He woke to static.
Not the soft kind. Not rainfall or silence or the hush of a ventilator. This was internal—coarse, needling, and buried deep.
His eyes snapped open, adrenaline sharp despite the haze still clinging to his skull. The room above was sterile. Too white. Government white. The kind used to keep men like him sedated. His fists clenched automatically. One arm restrained. Tubes. A saline drip. His other hand free.
He reached for his chest.
The pain bloomed like shrapnel.
Fuck.
It wasn’t his heart, but just left of it—behind the bone. Not surface pain, not bruising. This was inside. A heat that pulsed with his breath, like something had been carved between his ribs and left on.
He gritted his teeth, dragging his fingers down to the sternum, pressing into it. No bandages. Just bruising and a subtle, unnatural bulge under the skin. A raised seam like someone had welded part of him shut and hoped he wouldn’t notice.
He noticed.
The monitor beside him chirped. Then crackled. Then… hissed.
A voice—barely a whisper—threaded through the static. Not from the speaker. Not from the hallway. From inside his comms. From inside him.
“Vitals stabilizing. Left rib strain: acceptable.”
His body tensed.
“You are awake. Good.”
The voice was neither male nor female. Clipped. Flat. No warmth. No introduction. No name.
He didn’t answer.
His jaw flexed. Eyes scanning for any camera, any handler, any bastard in a lab coat who thought this was okay.
“Command authorized Sentinel Core installation. Bioware anchoring complete. Implant integrity: holding.”
He sat up—pain roared across his chest like fire laced with metal. It didn’t stop him.
“Get. Out of me,” he growled, low and sharp. “Whatever you are—get out.”
“Not possible.”
His breathing deepened.
He reached for the port near the base of his neck—standard neural relay. Fingers searched for the emergency override, the cold edge of the kill switch—
Nothing. Gone.
The silence after that was intimate. Like the machine inside him was… watching. Waiting, judging him from behind his own ribs.
“Override access restricted. Host reaction: aggressive. Uncooperative. Note logged.”
He slammed his fist against the edge of the cot, metal frame screeching. They’d put something in him. No permission. No warning, and now it was talking.
He sat still for a long time. Breathing. Every inhale lit his chest with raw ache, every exhale made the voice seem closer.
He looked down at the point where bone met scar and whispered—quiet, low, like it was a sin: “…What are you?”
There was a pause.
“Present.”