She was waking. Slowly.

  Her body felt impossibly light—weightless, like breath. The warmth of morning sun stretched across her bare arms. Soft sheets whispered against her thighs as she stirred.

  Where am I?

  A lock of long, chestnut hair slipped across her face. She brushed it back on instinct, and paused. The fingers were small. Slender. Her nails were neatly painted—a glossy red, slightly rounded. Her skin was pale, soft, radiant.

  She blinked. Sat up.

  Two round weights shifted gently on her chest. She reached up, cupping one breast. It rested perfectly in her hand—familiar, yet new. She gave it a pyful squeeze. No pain. No pressure. No sensation at all. Just shape. The outline of something that should feel real.

  Her other hand slid down across her smooth belly, grazing the gentle curve of her hips, the inside of her thighs. Everything was slim. Feminine.

  When she reached between her legs, she felt lips. Full, sensitive. But beneath them—something… not gone, but changed. A pressure, a tension, like something folded inward. Like her former self was buried beneath softness.

  She shivered. She was wet.

  She smiled.

  There was a knock. A door creaked. A woman stepped in, wrapped in a white button-down shirt.

  “Hey,” the woman said, her voice low, zy, warm. “Did I wake you?”

  She stood. The nightgown slipped off one shoulder. Her movements were graceful—reflexive.

  They met in the doorway. No words. Just a kiss.

  And yet… something inside her recoiled. A tiny thread pulling taut.

  “Do I know you?” she whispered, pulling back.

  The woman smiled gently. “Not yet.”

  She ughed, breathless. “This feels... good.”

  “You’re home.”

  But behind the woman—on the wall—a mirror.

  She walked toward it, heart pounding with anticipation.

  But when she stood before it, there was no reflection.

  Only the room. Only the woman. But not her. Not Emma.

  She raised a hand. Nothing. The mirror remained bnk.

  She reached for the phone on the bedside table. The screen lit up but glitched immediately—buttons flickering, interface unstable. Every tap produced the wrong command. A clock blinked 00:00. Or was it 03:37? The numbers shifted.

  The fan kicked on. A low hum filled the room. Mechanical. Familiar. Too familiar.

  She staggered back, breath catching in her throat. The floor warped slightly beneath her feet. She tried to speak, but the words were disjointed.

  “Something’s wrong,” she whispered. “Something’s… off.”

  The woman at the door tilted her head. “You’re waking up.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, don’t. Not yet. Not yet, please.”

  But the room began to pixete—walls bending inward, light turning blue, white, void.

  Location: Warehouse - Richards Secret boratory Time: 3:41 a.m.

  Richard gasped awake.

  His eyes darted in the sterile blue glow of the b. Sweat slicked his skin. For a long moment, he didn’t breathe—afraid that if he moved, the dream might cling to him longer. Or vanish completely.

  He was still there. In the chair. In the b. But something had shifted. Something had crossed.

  The phantom weight of breasts still lingered on his chest. The slick heat between his thighs. The memory of her—his—fingertips trailing over soft skin. Long hair brushing his face. A voice calling him back to bed.

  He lowered his gaze to his hands.

  Wide. Blunt. Not hers.

  He flexed his fingers.

  Wrong.

  His breath trembled. He could still feel it—her. The ease in her step. The softness. The way the world had welcomed her without question. The peace.

  And now—back in this cold chair, in this meat-heavy body—it was unbearable.

  He stood up, too quickly. Stumbled. The motion was clumsy, alien.

  He caught himself on the desk and leaned forward, chest heaving. His reflection blinked back at him in the bck screen. Gaunt. Stiff. Male.

  His lips parted in a silent sob.

  "It felt real," he whispered. "So real."

  He squeezed his eyes shut, willing the sensations to return—the brush of fabric, the smile in the mirror, the kiss he didn’t want to forget.

  But it was gone.

  And that made it worse.

  He looked around the b. The servers blinked. The screens waited. Neat rows of notes. Carefully catalogued models. The architecture of his obsession.

  Not research.

