It was late. Jayden had just finished a solo run through the city's outskirts, half to clear his mind, half hoping to trace where Ren had last been seen. The air was thick with tension. He felt watched.
He turned down a narrow alley that cut behind a shuttered electronics store.
That's when he heard it. The click of a boot. The shift of weight against gravel.
Too late.
A shadow lunged from the side. Jayden ducked instinctively, years of dormant training kicking in like a second heartbeat. He twisted, delivering a sharp elbow to the attacker's ribs. Another figure closed in—a sweep kick aimed at Jayden's legs.
He jumped, barely clearing it, and drove his knee upward into the second man's chin. A third attacker emerged from behind and locked Jayden in a chokehold.
Jayden struggled, dropping his weight and twisting out, then slammed the attacker against the wall.
But there were too many.
They moved like a trained unit. Masked. Silent. No words—only brutal precision.
A punch caught Jayden in the stomach. Another across the jaw. Blood filled his mouth.
He dropped to one knee, blinking back the black edging in his vision.
Then—
A glint.
From the rooftop, something flashed.
A dart? No—a light. Sleek. Targeted.
The closest attacker dropped instantly and was tranquilized.
Then another.
The rest scattered into the shadows like insects.
Jayden collapsed. Everything spun. The last thing he saw was a circular emblem glowing faintly in the alley dust—a symbol of overlapping rings—just like the one he had seen on Silas' coat.
DAYS LATER...
Jayden stirred.
The brightness above him stung his eyes. He blinked several times until the sterile white glow of the room sharpened into focus. The ceiling was smooth, metallic, and oddly quiet—no hum of machines, no beeping monitors—just silence and the faint hiss of clean, filtered air.
A figure moved into his blurred vision.
"Easy now," a voice said, calm and professional. "Don't sit up too fast. You've been unconscious for a few days."
Jayden froze, still groggy. His body ached in places he didn't recognize. The voice belonged to a woman in a crisp white coat, her ID badge pulsing faintly with a digital glow—Dr. Alira Sen, it read.
"I'm Dr. Sen," she continued gently. "You're safe. You had a minor surgery after you were brought in. Nothing too invasive—just enough to stabilize you."
Jayden's mind raced, but his body refused to move.
"We ran some tests," she said, tapping on a floating translucent screen beside his bed. "Standard protocol. But… we found something. Inside you."
She paused, her eyes scanning his face for a reaction.
"It's a microchip," she said carefully. "Embedded deep, just behind your sternum. But it's… unlike anything we've ever seen."
Jayden's confusion deepened.
"We tried to extract it," she admitted. "Our best team. Carefully. But it reacted defensively. It began to fragment. Had we pushed further, it might have... harmed you."
She sighed, folding her arms.
"So we stopped. Patched you up. And now we're running non-invasive scans to figure out what it is… or who put it there."
Jayden's mouth was dry, but the questions were already forming.
Who put a chip in me?
Why did it react that way?
What even is this place?
But before he could ask, Dr. Sen leaned in slightly.
"I know you must have a thousand questions," she said, almost kindly. "But right now, you need rest. We'll talk more once we know what we're dealing with."
She turned, and the lights dimmed slightly.
Jayden stared at the ceiling, his mind reeling.
A chip inside him.
An unknown facility.
And the strange sense that his life had just taken a turn he couldn't reverse.