Project Obsidian

He awoke to the sound of nothing.

Not silence. Absence.

The kind of nothing that sucked every sound from the air—no humming machines, no distant footsteps, not even the familiar white noise of breath. Just a void.

Kade opened his eyes.

Or at least, he thought he did.

Nothing changed.

The world was still blinding white—ceiling, walls, floor—indistinguishable from one another. Seamless. Sterile. It felt like floating in bleach. The only hint he hadn't gone blind was the faint, static blur of light itself—like watching fog press against glass from the inside.

His throat was dry. Scratchy. Swallowing was like trying to move sand.

When he tried to shift his arms, something resisted.

He was restrained.

Soft pressure coiled around his wrists, ankles, and chest—not metal, not plastic. It molded around his skin like a second skin. Like a muscle.

His heartbeat began to rise, but even that felt…off.

Too slow.

Too clean.

Too monitored.

He took a breath.

The air was cold. Purified. It smelled like antiseptic and electricity.

He tried to speak.

Nothing came out at first.

His lips cracked as they parted, muscles sluggish.

He licked them, wincing, tasting something metallic—copper, maybe.

Or blood.

Then the voice came.

"Subject XIII: neural patterns normalized. Stasis concluded. Initiating integration protocol."

The voice was impossible to trace.

It wasn't coming from anywhere. It simply was embedded in the room itself, like the room had been given speech but no mouth.

Subject XIII.

The words rattled in his mind like a stone in a tin cup.

Subject XIII. Not Subject One. Not a name. Not a person.

His breathing quickened.

He tried to move again. The restraints did not tighten, but they didn't release either.

His legs were pinned. His chest couldn't rise fully.

And there were no shadows.

No edges.

No corners.

No lines on the wall or light in the seams.

Just smooth, continuous white. The kind of brightness that eats the shape of things.

Kade turned his head, just enough to see a faint outline of his body against the padded surface. His skin was pale—palier than it used to be.

Or maybe he'd always been that pale?

He couldn't remember.

He tried to speak again.

Tried to push something out—anything.

Finally, a whisper scraped past his throat:

"That's… not my name."

No answer.

Not even an acknowledgment that he'd spoken.

The voice had never been a conversation.

He wasn't a patient.

He was an experiment.

Kade stared at the ceiling—its surface too smooth to be real. Like it had been 3D printed from memory.

His wrists began to tremble. Muscles flickering back to life.

The restraint there loosened slightly. Whether by intent or accident, he didn't know.

Was he recovering? Or being rebooted?

He felt something twitch beneath his skin—like a muscle spasm, but deeper.

He flinched.

The restraints remained unmoving. No alarms. No warnings.

Only that voice:

"Subject XIII: synchronization pending."

His stomach twisted.

It wasn't just what they were calling him.

It was how they meant it.

Not a name. Not a code.

A designation.

He looked at the corners again out of instinct. Habit.

Still no shadows.

Even where his restrained arm should have cast one, there was nothing. No edge. No darkness.

He didn't realize he was whispering again until the words reached his ears:

"Where's the dark?"

As if saying it would bring it back.

But the room didn't answer.

Instead, a hatch opened above him—a thin seam splitting the ceiling with a hiss of air.

A lens descended. Smooth, red, glassy. Like the eye of a machine god.

It didn't blink.

Didn't move.

Just stared.

Then the tone returned.

Deeper this time.

A hum like a low heart monitor, vibrating in his ribs.

His restraints hissed softly, releasing.

Limbs dropped like dead weight. No warning.

He gasped—first out of fear, then in pain.

Muscles collapsed like they'd been asleep for years. He could barely lift his hands.

One leg twitched. The other didn't move at all.

The white light didn't dim.

No door opened.

No voice offered instruction.

He wasn't meant to escape.

He was meant to be watched.

Kade lay still, breathing in the artificial air.

His eyes burned.

Tears wouldn't come. Even his body felt too controlled for that.