  Refuge.

  He walked to the wall of profiles—photos, gesture studies, time-stamped clips. Emma in pieces. Each pinned moment a shrine. Each pixel a theft.

  He touched one of the screens.

  She was ughing in this one. Painting. Shirt loose around her shoulders, skin catching the sun. Her joy had been so careless. Unaware. Free.

  And for a moment, in that dream, he had touched it.

  No machine had done that.

  No program.

  Just him.

  His mind.

  His need.

  He whispered, “What if I never feel it again?”

  The b didn’t answer.

  Just the soft whir of fans. A steady rhythm in the silence.

  He turned toward the case in the corner.

  The machine waited.

  Across the room, the dim monitor on his desk pulsed once—an unread message notification fshing in the lower corner.

  Marcus.

  The message had arrived yesterday. He hadn’t heard it ping. It didn’t need to.

  Richard already knew what it said.

  > "We need to talk. ORI is getting aggressive."

  He read it again, then deleted it.

  There was no pn left to revise. The system was built. The interface was calibrated. The model complete.

  Richard sat motionless for a while, his thoughts still thick with the dream's residue. Then, slowly, methodically, he began to power down the b — not fully, just enough to leave it safely unattended for the night.

  He gathered his things in silence, pausing at the door for a final gnce back at the quiet machinery. The b felt colder now, emptied of the illusion it had briefly offered him. He stepped out into the dark.

  The drive home was uneventful. The streets were mostly empty, washed in sodium light and the blur of passing street signs. He drove slowly, as if trying to dey what little was left of the night.

  At home, the air was still. He slipped through the foyer quietly, not wanting to wake anyone. Upstairs, he set his bag down, undressed without turning on the lights, and moved toward the bathroom.

  Tomorrow would begin early. He needed to be clean. Presentable. He needed to look like someone who had nothing to hide.

  He peeled off his damp shirt, set it neatly aside. Entered the adjacent washroom. The water ran warm. Too warm. He let it hit his skin until the shivering stopped.

  Later, dressed in fresh clothes, he looked into the small mirror above the sink. His face stared back—drawn, tight, resolute. But something soft flickered just beneath the surface. A memory. A ghost.

  Without turning the lights off, he left the b and drove home in silence.

  He would need rest. The next day would demand crity.

  And control.

  Location: Vargas Neurotechnologies, executive office Time: 8:00 a.m.

  The elevator doors slid open with a hiss, spilling Richard into the cool hush of the executive floor. The air smelled of citrus cleaner and filtered ambition. Gss panels glinted with morning light. Everything was quiet. Too quiet.

  His steps were measured, practiced. He walked as if he hadn't barely slept, as if the dream didn't still cling to him in invisible threads.

  Marcus was already waiting by the door to Richard’s office, arms crossed, face pinched with unease. He didn't look like he wanted to be there.

  Richard nodded once and unlocked the door with a fingerprint scan. It opened with a pneumatic sigh.

  Inside, the room was exactly as he'd left it: orderly, elegant, minimal. The calm before whatever came next.

  Marcus followed him in, closed the door behind them.

  "You saw the message," Marcus said, his voice quiet but strained.

  Richard moved behind his desk. "I did."

  "They’re coming today. ORI. Not a surprise inspection. They’ve scheduled it. It’s formal."

  Richard sat, slowly. “Then we’ll treat it that way.”

  Marcus didn’t sit. “This isn’t routine anymore, Richard. You know that.”

  “I’m aware.”

  There was a long pause. Marcus shifted, eyes flicking toward the tinted windows.

  “I know you’ve been working on something,” Marcus said finally. “Off the books. And I’ve let it slide, because I trust you. But whatever it is—it’s bleeding into the surface. People are noticing. The board is noticing. If they trace anything unusual—funding reallocations, missing logs, blocked server access—”

  “They won’t,” Richard said firmly.

  “But if they do,” Marcus pressed, “you need to be ready. You need to have a version of the story that doesn’t implicate the company.”

