Morning always came too quietly.
Like the world was holding its breath, waiting to see if I'd wake again.
The first thing I noticed wasn't the light — it was the stillness. The air around me, motionless. The hum of the city, faint but restrained, like someone had pressed pause on existence itself.
I stayed there, lying in the gray half-light, listening to the muted whir of the ceiling fan that never worked right. My heart was still racing, my breath shallow — I already knew why.
The dream had followed me again.
That endless plain of white, stretching into infinity.
That faceless figure standing in the middle of it, still and silent, yet somehow aware of me.
I could feel its attention, like gravity. I could feel it look through me — and every time, I woke just before I could reach it.
Forty-one nights.
Forty-one times I'd seen it.
And every time, a whisper followed me into waking — soft, patient, unrelenting:
"The Will remembers."
I didn't know what it meant. I'd stopped trying to convince myself it was just a dream weeks ago.
My apartment was small — one of those high-rise boxes packed against the glass spine of Ardent City. The walls were off-white and humming faintly with the current of power grids that ran beneath every floor. The air tasted like metal and old rain.
I swung my legs off the bed, the chill of the floor grounding me. It was dawn — the faintest gold beginning to creep through the horizon between the towers.
From this height, Ardent City was breathtaking: a labyrinth of light and glass stitched together by elevated walkways, transport rails, and the constant shimmer of data streams. They said the city never slept — that every moment, its pulse synced with the flow of the planetary network.
But right now, it felt like it was holding back. Watching.
I padded into the kitchen, started the coffee maker, and leaned against the counter as it hissed to life.
A familiar, bitter scent filled the room — one of the few things that still felt real.
I wasn't superstitious. I was a scientist.
At least, I used to be certain of that.
I studied quantum cognition — the interface between human thought and artificial consciousness. My research focused on how the mind could manipulate data fields through sheer perception. The boundary between awareness and code was thin — frighteningly thin.
Maybe that was why the dreams unsettled me so deeply. They felt like… interference.
Something ancient pressing against the edges of my mind.
I took a sip of coffee and turned toward the window. The skyline shimmered.
Then — blink — for a fraction of a second, the city went dark.
It wasn't the lights. It wasn't my imagination.
Everything — the buildings, the sky, the movement — flickered.
I froze, the cup halfway to my lips.
The air outside wavered, as if reality itself had hiccuped.
And then it was gone.
Everything normal again.
The clock on the wall read 06:13. Then 06:14. Then 06:13 again.
I stared at it until the numbers stopped changing. My pulse hammered behind my ribs.
It was happening more often now — these moments that didn't make sense, these tiny rips in the ordinary.
I wanted to believe it was exhaustion, but deep down I knew better.
The same way I knew the dreams weren't just dreams.
"The Will remembers."
The words whispered again, unbidden, soft as a breath in my ear.
I turned toward the sound — but of course, there was no one there. Only the morning light spilling across the floor, painting the world in shades of quiet gold.
For a moment, I thought about calling Mira. She'd know what to say — she always did. But what would I tell her? That the city blinked out of existence for half a second? That I was hearing voices?
She'd worry.
Or worse — she'd believe me.
So instead, I sat down at the table, pulled my datapad closer, and tried to lose myself in numbers and code.
Work was safe. Predictable.
Reality made sense there.
Except today, it didn't.
Every few minutes, my screens shimmered. Equations misaligned. Data streams looped. My neural interface lagged by milliseconds that shouldn't exist.
And through all of it, I felt that same quiet presence, just beyond my thoughts — patient, watchful, ancient.
As if the dream had followed me out of sleep.
By the time the sun had fully risen, the world had righted itself again.
The airtrams sang through the morning air. The city resumed its pulse.
And I, for all my logic and reason, couldn't shake the feeling that something out there had just looked back at me.