My biometric profile will flag.
Oversight will notice.
They always notice.
The old fear slides through me like ice water, clean and familiar and devastatingly persuasive.
You are not a person, it whispers in a dozen remembered voices.
You are a containment variable.
You are a weapon that has not yet misfired.
You are safest when you do nothing.
I stare at the terminal until the glow makes my eyes ache.
“Log and walk away,” I murmur again.
My fingers hover over the commit command.
The terminal pings.
Another fragment breaks through.
“…noncompliance confirmed…”
“…final warning delivered…”
“…ignite on schedule…”
Something shifts.
It isn’t loud.
It isn’t dramatic.
It feels like a subtle misalignment in my bones, like the internal gravity of my body just tilted half a degree off center.
I inhale.
And don’t quite finish the breath.
There is a pressure building behind my sternum, low and dense and wrong, like a second heartbeat trying to start in the wrong place. It isn’t pain, exactly. It’s a tug. A directional pull. A sensation of being leaned on from the inside.
“What the hell is that,” I whisper.
My hand curls into a fist against my thigh.
The pressure intensifies, a slow, insistent drag that makes my ribs feel too small for what’s inside them.
Gravity misbehaving.
My vision sharpens, edges of the terminal light fracturing just slightly as if my pupils can’t decide what to focus on.
I swallow.
I have lived my entire adult life without sensations I couldn’t explain.