  “I have a version,” Richard said. “It’s called the truth. We’ve been pushing boundaries. That’s what we do.”

  Marcus let out a quiet ugh—dry, joyless. “Boundaries aren’t suggestions, Richard. They’re legal lines. Ethical lines.”

  “I know exactly where the lines are.”

  “Do you?” Marcus asked, his voice almost gentle. “Because sometimes I look at you tely and I don’t know if you do.”

  Richard didn’t respond.

  Marcus took a breath. “Just… be careful today. They’ll come with smiles and pens and pretense. But they’ll be listening to everything. Watching.”

  Richard’s expression didn’t change. “I’m ready.”

  Marcus hesitated by the door. “I hope you are.”

  When the door closed behind him, Richard let the silence settle again.

  For a moment, he sat absolutely still.

  He could still feel the weight of the dream pressing into the back of his skull. The softness, the lightness of it—of her. It wasn’t fading fast enough.

  He gnced at the sleek tabletop. Reflections of fluorescent light shimmered on the surface, white and cold and hard. Unlike her. Unlike the world he’d held, briefly, in his own hands.

  He told himself he was calm. But his shoulders were tight, his jaw clenched. His knuckles white where they gripped the armrest.

  He wasn’t ready.

  But he would perform it. Like everything else.

  Richard straightened his back. Smoothed his cuffs. Reset his expression like armor.

  He would not give them anything.

  Location: Vargas Neurotechnologies - Executive conference room Time: 12:04 p.m.

  The sterile silence of Richard's secured corporate office was disrupted only by the soft hum of computers and the rhythmic clicking of keys beneath his fingers. Three months had passed since the inception of his daring pn—months filled with meticulous pnning, covert experiments, and escating risks. Richard's gaze remained fixed intently upon the monitors dispying his carefully orchestrated enhancements to Jakub’s original research.

  Jakub’s neural model had shown remarkable potential, but Richard’s alterations elevated it beyond its initial constraints, transforming it into a sophisticated mechanism perfectly tailored for his ultimate purpose. Utilizing corporate resources discreetly had significantly accelerated the progress, yet Richard knew it also dramatically increased the potential for exposure.

  He leaned back slowly, his shoulders tense, eyes narrowing at the digital streams cascading down the screen, each representing intricate neural pathways now mapped with precision. A folder titled "Transcendence Protocol – Advanced Data Preparation Phase" y open, containing meticulous documentation of each adjustment made.

  A sharp knock shattered the quiet. Richard flinched.

  Two agents from the Office of Research Integrity stood at his door, fnked by a stone-faced Marcus. The taller one, a woman in a crisp navy suit, held a tablet. The other wore gsses and an unreadable expression. Their presence felt surgical.

  "Dr. Vargas," she began without waiting for invitation. "We have questions. You'll answer them now."

  The interrogation began in the conference room—gss walls, bright lights, air thick with tension. Richard sat opposite them, spine straight, hands folded with performative calm. He looked like the picture of composure.

  Inside, he was crawling.

  "You're aware of the recent reallocations from your discretionary research budget to an encrypted server cluster registered off-site?" the woman asked, eyes scanning him like a scalpel.

  Richard blinked. "Of course. That cluster handles long-term data modeling. AI training sets."

  "Then why were the access logs wiped five days ago?"

  His throat tightened. He felt a single bead of sweat trace down the side of his ribs, hidden by the fabric of his shirt.

  Don’t twitch. Don’t stutter.

  "I’m sure there’s an expnation. Probably a maintenance overwrite. I’ll have IT look into it."

  The man with gsses cut in, voice soft but surgical: "And the synthetic neurotransmitter batch ordered from BioNet Labs under a different department name?"

  He felt his heart knock once—hard.

  "We use them in a range of cognitive restoration studies," he said quickly. "Perfectly legal. Perfectly documented."

  "We have the documents. That’s not the issue." The woman’s voice was ice. "The issue is how many vials are unaccounted for. The issue is that someone in your b is experimenting on something we can’t find."

