The nightmares began the moment the machine stopped humming.
Shane jolted awake, sweatless and breathless, because his body no longer sweated, and his lungs no longer needed to panic. Still, the sensation of drowning clung to him.
He sat up in the metal cot of the recovery room. The walls around him were raw steel, embedded with faintly pulsing diagnostic veins. Machines blinked, tracking vitals he no longer felt. A mirror in the far corner caught his eye, his own reflection, barely human, watching him like a stranger.
I'm not him anymore.
---
Ghost Limbs, Ghost Memories
He raised his left hand and flexed it. The movement was smooth, exact. But he could still feel the old hand, the one that trembled when he first held a wrench at age seven, the one that reached for Liora's hand the day she vanished. Now, it was a weapon.
Sometimes it buzzed involuntarily, an echo from the neural mesh syncing to pain centers that didn't exist anymore.
Dr. Rhane called it "phantom integrity syndrome."
Shane called it a reminder.
---
Voices from Before
The lab was quiet, but his mind wasn't. In the hollow places between his thoughts, memories played like corrupted files.
"Shane! Come on, you promised we'd
race the drones today!"
Liora's laugh - young, bright, still full of life.
"You've always been better than the rest of
them,"
Dr. Rhane, during those late-night
sessions before the fall. Before
everything burned.
Then—
"Subject 13 has exceeded parameters.
Prepare the neuro-chain."
Voices from Parallax. Cold. Mechanical. They weren't just engineers. They were harvesters.
He curled into himself, knuckles clanging against his ribs.
How much of me did they take? How much did I let them?
---
Dr. Rhane's Visit
The door hissed open. Rhane entered, carrying a tablet, his coat wrinkled from sleep deprivation. His eyes softened as he saw Shane hunched on the edge of the cot.
"You're not sleeping."
"I don't sleep. I simulate it."
Rhane hesitated. "You still dream. That's something."
Shane glanced at him. "They're not dreams. They're failures on repeat."
Rhane sat beside him. "You're grieving."
"Grieving what? My body? My soul?" He looked down at the metal plates on his chest. "You said you saved me. But sometimes… I think you built a ghost instead."
"You're not a ghost," Rhane said gently. "You're still you. You survived something no one else could've. You didn't give up."
Shane didn't answer. He couldn't.
---
The Wall of the Lost
Later that evening, Shane wandered the lower halls of the lab, now strong enough to walk with full cybernetic fluidity. He found himself in a small annex with old holos pinned to the wall.
Photos. Clippings. Blueprints.
The Wall of the Lost.
Engineers Rhane had worked with many killed in the collapse. Resistance fighters erased by Parallax. And at the center: a photo of Liora Warne.
Shane stopped breathing, even though he no longer needed to.
The image showed her smiling beside him, tiny braids framing her round cheeks, eyes lit up as she held up a model drone they'd built. His arm was around her.
She looked up to me. And I let her disappear.
His metal fingers pressed to the image. The glass beneath his touch didn't warm. Nothing ever did anymore.
---
Machine Tears
When he returned to his room, he sat in the corner, back against the wall, eyes closed.
Why can't I cry?
The trauma was there, tight in his chest like a coil, twisting, but no release. No tears. No breath-hitch. Just cold calculation.
He whispered to the darkness, "Am I already dead?"
Silence.
Then the faintest sound from his neural core, a pulse, soft and steady.
Not human. Not machine.
Just something in between.
---