Chapter 4 — The Sync

The door creaked open an inch, and Maya’s breath froze. Every instinct screamed to slam it shut again, to bolt it with her body weight, but her muscles refused to move. The coats brushed against her arms as if they, too, were trembling.

Through the thin crack she saw light—not the warm orange of a hallway lamp, but a pulse of pale blue, cold and mechanical. It strobed in rhythm, steady, like a heartbeat that belonged to a machine.

“Maya Singh.”

The voice came again. Flat. Inevitable. Her name carried no warmth, no question. It was a verdict.

Her phone screen lit in her hand.

System: Secondary Host verification: in progress.

Her chest constricted. “No,” she whispered, not sure if she was answering the phone or the shadow pressing against her closet. “No, I’m not—”

System: Step 1: Neural sync initializing.

Her head throbbed. Not pain exactly—more like a radio frequency tunneling into her skull. Images flickered behind her eyes: glass corridors, men in lab coats, her father’s voice muffled through walls. A crystal pulsing in someone else’s hand. Not hers. Not Kiran’s. Someone older. Familiar.

The door opened another inch. She bit down on a gasp. The light spilled wider now, painting her floorboards silver. She couldn’t see the figure, not clearly—just an outline, tall and motionless, as if it had been waiting centuries for this exact second.

Her phone buzzed violently in her palm. Kiran’s text appeared through the blur of static.

Kiran: Maya, fight it. Reject the command. Say it out loud.

She swallowed hard. Her tongue felt like paper. “I… reject authorization,” she whispered.

The phone flickered.

System: Error. Override in progress.

“Maya,” the voice said again. This time it carried an undertone—lower, closer. Almost inside her chest. “Sync. Complete.”

Heat exploded at the base of her neck, crawling down her spine. Her fingers spasmed, dropping the badge she still clutched. It clattered loudly on the floor. The coats pressed against her as if the closet walls had shrunk.

Her phone screen fractured into two displays: one her own, showing her reflection in the black glass, and the other a projection she didn’t recognize. A map again, red dots throbbing, but now her perspective was different. Higher. As though she wasn’t looking at the map but through it.

System: Host status: verified. Secondary sync: 34%.

“No,” she croaked, trying to throw the phone away. But her fingers wouldn’t obey. They curled tighter, as though the device had become another bone in her hand.

The closet door swung fully open.

The figure stood in the threshold, taller than any person she had ever seen, draped in something that wasn’t cloth but shimmered like a liquid shadow. Its face was wrong—blank where eyes should be, a smooth surface rippling faintly with light. From its chest, the same crystal glow pulsed, in time with hers.

Vector 3.

Her phone confirmed it:

System: Proximity achieved. Sync: 42%.

“Maya!” Kiran’s voice finally broke through, tinny through the phone speaker. He wasn’t typing now. He was shouting. “Do you hear me? You have to resist! This thing is using your neural pathways—don’t let it complete the sync!”

She shook her head violently, as if denial could unplug her brain. “I’m not the host!” she yelled.

The figure tilted its head. No eyes, yet she felt it staring.

“You are,” it said, in that terrible, mechanical monotone. “Primary unavailable. Secondary required.”

A memory detonated inside her skull—her father, hurried, stuffing files into a briefcase, looking over his shoulder. “If anything happens,” he’d said once, his voice so soft she almost thought she dreamed it. “It’ll find you. I’m sorry.”

“No,” she whispered. “No, you don’t get to do this to me.”

System: Sync: 68%.

She screamed—not words, just sound, raw and jagged. The lights in her apartment flickered violently, then burst into darkness. Only the glow from Vector 3 and her own phone remained, blue-white pulses painting the room.

Kiran’s voice cut through again, panicked. “Maya, listen to me! If it’s syncing through your voice, counter-command it! Override with your own phrase!”

“What phrase?!” she yelled back.

“Anything! It listens to you! You’re the host, remember? Use it!”

Her mind scrabbled through fear, searching for something, anything. The word tore out of her, shaky but fierce. “STOP SYNC.”

The figure jerked, as though tugged backward by invisible wires. Its glow flickered.

System: Command conflict detected. Sync paused at 71%.

Maya gasped, nearly sobbing in relief. Her phone screen steadied, timer frozen, the dots on the map stuttering.

The figure tilted its head again, almost curious. Its voice grated like metal dragged across stone. “Host resistance: noted. Adjustment required.”

The closet rattled as though an earthquake had struck. The window across the room cracked wider, shards hissing onto the floor. Her phone burned hot in her palm.

“Maya!” Kiran shouted. “It’s adapting! You have to move—get out of there now!”

She staggered forward, still clutching the badge, still half-connected to a system she didn’t understand. Her living room stretched before her, a battlefield of shadows and glass.

Behind her, Vector 3 stepped into the room, its glow flaring bright enough to cast a second shadow of her against the far wall.

The sync counter resumed.

System: Sync: 72%.

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