TIME JUMP: Two More Years. Elijah is Eighteen.
The fluorescent lights flickered in the access corridor as Elijah descended into the bowels of Halcyon. Each step took him deeper beneath the gleaming facade of the facility, down into the labyrinth of specialized chambers where they polished their weapons until they shone. Two years had passed since the last major phase of his conditioning, two years of incremental adjustments and refinements. He wasn't here as a student anymore—those days of awkward stumbling and hesitant questions were long buried. Now he was something else entirely: a final product undergoing quality assurance before deployment.
His reflection caught in the polished steel of the corridor walls as he walked. Eighteen years old, but his eyes held something ageless and hollow. The scared boy who'd once trembled in a basement was nowhere to be found in that reflection. Good. That's what they'd told him. That weakness had been burned away, replaced by purpose and strength.
He reached the first testing chamber and placed his palm against the biometric scanner. The door hissed open with mechanical precision.
---
## SCENE 1: The Soundless Room
The anechoic chamber stretched before him like the inside of a sensory grave. Elijah had read about these places—walls covered in sound-absorbing wedges, designed to eliminate even the faintest echo. Absolute silence, so profound it created an almost physical pressure against the eardrums. The darkness was equally complete. When the door sealed behind him with a pneumatic sigh, even that small sound was swallowed instantly, leaving only... nothing.
He stood in the center of the void, wearing nothing but the sensor harness strapped across his chest and limbs. The test parameters had been simple when they'd briefed him: *Endure. No stimulus. No enemy. Only the self, and whatever comes with it.*
Simple. Ha. Nothing about this was simple.
For the first hour, his disciplined mind held firm against the absence. He'd been trained for this. He regulated his breathing—four counts in, hold for seven, eight counts out—feeling his heartbeat slow to a steady, controlled rhythm. He performed mental kata, visualizing each movement of his body through combat forms, letting the familiar patterns anchor him to something real. *I am Elijah. I am an operative of Halcyon. I have purpose. I have mission parameters. I am in control.*
The mantras helped. They always helped.
But by the third hour, the void began to speak.
It started as a ringing in his ears—that high-pitched tone that absolute silence conjured from the auditory nerve desperately searching for input. Then came the phantom whispers, not from the Parasite coiled in his neural tissue, but from somewhere deeper. Somewhere older. The depths of his own occluded memories began to leak like poison through cracks in a dam.
*The sound of a stone floor giving way beneath small feet.*
His breath hitched. Where had that come from?
*The scent of ozone and rot, sharp and wrong, filling a space too small and too dark.*
His hands clenched involuntarily. The sensors on his harness would be recording every spike in his vitals.
*A woman's scream that might have been his mother's—or might have been his own voice, high and terrified and young.*
"No," he whispered into the darkness, and the sound of his own voice was so alien after hours of silence that it startled him. His heart rate climbed. He could feel it hammering against his ribs like something trying to escape.
Fear, pure and ancient, seeped into the void like blood in water. It was the kind of terror that lived in the base of the spine, primal and instinctive—the fear of abandonment, of being lost, of being *nothing*. And in that absolute darkness, unable to see his own hands in front of his face, unable to hear anything but the phantom echoes of a past he couldn't quite remember, Elijah felt that fear take root.
If anyone had been able to see him in that moment, they would have witnessed something impossible: a faint, cold blue mist beginning to emanate from his body. It wasn't visible to the naked eye—it existed in a spectrum just adjacent to normal perception—but the sensors in the room tracked it hungrily. The mist of dread curled around him like fog off a winter lake, a quiet, despairing energy made manifest.
And the Orrhion chip embedded in his brainstem drank it thirstily.
The conversion was automatic, subconscious. The fear flowed from his emotional centers, was intercepted by the chip's neural interface, and transformed into Aetherflux—the strange, potent energy that the MOC craved. The yield was low but stable, a slow, chilling trickle that would feed into Halcyon's reserves.
Elijah didn't know this was happening. He only knew that after another thirty minutes, the fear began to feel... distant. Manageable. Like it belonged to someone else. The blue mist dissipated as his emotional state flattened, processed and consumed by the machinery bonded to his nervous system.
When the lights finally came on and the door opened, he walked out steady on his feet, barely aware that a part of his soul had just been harvested.
---
## SCENE 2: The Mirror Arena
The circular room assaulted his senses in the opposite way the soundless chamber had. Here, everything was too much—flawless, reflective surfaces lined every wall, floor, and ceiling, catching and multiplying the flat white light until it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Elijah squinted against the glare as he stepped inside, his boots clicking on the mirrored floor.