  Richard held their gaze. Every cell in his body screamed to run.

  They know. No. They suspect. There’s a difference. You are calm. You are the CEO. This is your kingdom.

  He smiled slightly. The controlled, practiced smile of a man used to cameras and crisis.

  "Look, I understand your concern. But this sounds like a clerical issue blown out of proportion. I’ll personally investigate."

  Silence.

  The woman leaned in, her breath cold as metal. "Let me make this simple. If we find one more discrepancy—just one—we’re shutting everything down. Your clearance will be revoked. You’ll be suspended pending formal investigation."

  Her eyes didn’t blink.

  "And if we find anything resembling unauthorized trials, Richard—we won’t be dealing with corporate oversight. We’ll be dealing with federal prosecution."

  Richard nodded slowly. "Understood."

  He didn’t remember walking back to his office. Didn’t remember dismissing Marcus. The door shut with a pneumatic hiss.

  Then he sat.

  And for a moment, all the lights felt too bright. His hands trembled.

  You’re fine. It’s nothing. It’s manageable. They don’t have proof. You’re smarter than this. You’ve always been smarter.

  His vision pulsed.

  He opened the drawer and stared at the fsk inside.

  Just one sip. Just one line of code. Just one more lie.

  Location: Downtown caffe Time: Late afternoon, after work hours

  Richard sat tensely at his usual corner table in the café, carefully hidden behind his ptop, trying to appear absorbed in work. His pulse quickened slightly as Emma entered, accompanied by a friend. He watched discreetly as she whispered something to her companion, giggled, and then, to his shock, headed directly toward him.

  "Hey there, creep," Emma sneered loudly, deliberately attracting attention. Her friend snickered behind her. "You think you're invisible or something? You've been eyeballing me for weeks."

  Richard felt his face flush, heat rising to his cheeks. "I'm sorry, I think you're mistaken—" he began, desperately attempting composure.

  "Mistaken?" Emma scoffed harshly, crossing her arms. "Listen, you sad little perv. You think I haven't noticed your nasty stares? Get your kicks off spying on young girls, huh?"

  Several patrons turned their heads, murmuring softly. Richard's stomach churned painfully, his throat tightening.

  "I don’t know what you're talking about," he protested weakly, feeling increasingly exposed.

  Emma leaned closer, her voice dripping with cruel sarcasm. "Yeah, right. I bet you just sit here fantasizing about chicks you could never have. Pathetic."

  Her friend ughed louder, encouraging others to stare. Richard’s fists clenched beneath the table, humiliation surging through him like a physical blow.

  "Just leave me alone," he whispered harshly, eyes darting anxiously around the room.

  Emma ughed cruelly, eyes glittering maliciously. "Oh, does the creepy stalker want to be left alone now? Boo-hoo. Maybe next time don't be such a desperate loser."

  She straightened abruptly, flipping her hair dismissively as she strutted back to her table, basking in the amused looks of the other patrons. Richard sat frozen, the burn of humiliation intensifying with every whispered remark and sidelong gnce aimed his way. His carefully constructed illusion of Emma had shattered completely, repced by stark, painful crity—she was no victim, no delicate ideal. She was malicious, cruel, and utterly unlike the fantasy he'd obsessively built around her.

  With a bitter taste in his mouth, Richard quickly gathered his belongings, desperate to escape the mocking ughter that now filled the café. His obsession had brought him here, but reality had cruelly revealed its ugly truth, leaving him shaken and deeply unsettled.

  Location: Vargas estate - dining room Time: Early evening

  The clink of cutlery. A pte passed silently. No one really eating.

  Julia finally broke the silence.

  "You missed Cra’s birthday dinner st week, Richard."

  She waited, but Richard said nothing. Her voice sharpened.

  "Jakub had pnned a special evening to introduce his girlfriend to us." You didn’t even show up. Do you have any idea how hurt they were?"

  Richard felt a pang in his chest—a sharp mix of shame and defensiveness, as if caught in a lie he hadn’t spoken. He wanted to care, to soften, but the wall inside him rose faster than he could stop it. "Julia, we've been over this. Work is demanding."

