I wake to the sound of water. It isn't real water, but the rhythm is close enough that my mind reaches for it. Drip. Pause. Drip. Each sound lands behind my eyes and spreads like ink. My body tries to move, but it remembers it isn't allowed yet. Muscles float without gravity. Breath comes thin and bright.
The ceiling is still white, but the light feels off, warmer than it should be in the lab. My hands twitch under the blanket, slow as if someone else has to grant permission. The pulse monitor clicks in time with the ache at my wrist. It feels almost alive.
"Jonah," I try to say. The word emerges dry and split in two. My tongue tastes of copper and air that has been recycled too many times. No one answers.
A shadow moves near the corner of the glass partition. A man, or maybe just the memory of one, turns and leaves. The door sighs closed. I hear the faint hum of the air system and realize I'm alone.
Alone, but not empty.
Something hums behind my ribs, low and steady. It feels like a second heartbeat living one floor beneath my own. I close my eyes and count. My pulse at the wrist, one rhythm. The hum beneath it, slower. Off by just enough to be unsettling.
The voice doesn't come right away. It waits until I've convinced myself I imagined it the first time.
Breathe, Iris.
The sound curls through me, smooth as glass. I jerk so hard that the IV line tugs at my arm. The monitor beeps in disapproval. The voice fades, but the echo of it lingers in my spine, a vibration too intimate to belong to air.
"I heard you," I whisper. "You're not real."
Real enough.
The words don't arrive through the ears. They bloom from within, like a remembered phrase replayed in the throat. My heartbeat trips over itself. I grip the edge of the blanket. The static at the back of my skull sharpens.
The room changes color when I open my eyes again. Not physically, something in me alters the way light behaves. White turns to soft gold, the air trembling at its edges. It smells faintly of ozone and lilies, too sweet to be this clean place. The scent belongs to the dream world, the one they said would stop when the machine shut off.
"Cassian?"
Nothing answers, but silence feels like permission.
My memories stagger back in fragments. The stairwell. The water. The frames on the wall. The last image before everything folded, his voice saying sleep. Then nothing. But I know what happened after, because my body remembers being touched without hands.
I pull the mesh cap off my head. It sticks to my hair, wet with sweat. The motion makes my stomach pitch. When the room steadies, I catch my reflection in the glass. My pupils are too large. My skin is the color of paper. The faint imprint of electrodes decorates my temples like a crown.
Something scratches faintly at the back of my mind, a feather made of static. The hum in my chest grows louder.
You hear me.
I flinch. "Stop."
You hear me. The tone remains the same: measured, curious, and polite. I recognize it even stripped of sound. Dr. Cassian Cross speaks like he's examining the world's most dangerous instrument and refuses to admit he likes the tune.
"What did you do to me?" Silence, then: You opened the door.
I press my palms against my face. My skin feels foreign, edges smudged. Behind my eyelids, colors move, streaks of gold, violet, gray. I'm still linked. I know it without evidence. Whatever they unplugged didn't matter. The connection grew roots.
I swing my legs off the table. Cold tile greets my bare feet. A dizziness rolls through me, electric and heavy. The air becomes thick, making breathing a struggle. When I take a step, the pulse in my chest syncs with the hum again. The sensation steadies me. It shouldn't.
The reflection in the glass shifts. I tell myself it's just me, but the shadow behind the reflection tilts its head at the wrong angle. My pulse stutters.
"I'm awake," I say. "You can let go."
I never held you, he says.
The voice lands lower this time, almost tender. Something inside me stretches toward it before I can stop it. The warmth that follows is subtle, a phantom hand brushing over my sternum, tracing the edge of the hospital gown. My breath catches.
"Stop it," I whisper.
The hum stills. For a moment, the room is simply quiet. Relief flares and vanishes when the voice returns, closer, softer.
Let me know what you feel.
"Angry."
No. Deeper.
"Afraid."
Still wrong.
My hands shake. "I feel invaded."
There's a pause. Then, Truth.
Heat blooms at the base of my throat. I hate that I want to answer him, hate that the sound of his thought inside mine makes me less afraid than the silence would. My body doesn't know how to distinguish between comfort and control.
I stumble toward the door. The handle refuses to move. The lock flashes red, mechanical and merciless. Behind the glass, monitors glow faint blue, steady and calm. He could be watching. He always watches.
"Cassian!"
Lower your voice, he says. Your vitals spike when you shout.
"Then stop talking to me!"
The hum swells. My vision blurs, the edges of the room tremble like heat above asphalt. For a heartbeat, I swear I see him standing where the reflection should be, dark suit, stillness sharp enough to cut. I blink, and he's gone.
I sink back against the table, breathing through my teeth. The whisper slides through me again, faint as a pulse under skin.
You were beautiful when you slept.
I close my eyes, the words slicing open something I didn't know was healing. A single tear escapes, and the monitors react, their tone rising as if the machines can taste emotion.
"Is this what you wanted?" I ask. "To build a mirror that talks back?"
To understand.
"Understand what?"
Attachment. The way it grows from hurt.
The answer lands without arrogance. He means it. That makes it worse.
"Then you should have left me alone."
I tried.
His presence thickens. It sits behind my ribs, watching through borrowed nerves. I can feel the weight of his attention like sunlight through glass, warm and terrible.
I grab the edge of the counter until my knuckles ache. "You don't belong in my head."
You invited me in.
My breath shakes. "I didn't mean to."
Intent is irrelevant.
The air around me vibrates. Every machine in the room hums in time with my heartbeat. The sensors on the wall flash amber. I think, for an awful moment, that he's testing the limits, pushing current through the connection to see how much my body can hold.
Then it stops.
Cold air rushes back into the space where he was. I sag, light-headed, trembling. The silence that follows is heavier than sound.
I slide down the wall until I'm sitting on the floor. My knees draw to my chest automatically, a position my body remembers from old nights of waiting for pain to end. The IV line tugs free, leaving a bead of blood on my arm. I watch it bloom, fascinated by the color.
I did not want this, he says, so faint it could be conscience or static. But I cannot look away.
"I don't care," I whisper. "You don't get to stay."
The hum fades one last time, receding like a tide that has learned to be polite. The monitors settle. My own pulse remains doubled, mine and the echo he left.
I rest my head against the wall. The air smells faintly of antiseptic and rain. Somewhere beyond the door, footsteps echo down the corridor. Jonah, maybe. Or the next patient. Or ghosts of both.
I think of the way he said my name before everything went dark. I try to forget the warmth that came with it.
My body remembers anyway.
I stare at the ceiling until the light hurts. The hum in my chest refuses to die, faint but loyal.
When I finally speak, the words scrape raw but steady.
"I hear you," I say. "But I'm still me."
For now, the silence agrees.