Whispers from the Core
The silence in Darian's chest wasn't silence at all.
He lay on his back in the Black Squad barracks, eyes fixed on the metallic ceiling overhead. The bunk beneath him hummed faintly with the same low-frequency current that powered every Federation installation, but it was background noise barely noticeable to most. To him, it was amplified. He could hear the subtle rhythm beneath it, like a second heartbeat buried within the structure itself.
Only it wasn't coming from the bunk.
It was coming from within him.
The Void Serpent hadn't spoken. It hadn't revealed its voice or mind or even intention. But it was not passive. In moments like this, when the world went quiet and the system wasn't prompting him with data, he could feel it moving. Not in his body within the core, the space inside him that had reshaped itself after the first Rift kill. Its coils pulsed slowly, like it was dreaming with its eyes open.
Sometimes he thought he could hear it breathe.
He reached for the interface, not through a command, but instinct.
System Notification
[Core Status: Active – Sovereign Thread Stabilized]
_Stage: Infant – Phase I (Coiled)
_Resonance Fluctuation: 0.9% above threshold
Evolutional Strain: Contained
Cognitive Echoes: Intermittent – Logging…
Note: Sovereign anomaly appears self-regulating. External scan denied.
His jaw tightened.
Cognitive Echoes. That wasn't part of the standard system interface he'd studied enough hidden logs to know. It meant the beast inside wasn't just reacting to him. It was forming a conceptual layer of awareness. Primitive thoughts. Instinct-based signals. Emotionless, but intentional.
The system logged them neutrally, without interpretation.
He lay there a moment longer, watching the ceiling as the interface faded. His bunk was the only one unlit. Nova's soft breathing came from across the room. The other squad members had returned from their briefing and gone straight to rest. Black Squad operated on flexible sleep cycles disruptive Rifts had their own rules.
But his rest was never complete. Not since the bonding.
He sat up, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and opened his locker. His uniform jacket hung there, perfectly folded. His equipment had been polished and returned after his debrief. Everything was normal on the surface.
But the Federation didn't assign normal cadets to a ghost unit.
Morning or the closest thing to it within the underground base began with a chime that echoed low and slow through the squad barracks. The room lights shifted from blue-tint sleep mode to a neutral white.
Nova was already up. She sat on her bunk, reassembling the long-frame hilt of her weapon a modular glaive that pulsed with soft blue runes. Her hair was damp from a recent sonic shower, and she didn't look up as he moved.
Across the room, Ryne Calder was stretching in silence, his massive frame casting shadows even in the dim light. His beast, the Titan Apex Hound, pulsed with a physical energy that left faint heat distortion around his hands. His evolution path, Darian had noted silently, was locked to a brute-force progression tree efficient, but ultimately stagnant without external catalysts.
Elian Vehr stood near the console, sipping synthetic tea. He was the quietest of the group. His beast a Storm Glass Weaver was a hybrid species with atmospheric resonance and support-class defense mechanics. Darian found it the most interesting after Nova's. But he never commented.
They didn't know he could see what he saw.
And he never gave them a reason to suspect otherwise.
The door slid open, and their handler stepped in.
Dressed in a black Federation uniform with silver trim and no name, the man walked to the center of the room and faced them like a commander facing a death squad.
"You've all had two nights in containment," he said. "Black Squad doesn't operate on a timetable. You move when the Rift says move. And it's moving."
He tapped his wrist console.
Simulation Core loading…
The far wall shimmered, transforming into a glowing hex-grid simulation chamber. The temperature dropped slightly.
"Today is tactical cohesion testing. Your Beast sync ratios have been logged. We're running live-reactive feedback no instructors, no corrections. You fail, you fall."
Darian stepped forward with the rest. Nova grabbed her glaive and locked the last segment in place.
As they entered the grid chamber, he could feel the Void Serpent shift again. Not wake. Shift. Like it had been waiting for this.
The handler didn't follow.
Inside the simulation, the terrain changed instantly broken cityscape, shattered spires, cracked roads and smoke-pouring ruins. The Rift simulation was incredibly close to real-world dynamics, though Darian could tell it lacked certain sensory densities. The true Rift didn't just simulate danger. It was danger.
Their earpieces buzzed as the scenario loaded.
"Black Squad, welcome to Simulation BZ-Seven. Objective: defend the unstable core site for six minutes until stabilization. Hostile entities: Riftborne Swarm Class – Grade C to B+."
Elian muttered, "Rift swarm already? First sim?"
"Seems like they want to see how fast we break," Ryne replied, not concerned.
Nova's voice cut in. "Positions. Darian and I center. Ryne, take left elevation. Elian, deploy webs at the rear perimeter and maintain radius surveillance."
No one argued. That told Darian everything he needed about who actually led Black Squad.
They moved.
As the simulation pulsed into combat phase, Darian felt his awareness stretch faster than before. His perception of motion widened. Elian's support field glimmered faintly behind them. Nova's glaive began to pulse with orbiting energy arcs, and Ryne leapt to the second tier of rubble like a beast without armor.
From the shadowed edge of the broken highway, the swarm emerged.
Dark figures insectoid Riftborn, some leaping, some crawling, some flying. He could feel the feedback of their pattern. They didn't move like a single mind. They moved like they were hunting one.
The team responded.
Nova struck first, spinning her glaive in a motion too fast for standard cadet specs. A wave of force knocked three of the swarm backward. Elian's storm glass erupted into a ripple of shattering light, slowing two flyers.
Ryne intercepted a charge, slamming his fists into a crawler's exoskeleton with a crack that echoed.
Darian?
He didn't move.
The Void Serpent did.
Inside him, it pulsed once and then he moved.
A flash-step forward. Blade out. Two Riftborne fell before their bodies understood they were hit.
He didn't know if he had activated the enhancement, or if the beast had simply pushed energy into his limbs.
System Notification
[Sovereign Sync: +3.2% Spike]
Reaction Delay Reduction: Engaged
Core Strain: Stable
Beast Response: Instinctive Override Logged
He reset his stance and caught his breath. No one said anything. None of the team noticed his movement had been augmented. They were focused. Alive.
Six minutes passed like a blur.
When the simulation faded, none of them were injured. Elian's shield was down to 13%, and Ryne was panting, but the handler's voice came through neutral.
"Simulation complete. Squad cohesion rated: 81%. Pattern breach risk: minimal. Debrief in two hours."
The walls returned to black.
They returned to their bunks in silence.
But something was wrong.
Darian sat on the edge of his bunk, fingers clenched against his knees. The Void Serpent wasn't coiled anymore. It had shifted. Tightened.
Then it spoke not with it's words but with presence.
It pushed against his thoughts not violently, but undeniably.
He gasped once, quietly, and let the system respond.
System Notification
[Core Instability Detected – Anomaly Surge Incoming]
Event Type: Void Cascade Ping
Source: Internal Loopback Thread
Threat: Non-lethal
Priority: Immediate
The world tilted.
His spine locked. Vision tunneled. It was like standing in the center of a singularity that hadn't collapsed.
Then it ended.
Just… stopped.
His vision cleared. The Void Serpent had coiled again. Quiet. Sleeping.
But not empty.
Something had opened. He had no name for it yet. No way to measure it.
Just the faint echo of something watching from inside.