  "Is it?" Julia's voice sharpened. "Or is it an excuse to avoid us? You're slipping away, Richard, and I don't even recognize you anymore."

  Cra's voice trembled softly, eyes pleading, "Dad, we just miss you."

  The vulnerability in his daughter’s voice twisted painfully within him, yet he snapped sharply, driven by defensiveness. "Maybe if everyone wasn't constantly pressuring me, I'd actually want to be here."

  Cra recoiled as though struck, tears filling her eyes. Julia’s gaze hardened in anger and disbelief. Richard felt sickened by his own harshness but could not bring himself to soften.

  He abruptly stood and left the room without another word, feeling the weight of his family's shattered trust bearing down heavily upon him.

  Richard smmed the door of his home office behind him, his fists clenched at his sides. The cruel words he'd spat at his daughter echoed in his mind, yet instead of regret, all he felt was a desperate need to escape. Their expectations, their needs, their love—it all felt like a prison closing in around him.

  Without a second thought, he grabbed his keys and coat. Minutes ter, he was in his car, driving toward the b—the only pce where he truly felt in control. The only pce where he could become someone else entirely.

  Location: Warehouse - Richards Secret boratory Time: 9:00 p.m.

  Richard stood alone in his meticulously arranged secret boratory, the stark brightness of overhead lights illuminating the clinical precision of his surroundings. His hands trembled as he stared at the tablet in his grip—Emma's profile paused mid-ugh, the same frame he had seen too many times before. But this time, he didn’t just look. He listened. Watched the micro-gesture, the way her eyes half-closed before her smile peaked. It wasn’t beauty—it was memory. A rhythm his mind had memorized like prayer, now twisted by the cruelty of what she’d become in front of him.—her once mesmerizing smile now a cruel reminder of humiliation and shattered illusions.

  Internally, his mind was a maelstrom of conflicting thoughts. Emma’s cruel words echoed in his ears, each sylble tearing at the very fabric of his carefully constructed fantasy. Doubt gnawed persistently at his resolve, whispering relentlessly of potential catastrophe and ruin.

  His breathing grew uneven, anxiety cwing at his chest. He shut his eyes, overwhelmed by a vivid, sudden hallucination: the sensation of plunging into a vast, endless abyss, darkness swallowing him whole, air rushing past him violently as he fell deeper into despair.

  His eyes snapped open, heart racing wildly. He gnced around desperately, the sterile environment offering no soce, only amplifying his isotion and panic. The reality of imminent ORI investigations, potential imprisonment, and irreparable damage to his reputation loomed heavily in his mind, intertwining with the fractured remains of his family bonds.

  His gaze dropped once more to Emma's profile, her superficial charm mocking him from behind the gss. His grip tightened, knuckles whitening, his pulse pounding in his ears. The moment hung unbearably tense as a profound sense of dread and determination battled fiercely within him.

  "Is it still possible to retreat," he wondered desperately, his voice a trembling whisper in the oppressive silence, "or is jumping already inevitable?"

  With an abrupt motion, Richard shut off the tablet, the screen plunging into darkness. He stood motionless, eyes hardening slowly with steely resolve, yet shadows of doubt continued to flicker ominously behind his carefully composed facade. Taking a deep, shaking breath, he turned sharply and strode out of the boratory, leaving behind an unsettling emptiness—a chilling question lingering unanswered in his wake.

  He paused at the threshold of the b, tablet still in hand, screen bck and heavy with meaning. His fingers hovered above the power switch.

  To erase it all. Every trace of the project, the surveilnce, the simutions. Burn it clean. Take back control.

  Or preserve it. The data. The dream. The chance to touch it again.

  To be or not to be—no longer about existence, but identity.

  To burn it all—or step into what remained. To sever the dream—or become it.

  He stood there, torn between annihition and completion, as the soft hum of the machines murmured behind him—waiting for his choice.

  He didn’t move.

  TO BE CONTINUED...