Exordium 6

The room was low-lit and humming, a hush of electronics coiled around the ceiling like they were holding their breath. △ My fingers twitched - too long, too big again, though not so much as last time. ⚡ I felt myself stretch, skin pulling strange over a body that kept growing without asking me. ⚡

∷ "QW1hdGE=?" ∷ I whispered, the word clumsy in my mouth. ⍟ A name that felt like memory spat backward, chewed into noise. ⍾ It stirred something. Not just sound - emotion. ⍾ I remembered her. Sort of. A shape of her. A pattern: external, other, and... familiar. Not quite family. Not quite not.

⚑ She was scared. ⚑ Her voice, her distress, carried through the door like steam from a cracked pipe. I could hear it even before I really heard it. The room smelled the same - sanitized metal, false air, the ozone-buzz of voltage somewhere close - but the shapes inside were wrong. ⧖ A thousand days had happened here, and I could feel every one of them out of place.

⚭ I didn't take the gun. ⚭
She offered it - held it out like a bridge - and I shook my head. ≣ That wasn't the way. ≣ My fingers brushed it, once, then fell away. I didn't want to hurt anyone. I didn't want to be that kind of thing.

↗ I wanted to find my father. ↗

I thought I was going to come back. I thought I would return. I even looked around the room like it might still be mine later. Like maybe, just maybe, things would settle back into the shapes I knew. That he would be there, arms crossed, voice patient but strained, explaining why he left.

☈ But he was gone. ☈

⍙ And they were coming. ⍙

The sirens screamed, and every hallway turned sharp. << Guards - not guards, not really - not anymore. >> Their faces twisted, like they'd been glitched. Names I knew spat words like gunfire. ⍾ They were angry. I remember thinking how angry they looked. Not at the situation. At me. Like I'd done something. ⍾

⚡ I ran. ⚡ BB-shapes helped me - small, familiar. Soft chitter, metallic sympathy. One of them was smashed by a security bot. I hated that thing. Its arms didn't hesitate. It tore through them like they were nothing.

♾ I remember Jonas. ♾
He was... there. Then he wasn't.
There wasn't time to cry. Not then.

I ran through a room where two people were trying to escape. They didn't make it. I don't even know who they were. But they were trying. I remember the motion - their bodies stopping in ways bodies aren't supposed to stop. Vault security did it. Their own. Our own. The same uniforms we all wore.

⚯ Everything was wrong. ⚯
Everything I trusted was hurting itself.
And me.

↻ Just run. Just keep running. ↻

I stopped once. ∷ Amata. ∷ She was screaming. Her father - Overseer. Authority. He was hurting her. That was my fault too, wasn't it? ⚑ I was the fracture. I made this reality unstable. ⚑

⚭ I... stopped it. ⚭

I don't remember how. I think - she took the gun. I still wouldn't. I couldn't. Even now I don't know if she used it.

Then I ran again. Just... kept moving. My legs ached. My throat burned. My skin stung every time I brushed metal. My heart felt too big, too loud. Like a drum caught in a cage. Like a bird dying in glass.

⏃ The Overseer's office smelled like paper and oil. ⏃ Amata met me there. She told me where the escape tunnel was.

She wouldn't come with me.

⍙ She said goodbye. ⍙ Not with words, not really. But it was a goodbye. I felt the closing of it - like a vault door. Final. Crushing. I tried to say something back, but all I had left was silence.

I was tired.

⍾ I'd never been that tired. ⍾

The tunnel was narrow, cold. I pressed my hands against the rock walls as I walked. Dirt clung under my nails. The air was different. Real. Unfiltered. It smelled - alive. It was wrong, but in a way that woke something up in me.

⬤ Skeletons waited there. ⬤ They didn't speak, but I heard them.

~ This isn't home. ~

I repeated that under my breath like a prayer. Like it might give me strength. This isn't home. This isn't home.
Where is home?

Everything behind me had locked me out. Rejected me. The place I thought was mine had decided I wasn't part of it anymore. My hands shook. My breath steamed in front of me.

↗ I kept walking. ↗

There was a door at the end. Heavy, round, rust-edged. I stood in front of it and reached for the lever.

⌖ I think I said something. Maybe just breathed. ⌖

Then the door opened, and everything turned white.