Chapter XVI: The Pauli Exclusion Principle
The suspension of classes should have been a blessing.
At King's College, word spread quickly: no engineering lectures for an entire week. Professors were bound for an academic summit in Edinburgh, leaving students with assignments and promises of heavier workloads when they returned. The announcement had drawn cheers from many, groans from others.
For Nathaniel Cross, it was neither.
He sat alone in his flat, blinds shut against the half-hearted London sun, laptop humming quietly on the desk. The news of suspended classes had been met with Theo's excitement—"Mate, a week off! Finally, sleep! FIFA marathon! We deserve this!"—but Nathaniel had not shared in the joy.
For him, this was not reprieve. This was space.
Space to confront the truth he had been running from.
He leaned back in his chair, headphones abandoned, controller untouched. The screen before him displayed the paused menu of a game Theo had begged him to install. Normally, Nathaniel would have escaped into it—hours wasted in simulated battles, laughter covering the unease—but not now.
Because the silence pressed too close.
The scar beneath his shirt thrummed faintly, reminding him that time was no ally.
"Fine," he whispered into the empty flat, voice hoarse. "We'll do it properly. Diagnose it."
He pulled his engineering notebook closer, its pages already warped from frantic scrawls of equations and diagrams that bore no relation to coursework. This wasn't for school anymore. This was for survival.
Nathaniel stripped off his shirt, examining himself under the harsh white of his desk lamp. His reflection in the black screen of his laptop showed him a figure he barely recognized: leaner, sharper, almost gaunt. The light revealed faint traces beneath his skin—veins that shimmered faintly, not red but metallic.
He pressed a finger against his forearm. The vein twitched, glowing briefly like quicksilver, then receded.
Nathaniel wrote:6Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVW36S6TPxe
Subdermal luminosity confirmed. Pattern: silver. Response time: 0.3s after tactile pressure.
His pen trembled. He forced himself to keep going.
He sat cross-legged in front of the mirror, notebook open. He raised a candle—the emergency kind he kept for power cuts—and lit it with shaking hands. The flame flickered weakly.
Nathaniel focused.
His pupils contracted violently, adjusting to the light not once but in layers, like lenses shifting in a camera. Details of the flame sharpened until he saw not just the flicker but the molecules of wax sublimating, the trail of invisible smoke curling upward.
The scar pulsed.
He gasped, clutching his head. The candle slipped and rolled across the floor, leaving a smear of wax.
Nathaniel staggered forward, scribbling:6Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOjtE2ejyeb
Vision range: non-human. Depth acuity: excessive. Caution: overwhelming sensory input.
He paused, staring at his handwriting. The letters were jagged, uneven—like a different hand altogether.
By afternoon, he tried to drown the thoughts with routine. Gaming. Reading. Anything that could chain his mind to something ordinary.
For a moment, it almost worked. He slumped on the couch, controller in hand, half-smiling as pixelated characters leapt across his television. The muffled city beyond his flat faded, and for fleeting hours, Nathaniel could pretend he was normal.
But even in the game, his altered senses betrayed him. He reacted to enemies before they appeared onscreen. He noticed patterns in coding, pixel stutters invisible to ordinary players.
The illusion collapsed.
He set the controller down, breathing heavily. "Not even this," he muttered.
Evening fell. The city's lights blinked alive one by one, but Nathaniel's world was already too bright, too detailed.
He forced himself back to the desk.
Test Three: Endurance.
He dropped to the floor, setting his stopwatch. Push-ups. Sit-ups. Squats. Movements drilled into him back in secondary school PE, the kind that once left him winded.
Now, he passed two hundred before the burn even began. His body moved like a machine oiled beyond human capacity. His pulse climbed but refused to collapse. His breath shortened but never failed.
When he stopped, sweat soaked his body but his mind remained sharp, too sharp.
Physical endurance: enhanced. Comparative analysis: peak athlete range exceeded.
The words mocked him. He slammed the notebook shut.
Nathaniel leaned against the wall, sweat cooling, the silence of the flat settling once more.
He realized then how much he loved the privacy. No professors demanding answers. No students whispering. No Theo knocking at his door. The flat was his alone, sealed against the world.
Like a NEET, he thought bitterly. Living like those stories he'd mocked—shut-in, retreating into games, blinds drawn, the city reduced to a hum outside.
And yet—
He felt safe.
Or he should have.
Because in that silence, he felt it again.
The weight of eyes.
Not from the window this time. Not from the mirror. But from the walls themselves, as though the plaster carried breath, as though the wires in the sockets whispered secrets.
He stood abruptly. His scar seared in warning.
The lights flickered.
Not once. Not the usual London brownout that locals cursed and forgot. No—this was rhythmic. Deliberate. A pulse.
On. Off. On. Off.
Nathaniel froze. His breath hitched. He reached for the nearest object—a wrench he'd left on the desk from a half-forgotten project.
The laptop flickered too. Its screen snapped on, though he hadn't touched it.
Lines of code spilled across the display. Not English. Not programming syntax he recognized. Symbols twisted into spirals, letters bending into shapes his mind recoiled from yet understood instinctively.
The scar burned.
"No," he whispered, clutching his chest. "Not here. Not now."
The symbols shifted. Words began to form—shapes rearranging into jagged letters.
WE SEE YOU
The screen went black.
Nathaniel's hand shook on the wrench. Sweat dripped down his temple.
Silence again.
Only the hum of the city. Only the faint buzz of the lamp.
He dropped the wrench with a clang. His knees buckled, and he fell against the desk, chest heaving.
"What is happening to me..."
But the silence gave no answer.
Midnight Vigil approached as the hoots of malevolent owls within the distance.
He couldn't sleep.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, notebook beside him, scar burning faintly like an ember buried deep. His laptop remained black, screen cracked with his own reflection.
The city outside murmured faintly—cars passing, a siren in the distance—but to Nathaniel, it was background noise. All that mattered was the quiet between sounds. The quiet that seemed alive.
His vision stretched again, unbidden. He saw beyond the flat, through the rain-slick streets of London. He saw shadows move not with the wind but with intent. He saw figures that weren't there when he blinked.
The scar pulsed, harder this time, insistent.
He pressed his palms to his face, desperate. "I need control. I need... I need answers."
But the only thing staring back was the machine he was becoming.
And in the reflection of the darkened window—
A shape lingered.
Closer than before.
Watching.
Always watching.
ns216.73.216.33da2
and then Add to home screen.