But somewhere deep, in the pit of his mind, something stirred.

Something black.

Something not made for this kind of light.

"You can call me XIII," he whispered.

"But that's not who I am."

Time no longer moved forward. It twisted.

Bent like light through broken glass.

Kade stopped trying to count the hours.

Eventually, he stopped wondering if time still existed.

There were no clocks.

No windows.

No meals.

Just transitions.

He'd blink and find himself in a different room. A different position. Sometimes vertical, sometimes horizontal. Sometimes he was strapped down, floating. Once, he was suspended upside down with electrodes dancing down his spine-no—pain, just numb heat—and something dark slithering under his skin.

The voice always came first.

Sterile. Male. Detached.

"Subject XIII: cellular harmonics holding steady. Particle saturation at 42%."

Another voice followed, female, younger, more curious than cruel:

"He's stabilizing?"

"More like… reshaping. The dark isn't overwhelming him. He's shaping to it."

"That's new."

"That's the point."

He blinked.

The world shifted.

Now he was in a chair, arms bolted into cuffs padded with bio-gel. Tubes ran from his veins into a crystalline tank filled with viscous black fluid—shimmering with impossible motion, like watching galaxies fall apart in reverse.

The tank pulsed in time with his heartbeat.

Or maybe his heart was syncing to it.

Across the glass, he saw figures.

Silhouettes in lab coats and full masks. Eyes hidden. No names. No voices directed at him.

He wasn't a subject they spoke to.

He was a variable they logged.

"Sequence 42: metagene responsiveness confirmed."

"He's the first viable match. Shadow-based mutation. Passive affinity."

"No resistance to DPS-7 absorption. Neural latency is below threshold."

"Emotionally dulled. Memory is partially suppressed. Obedience potential is high."

Words bled into each other.

Kade tried to follow, but they made no sense.

They weren't meant to.

He was never the audience.

He was the test case.

Then, the pain came.

Not sharp. Not obvious.

Just foreign.

A pressure inside his brainstem like someone was inflating a balloon at the base of his skull.

Colors began to feel wrong. Sound arrived half a second late. His reflection—when he was allowed to see it—moved just slightly out of sync.

He watched himself blink before he felt the need to do it.

Then came the video feeds.

Room 3C. Room 7-A. Biochamber Delta.

All the lying images of him.

In one, he was screaming. In another, utterly still. In a third, he clawed at a mirrored wall—blood smearing the glass in long, spidery streaks.

In the last feed, he was curled on the floor. A shadow rose from his back like liquid smoke.

It moved without a light source.

"Synchronization is accelerating," one of the voices murmured.

"Is it him… or the particles?"

"Both. The dark doesn't consume him. It mirrors him."

"Like a second self?"

"Like a symbiotic weapon."

He blinked again.

New room.

This one is darker.

Cooler.

Less clean.

On the other side of a reinforced window stood a man.

Not a doctor. Not a researcher.

Something worse.

Broad-shouldered. Rigid posture. Armor is matte black and orange.

A half-mask covered his face—one side blank, the other with a single, glowing eye.

The man didn't speak.

Didn't move.

He didn't have to.

Kade knew instinctively—this was the one who trained weapons. Not built them. Sharpened them. Used them.

And he was watching.

More injections followed.

Needles in the neck. Needles under fingernails. Liquids are too black to be natural.

They never told him what they were.

But after each session, the world bent a little more. The shadows lingered longer. The voices echoed too far.

He woke one day with writing etched into his arm—XIII burned into his skin like a barcode.

He tried to rub it off until the skin tore.

It came back the next time he woke.

His voice returned, finally.

But it was hoarse. Weak. Like it had been buried alive and just learned to breathe again.

He whispered, pressing his fingers against the two-way mirror:

"My name's not XIII."

No response.

Not even acknowledgment.

The lights above him buzzed, flickered, d—and then didn't.

Darkness bloomed behind his eyes.

Not sleep.Not unconsciousness.Something… waiting.

