The sirens are gone doesn't mean quiet.
It just means the room is holding its breath.
I can hear it breathing.
Not lungs.
Intentions.
Little invisible strings stretching across the lab, humming with what everyone's about to do next.
Sato is watching the door like it owes him money.
Rey is staring at the floor like it might apologize.
Kwan is staring at his tablet like it just grew wings.
Mara is staring at me like I'm a loaded gun that learned how to smile.
Nobody wants to speak first.
I don't blame them.
I can feel the words lining up in their throats before they haven't decided to say yet.
Sato's finger is half a twitch away from drawing if anything moves wrong.
Rey wants to ask if I'm okay and is terrified the answer is no.
Kwan wants to shout eureka and hug me and dissect me, in that order.
Mara just wants me to still be the kid she dragged out of the street.
I sit because she told me to, but mostly because my legs are done arguing.
The second I do, the whole room exhales.
Something shifts.
Not a person.
Not the double.
Bigger.
Like the whole building leaned in to listen.
The lights flicker once, lazy, like someone testing a switch.
Only I flinch.
Because I get it now.
I'm not seeing the future.
I'm seeing the moment right before the moment.
The direction a choice is pointed before it pulls the trigger.
Mara steps closer, slow, the way you walk up to a horse that might bolt.
"Ryo. Talk to me. What changed?"
I think about lying.
I can already taste how the lie would land (sour, sharp, cracking the thin ice between us).
So I don't.
"I can feel what everyone's about to do," I say. "Before they do it."
Rey's head snaps up.
Sato's shoulders square a fraction.
Kwan forgets how breathing works.
Mara doesn't even blink.
"Control?" she asks, quiet.
"No," I say. "Just… translation. Every move starts as a direction. I can feel the direction."
Kwan whispers, "Pre-intent vector mapping… holy—"
"Doctor," Mara says, and the single word could cut glass.
He swallows the rest.
I open my hand.
The pin is just sitting there, glowing soft, like it's waiting for its line.
Then something answers.
Not in the room.
Not in the building.
Somewhere way, way bigger.
A hum rolls through everything (floor, bones, teeth) like the deepest note on a piano nobody's supposed to play.
Everyone freezes.
They feel the vibration.
They don't feel the recognition.
I do.
Something enormous just turned its head and looked right at me.
Like the sky cleared its throat and said my name.
The lights stop flickering.
The hum fades.
Everything goes perfectly, horribly quiet.
Mara's staring at me like I'm a door that might open onto a thousand-foot drop.
"What was that?" she asks.
I can't answer with words.
Because the answer is already walking toward us.
And it knows exactly where I am.