it her evaluation of "efficiency" rewriting my conscience?
Unable to take the silence any longer, I stood up, threw on a gray sweatshirt, and walked out into the corridor.
The facility at night felt like a tomb made of brushed steel. I didn't have a destination, but my feet carried me toward the training sector, my heightened senses mapping the emptiness around me. The air smelled of floor wax and the static hum of security grids.
"Insomnia is a predictable side effect of a first-stage calibration."
I stopped dead in my tracks.
Elena was standing by the observation balcony overlooking the darkened combat arena. She wasn't wearing her lab coat or her tactical gear; she wore a simple, dark tailored suit, her silver hair catching the dim emergency lights of the hallway. She held a porcelain cup in her hand, the steam rising in thin, twisting ribbons.
"I didn't hear you approach," I said, my voice tight.
"You didn't need to hear me," she said, turning her head slightly to look at me. Her eyes were shadowed, clinical, yet completely focused. "Your Brand anchored your position the moment you left your room. I knew you were coming five minutes ago."
She took a slow sip from her cup. On the back of my tongue, the exact taste of bitter espresso and mint flared up again.
I winced, taking a step back. "Turn it off. Whatever this connection is, filter it. I can't sleep with your thoughts rotting my brain."
"They aren't thoughts, Alfa. They are structural echoes," Elena corrected, her tone completely devoid of sympathy. She stepped away from the railing, her heels clicking softly against the floor as she closed the distance between us. "You are a hybrid vessel holding a master-class spell core. Until your neural pathways completely adapt to my frequency, my baseline consciousness will spill over. If it bothers you, learn to compartmentalize."
"Learn to compartmentalize?" I let out a harsh, dry laugh. "You almost made me kill an innocent man yesterday because your thrill leaked into my blood."
Elena stopped three feet away. The static scent of her like an impending lightning strike swallowed the smell of the corridor.
"I didn't tighten your hand around his throat, Alfa," she said softly, her dark eyes locking onto mine, a small flicker of sharp irritation breaking through her usual calm. "You did. Don't blame the tool for the hand that decided to close."
The words hit me like a physical punch. My fist clenched inside the pocket of my sweatshirt, the knuckles popping. The Brand on my neck flared with a sudden heat, a direct reflection of my spiking anger.
As my emotional spike hit the link, the emergency light fixture right above us gave a violent, high-pitched buzz. The violet neon tube flickered wildly, casting chaotic, jagged shadows across Elena's pale face before completely burning out with a sharp pop.
But as the darkness expanded, I felt a matching wave of cold pressure from the link, pushing down on my heartbeat, forcing it back into a calm, steady rhythm against my will. She was manually overriding my adrenaline. She was suppressing my anger from the inside out.
"Stop it," I gasped, my chest tightening as my own body betrayed my emotions. "Stop touching my chest."
"Control is not just about swinging your fists, Alfa," Elena whispered, her gloved fingers reaching out, stopping just short of touching my collarbone. "If you let your rage dictate the output, you will burn out before we even find the secondary targets in District 4. You are a weapon. Act like one."
She turned around, her coat billowing as she began to walk back toward the elevator wing.
"Go back to your quarters," her voice echoed, both in the corridor and inside my skull. "We move again in forty-eight hours. I need my asset functional, not emotional."
I stayed in the dim corridor long after her shadow vanished into the elevator.
My heart was beating at a perfectly artificial sixty beats per minute—calm, steady, and utterly hollow. She had ironed out my rage with a flick of her thoughts.
I looked down at my hands. A single, thin thread of black fluid began to ooze from my nostril, dripping onto the concrete floor. A quiet, physical reminder that my body was paying the price for her peace of mind.
But as I wiped the black stain away, a small, dark thought bloomed in the corner of my mind. A thought that suggested with this power, nobody could ever hurt me again.
The thought should have terrified me.
It didn't.