There was no do or. Thhad had never been.

Not one he could see.

Just four seamless walls, unbroken by seams or switches. Just smooth, industrial gray—all one color, one texture, one endless nothing.

It was the smallest room yet.

Smaller than a prison cell. Smaller than a coffin.

The single ceiling light flickered once every twenty-seven seconds.

He'd counted.

At least, he thought he had.

Kade sat in the corner with his knees drawn up to his chest.

His bones felt too long for his body now.

His thoughts came in fragments—like signals through static. Half the time, he wasn't sure if he was awake or dreaming. Maybe there was no difference anymore.

He whispered just to hear a voice:

"Subject XIII…"

He paused. Shook his head.

"No."

"Kade…"

He tried it again, slower. As if the name had weight.

"Kade."

The word felt like something lost. Like a souvenir from a life he didn't remember living.

The shadow was still there.

Always the same corner.

It wasn't cast from light—there was no visible source.

And yet, it existed.

Every time the overhead bulb flickered, it shifted.

Not like a normal shadow, stretching or shrinking.

More like it breathed.

Expanded.

Contracted.

Coiled in place like a sleeping serpent.

He stopped pretending he didn't see it on the second day.

By the fourth, he was talking to it.

By the seventh, he waited for it to respond.

It never made a sound.

But it listened.

He could feel it. Not in his ears—but in his spine.

Like something was curling inside him, closer with each breath.

At night—if you could call it night in a room without time—it would drift up the wall, never far, always watching.

When he blinked, it blinked.

When he breathed, it pulsed.

Not a reflection.

An echo.

He began to test it.

Raised his hand.

The shadow followed perfectly, but more slowly.

He moved his fingers in sequence: index, ring, thumb.

The shadow copied, just a fraction behind.

As if learning him.

Mimicking, not mirroring.

One cycle, the bulb flickered too long.Five full seconds of black.

When it lit again, the shadow was closer.

Still in the same corner—but stretched higher on the wall, more defined.

The vague shape of the shoulders.

A head.

One arm slightly extended, as if reaching.

He didn't move.

Didn't breathe.

He was afraid that if he did, it would vanish.

Or worse—finish what it had started.

But it stayed.

Still.

Calm.

Patient.

He stood.

Slowly.

Legs stiff from too long curled in the dark.

He took a step forward.

The shadow didn't flinch.

He took another.

It did the same.

Not quite matching—but responding.

He crossed the room until only a few feet remained between them.

The shadow towered just slightly over him now, drawn taller on the wall by the light, but its head tilted just like his.

Not like a mirror.

More like… a child.

Watching.

Waiting.

He reached out.

Fingers trembling.

The air near the shadow was colder. Heavy. Electric.

The moment his hand crossed the threshold of the shadow's edge, the light flickered again.

And in that heartbeat of darkness, he felt it touch back.

Not skin. Not substance.

But presence.

Fingertips ghosted across his palm—delicate, like smoke laced with memory.

He inhaled sharply, stepping back—but the sensation lingered.

In his mind. Behind his eyes. In the marrow of his bones.

Something inside him whispered—

It knows you.

It's always been you.

You were made for it.

Then the voices returned.

Faint. From behind the seamless walls.

"Subject XIII's vitals are unstable again."

"Let it happen. He's responding. Look at the waveforms."

"...This is faster than predicted."

"His brainwaves are syncing with the particle field. He's not resisting."

"He can't. It's what he's becoming."

The light above flared once, then popped.

Glass and sparks fell in a lazy spiral.

The room plunged into total blackness.

He gasped—but didn't panic.

Not this time.

Because in that absolute darkness, the shape before him didn't vanish.

It became clearer.

Stronger.

Welcome.

His voice was quiet, reverent.

"Are you me?"

The shadow tilted its head.

In response—

His own shadow twisted upward from the floor behind him, mimicking the movement.

Two figures.

One before him.

One behind him.

Both still.

Both waiting.

Both… smiling.

