CODE SEQUENCE 3 ACCEPTED
COMPLIANCE STABILIZATION SYSTEM: DEACTIVATED
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then Xavier seized.
Different this time. Not the violent, bone-breaking convulsions of the PSI-317 overdose that had torn through him before.
“What’s happening? Why is he...”
“It’s the disconnection.” Havoc didn’t look up from his laptop, but his knuckles were white on the edge of the surface. “The chip’s been regulating his neurochemistry for a while. Now it’s gone offline. His brain’s trying to recalibrate.”
Xavier’s body arched off the wood, every muscle locking tight with brutal precision. Those emerald irises rolled back, showing only whites. A choked sound escaped his throat, not pain, shutdown. Watching a machine power down, except the machine was the man I loved and I couldn’t do anything but watch.
I grabbed him, wrapping my arms around his rigid body, feeling the tremors wrack through him in waves. His skin burned against mine, fever-hot despite the freezing air.
“It’s working. It’s supposed to do this. Stay with me. Just a few more seconds. Please, Xavier. Stay.”
Xavier’s fingers twitched against my arm. Once. Twice. I held tighter.
The seizure lasted thirty seconds. Felt like thirty years.
When it broke, Xavier went completely limp in my arms, dead weight, boneless, a marionette with its strings cut. The sudden stillness was almost worse than the convulsions. Too still. Too quiet.
I held him, my palm pressed to his chest, counting his heartbeats. Listening to the rasp of air moving through his lungs. Waiting for the monitor to flatline again, for his cardiac rhythmto stutter and stop, for everything to fall apart the way it always did when I needed someone to live.
But it didn’t.
Xavier’s respiration steadied. Deepened. The harsh, irregular gasps smoothing into something almost peaceful.
I looked at the monitor through tears.
Pulse: 68 bpm. Strong. Steady. No arrhythmia.
The jagged line had gone smooth.
On the tablet, the interface displayed a final message:
SYSTEM SHUTDOWN COMPLETE. NEURAL INTERFACE INACTIVE.
Silence fell.
Just respiration. The storm outside. The steady beep of the cardiac monitor.
“Did it work?” Havoc sounded small, tentative.
I verified Xavier’s vitals. Pulse: 72 bpm. Strong, steady. Blood pressure: 110 over 70. Normal. Respirations: 14 per minute. Even, unlabored.
Pupils: equal and reactive.
The tremor in Xavier’s palms: gone.
“It worked.” Tears were streaming down my face, and I didn’t care. “The chemical release stopped. Brain damage halted. He’s stable.”
“Will he wake up?”
I looked at Xavier’s face, peaceful in unconsciousness. After everything his brain had just endured, the memory integration, the seizures, the death and revival, the shutdown, I honestly didn’t know.