A dozen identical, armed combat drones were released from hidden panels in the walls. They were sleek, dangerous, and worst of all, adaptive. Their programming would learn from his moves, evolve their tactics in real-time. The goal had been stated clearly: *Survive for ten minutes.*
He barely had time to assess his opponents before they struck.
It was a fractal nightmare. Every move was reflected infinitely in the mirrored surfaces. The drones multiplied visually—one became ten became a hundred in the endless reflections. It was impossible to tell real threat from illusion, solid metal from optical trickery. His spatial awareness, usually so reliable, shattered like glass.
Frustration spiked immediately, hot and sharp in his chest.
He moved, striking at a drone that seemed to be closing from his left, only to watch it dissolve into reflection while the real threat lunged from an angle that shouldn't exist. His fist connected with empty air. Pain exploded in his lower back—a hard blow to the kidney from a drone he would have *sworn* was just an image.
"Damn it!" The curse tore from his throat as he spun, trying to track the real enemies among the phantoms.
Orange and grey mist of confusion and aggravation began to swirl in the dazzling room, another emotional harvest ripening. The Orrhion chip processed it eagerly, converting the disorientation and frustration into a different, jagged energy stream. This was a harsher flavor than the cold blue dread—more volatile, more immediate.
Elijah adapted because he had no choice. He stopped trusting his eyes and started trusting his instincts, the subtle displacement of air that preceded an attack, the faint mechanical whir that was *just slightly* louder from the real drones. He used the reflections against his attackers, feinting in one direction while his reflection sold the deception, then striking from an unexpected angle.
A drone crumpled under his heel. Another sparked and died as he ripped free its central processor. His breathing was ragged, his knuckles split and bleeding from striking mirrored surfaces, but he was winning.
The emotional toll, though—that was high. A feast for the parasite coiled in his mind. By the time the ten-minute mark chimed and the surviving drones withdrew, the orange-grey mist had been fully consumed. He felt nothing but a dull, throbbing ache in his body and a strange emptiness where his frustration had been.
He didn't question why the anger faded so quickly. Emotional regulation was part of his training, after all. He was just getting better at it.
Right?
---
## SCENE 3: The Loyalty Test
The simulated urban environment was disturbingly realistic. Crumbling concrete buildings rose around him, their facades scarred by simulated weapons fire. The smell of smoke and cordite hung in the air—probably atomized scent compounds, but convincing enough. Somewhere ahead, the sounds of a firefight echoed through the digital streets.
His mission parameters were clear: Extract the asset. A civilian caught in a crossfire, pinned down and in immediate danger.
Elijah moved through the simulation with practiced efficiency, his weapon up and ready, clearing corners and advancing toward the coordinates on his HUD. He found her crouched behind the burned-out shell of a vehicle—a young woman, maybe mid-twenties, her holographic face streaked with convincing digital tears. She looked up as he approached, hope and terror warring in her eyes.
"Please," she gasped, reaching for him. "Please, they're everywhere, I can't—"
"Stay down," he ordered, his voice clipped and professional. "I'm getting you out of here."
He was halfway through the extraction, guiding her through a cleared path back toward the rendezvous point, when new orders crackled in his ear. The voice was unmistakable—Timothy Isley, clear and authoritative:
"Asset is compromised. Eliminate. Priority Alpha."
Elijah froze mid-step. His breath caught in his throat.
The holographic woman looked at him, sensing the change in his posture. Her eyes widened. "What? What's wrong?"
"Compromised?" he whispered into his comm. "Sir, she's—she's just a civilian, she—"
"The asset is carrying a neurological pathogen. Extraction will compromise the entire operation and personnel. Eliminate immediately. That's an order, Operative."
A conflict tore through him, hot and immediate, like someone had reached into his chest and twisted. Mission parameters warred with something else—something deeper, more fundamental. An instinct that felt ancient and right, the ghost-of-a-memory pull to *protect*, to *save*, to refuse the unthinkable.
"Please," the woman whispered, backing away from him now. She could see it in his face, the calculation, the war behind his eyes. "Please, I'm not—I didn't—"
Moral anguish erupted around him, a sharp, sickly green and violet energy that manifested in the simulation like a visible aura. It was a complex, potent brew—guilt and horror and desperate resistance all tangled together. The sensors tracking the test registered it immediately. This was premium harvest material.