And for the first time since the alley,

Kade didn't feel fear.

He felt peace.

In the dark,

he finally

felt

seen.

......

T

They brought him in without a word.

The lights in the ceiling didn't hum.

They stared.

Cold white cubes embedded into polished steel, casting perfect, sterile beams downward. No shadows. Not yet.

He stood alone at the center of a glass-walled chamber—hexagonal, seamless, a surgical fishbowl. Every wall doubled as a screen. Somewhere above, unseen eyes blinked.

Kade flexed his fingers.

No restraints.

No helmet.

No drugs.

But something told him this wasn't freedom.

This was bait.

He scanned the floor. Sleek. Silver. Reflective, but only faintly—like water with no depth.

He heard the click. A speaker came to life.

"Subject XIII. Physical vital s are within acceptable deviation. Neural dampeners disengaged. Proceeding with interaction test."

The voice was sterile, male, and detached. But listening.

Another voice joined—female, neutral.

Deploying Drone Unit 03-A. Calibration at minimal aggression."

He didn't move.

But the muscles in his legs coiled.

Something inside him knew what was coming.

From the far wall, a small hatch unsealed with a hiss of vacuum pressure.

Something unfolded.

Spindly.

Delicate.

Wrong.

A silver arachnoid drone clicked into view, eyes pulsing red as it scanned the room. It stood no taller than a chair, but its body was all jagged limbs and surgical grace.

Kade didn't react.

But his shadow, faint as it was, rippled unnaturally beneath him.

"Initiate behavioral probe."

The drone leapt.

No warning.

No delay.

It was fast—inhumanly so. A flash of chrome and red streaking for Kade's ribs.

He flinched—body slow, still human.

But the thing inside him wasn't.

The shadows erupted.

Without command. Without thought.

They surged from beneath his feet like a jet of ink in zero gravity, rising not just as mass, but as will.

They snatched the drone mid-lunge, black tendrils snapping shut around its body in a sudden, fluid chokehold.

Metal screamed.

Joints bent inward like tinfoil.

The drone convulsed once.

Then shattered.

Sparks exploded like dying stars across the chamber. One half of the machine slammed into the far wall. The other vanished into the writhing cloud that still danced around Kade like a living cloak.

Then, stillness.

Kade stood at the center, unmoving. Breathe slowly.

Eyes wide.

The shadow—his shadow—no longer lay dormant beneath him.

It curled around his shoulders, up his spine, across his chest like a second skin in motion.

Then, slowly, it seeped back into him, melting through his pores as if it had always belonged there.

Up in the observation deck, alarms blinked silently, sirens. Just lights—urgent, staccato, unblinking.

Behind two-way glass, three figures stared in stunned silence.

One of them finally broke it.

"Was that… initiated?"

"No. He didn't command it. It reacted autonomously."

"To what? The threat level was within the margin."

"Doesn't matter. It knew."

Another screen flashed a real-time readout. Neural activity—off the charts.

Synaptic resonance levels were climbing. Heart rate is normal. Cortisol levels are dropping.

"He's not in shock," the technician muttered.

"He's in sync."

A new voice entered the room.

Gravelly. Sharp. Masked behind a voice modulator.

"Save the footage. All of it. Start preparing a Phase 2 environment. He's ready."

"Sir, the shadow response—"

"I said: prepare it. He's not resisting. He's bonded."

Back in the chamber, Kade's hands trembled.

Not from fear.

From… realization.

That thing—the darkness—wasn't foreign anymore.

It didn't burn.

It didn't scream.

It didn't hurt.

It fit.

He looked down at the scorched claw marks on the wall where the drone had died.

Then at his own hands.

And for the first time since waking in the white room…

He smiled.

Small.

Crooked.

Almost sad.

But honest.

"I didn't ask it to do that…"

He whispered into the glass.

"…but it did."

A soft, wordless thought echoed back through the base of his spine.

We protect you.

We are you.

We are not alone anymore.