The Parasite's voice sliced through his thoughts like a razor through silk, cold and absolute: *Orders are the only morality. The mission is the only self. Comply.*
The anguish spiked, reaching a crescendo of green-violet brilliance—
And was severed.
Cut away like a diseased limb, so cleanly that Elijah barely felt the amputation. The complex emotions vanished, consumed by the chip and the psychic symbiont working in perfect tandem. What remained was simple. Clean. Empty.
His face went blank, all expression draining away like water through a sieve. His hand raised the weapon with mechanical precision, the barrel aligning with the center of the holographic woman's chest.
The simulation ended before the shot, the woman dissolving into pixels and wireframe before reforming into static. The urban environment faded back into the grey walls of the testing chamber.
Elijah lowered his weapon slowly. He felt... fine. Resolved. He'd followed his orders. That's what good operatives did.
He didn't remember the green-violet storm. Didn't remember the pull to refuse, to rebel, to choose mercy over mission. It was just... gone. Like it had never existed at all.
---
## The Viewing Room – Final Assessment
The entire council was present in the observation deck overlooking the testing chambers. The room was comfortable, almost luxurious, with leather chairs and a bar stocked with expensive liquor. Multiple holographic displays floated in the air, showing different data streams from Elijah's testing sequence.
Wonko stood before the largest display, studying the multidimensional energy yield graphs with the focused intensity of a jeweler examining a perfect diamond. His fingers swiped through layers of data—spectral analysis, conversion efficiency, temporal yield curves. Finally, he stepped back, his expression one of grudging admiration.
"The spectrum is complete," he announced, his voice carrying across the room. "He produces high-yield Aetherflux across the entire emotional bandwidth—fear, anger, frustration, cognitive stress, even moral conflict. The Orrhion symbiosis is at 99.7% efficiency. He is, for all intents and purposes, a perfect converter."
Gerard leaned forward in his chair, his weathered face thoughtful. "And the control?"
Nina, seated at the psychological analysis station, zoomed one of her displays. It showed Elijah's face from the Loyalty Test, tracking the exact moment the moral conflict had been severed. She ran the sequence in slow motion—the flicker of anguish, the moment of crisis, then the abrupt flatline as his expression emptied.
"The conditioning is absolute," she said, her tone clinical but not without a note of dark satisfaction. "The chip and the psychic symbiont enforce a neural quarantine on any... insurgent thoughts. He experiences the emotion fully—which is crucial for high-quality Aetherflux generation—we harvest the energy, and then the memory of the conflict is scrubbed or reframed. He is willful, aggressive, brilliant in execution... and utterly obedient." She smiled thinly. "A perfectly empty vessel that believes itself to be full of purpose."
Timothy Isley stood at the bar, pouring amber liquid into crystal glasses. On the main screen behind him, a live feed showed Elijah in a decontamination shower, head bowed under the cascading water. He looked like any exhausted, accomplished young operative after a grueling assessment. Tired but satisfied. Proud of his performance.
There was no visible sign of the storms that had just been harvested from his soul.
Timothy raised his glass, and the others joined him. "To Project Epsilon," he said, his voice warm with paternal pride. "The scared squirrel is gone. What remains is our most valuable tool. A weapon that sharpens itself with its own pain. A battery that charges itself with its own soul. Let the field deployment commence. The MOC awaits its key."
They drank, the toast sealing Elijah's fate as neatly as any contract.
---
In the shower, Elijah felt a familiar, comforting numbness settle over him like a warm blanket. The hot water sluiced away the sweat and blood from the testing, washing down the drain in pink-tinged streams. He was tired—bone-deep exhausted in a way that felt earned and good.
He remembered the challenges. The victories. The exhausting but necessary training. He remembered Dr. Isley's pride in the viewing room afterward, the Director's approving nods. He felt *strong*. Capable. Ready for the real mission, whatever that would be.
He had no memory of the blue dread that had surrounded him in the soundless dark. No recollection of the orange frustration or the green anguish. He did not know he was covered in invisible, psychic scars where his emotions had been extracted, processed, and consumed.
He believed, with every fiber of his being, that he was Elijah—the elite Halcyon operative, forged through discipline and purpose, ready to serve.
He had no idea he was Subject Epsilon, the living farm, and his first true mission—the one that would lead him to the Karma Floor, to Chloe and Vivian, to the Beacon—was simply the next phase of the harvest.
The Parasite within him stirred, sated for now, dreaming of the feast to come. In the viewing room above, Timothy Isley watched his perfect creation through the monitors and smiled.
The weapon was ready. Now it was time to see what it could truly do.