There was no one else.
The small boy stood alone in the center of the white room, slowly turning his head, eyes drifting across the walls around him. He seemed lost, not frightened—just quietly observing a world too clean to be real.
After a moment, his gaze locked onto one side of the room. Something about that stretch of wall held his attention.
He walked toward it without urgency, reaching out to touch its surface.
His fingers slid off almost immediately.
The wall was impossibly smooth—so polished that his hands couldn't find grip. Even pressing against it took effort, as if the surface rejected contact.
Up close, the wall gleamed under the sterile light. It reflected the brightness perfectly.
But not him.
No matter how he moved, how close he leaned—there was no reflection of the boy in the glassy surface. Only light.
Just light.
...
"It won't touch me back."
The wall didn't press back. It didn't hold warmth. It didn't even seem to see him.
Something in the boy's expression cracked. His lower lip trembled—not in fear, but in something quieter. Hurt, maybe. As if even this lifeless, silent room had chosen to keep its distance.
He blinked fast, eyes stinging. Not from the light.
From the nothing.
Then—A voice.
Clear. Calm. Unannounced.
It echoed across the white chamber, though no speaker was visible. Not on the wall. Not in the ceiling. Not in the air.
"Malo Jorin, right? … How are you?"
Malo's heart jumped.
Not in a poetic, emotional way. Just a literal, startled-jolt-in-the-chest way—the kind that happens when someone suddenly speaks in what you thought was an empty room. A voice, calm and oddly casual, drifted in from nowhere in particular. Ceiling? Wall? Floor vent? At this point, he wouldn't have been surprised if it came from the light.
"Malo Jorin, right? … How are you?"
Not what are you. Not state your designation. Just… how are you. Like they were in line at a coffee shop.
Malo didn't answer.
Not because he was scared, though sure, the heartbeat thing was a red flag. It was more like—what exactly was he supposed to say? "Good morning, strange omnipresent ceiling-voice, I'm a recently unboxed boy in a glowing white box of a room, and I have no idea if I'm in a dream or a very slow-moving government brochure."
He took a breath.
One of those "maybe I'll try speaking now" breaths. But before he could—
"Ah—sorry, kid. Didn't mean to scare you."
The voice beat him to it. Not harsh. Not clinical. Just… awkward.
Like the guy behind the mic had realized mid-sentence, "Right, children don't usually respond well to echo-chamber introductions following complete sensory isolation." A little late, but the apology seemed genuine.
The room was still glowing. The walls still didn't have seams. There were still no shadows, and no reflection in the mirror-bright wall.
So, yeah. Comforting.
Malo blinked a few times, then spoke—softly, cautiously, but clear enough to carry through the bright room:
"Hello, sir… where are you talking from?"
There was a pause.
Then the voice returned, same tone—half-relieved, half still figuring this out.
"Good question. Technically? Room 8A. Realistically? Some kind of wall speaker you can't see."
Another pause.
"You're doing great, by the way. Most people don't start with 'sir' after what you just went through."
Malo tilted his head slightly, as if trying to listen harder. Or maybe he was looking for the seams in the room again.
"There's no speaker here."
"That's intentional. We try not to make things weird."
"...Which sounds stupid now that I've said it out loud."
There was a faint rustle, like someone adjusting in a chair behind glass—or plastic—or… whatever was between them.
"Look, Malo, I know this is probably the strangest morning of your life so far. I'd offer you breakfast, but I think we're still figuring out what kind of breakfast would even make sense right now."
Malo glanced down at his jacket, the smooth floor, then back at the wall.
"Can I leave?"
The voice hesitated—not long, but just enough to be noticed.
"Not… just yet."
Another pause.
"Not because you're in trouble. You're not. You're… new. To us. We just need to make sure everything's alright before you walk out into the hallway and give someone a heart attack."
Malo frowned, just a little.
"I don't think I'm scary."
Another pause.
"You're handling this a lot better than most would. Polite, calm—honestly, that's rare. Especially for someone who just stepped out of a containment crate."
Malo blinked.
"Crate?"
"Yeah. Big one. Metal. Latch system that only opens from the outside."
Another pause. A softer tone now.
"...Except yours opened from the inside."
Malo tilted his head, unsure if he was supposed to explain something.
"Was I not supposed to do that?"
"No no—it's not that you weren't supposed to. It's just... no one's supposed to be able to."
There was the sound of someone tapping a pen or stylus against something hard.
"We've gone over the latch three times. It's standard issue. Internal access is sealed tight. Has to be unlocked externally. That's regulation."
He exhaled.
"But then it opened. From the inside. Smooth as anything."
The voice went quiet for a second, then continued, almost muttering:
"Either someone in procurement has a sense of humor… or you just did something we don't understand."
The kid didn't linger on the humor in the voice.
Finally, he asked the question like someone asking about the weather.
"Is there anything else?"
The man in the control cabin frowned.
'No "sir." now. Bit rude. Though maybe puberty hit early. Or maybe he's malnourished... Wait—no, his file says he's eleven. He just looks seven. Huh.'
He leaned into the mic, playing it casual.
"What do you think?"
Malo didn't answer right away. His eyes shifted, expression tightening—not in fear, more like he was trying to organize something heavy into a sentence small enough to say.
Then, plainly:
"I'm a murderer."
The voice's owner blinked. Slowly.
'Okay. Well. That's a lot.
The files didn't mention that.
...Did they?
A mental flip through yesterday's briefing papers. He hadn't finished reading them. He meant to. But the printer jammed, and someone was microwaving fish, and—
Maybe the files were altered. Maybe I wasn't cleared to see everything. Maybe I was hired through connections. Hell, maybe I was planted here by a cult. One of those weird ones that worship the "End of the World".
Yeah. Yeah, that checks out. That'd explain a lot.
...Actually, none of that's true.'
He exhaled through his nose and rubbed the back of his neck.
He wasn't underqualified. Or infiltrated. He was just a Sundered—fractured by exposure to things humans weren't meant to survive, now stuck in a government post no one else wanted.
And now he was talking to a kid who said he was a murderer.
He finally shook the tangle of thoughts from his mind. The spiral of half-finished theories, cult conspiracies, and printer malfunctions—gone.
Straightening in his chair, he reached for the mic again.
This time, his voice came out clear, steady, and with that subtle weight that made people listen:
"No. You're not going to be punished. And this isn't a prison, despite what it might look like—or what you've already guessed."
A pause. Not for drama. Just to let the air settle.
"But yes... it's something similar in function."
"This facility was designed to help people like you—people changed by the fracture. It's built to keep you safe from others… and them safe from you."
There was no accusation in his tone. Just a clinical, even almost kind clarity. It was the sound of someone who'd had to say this before.
Another brief silence passed.
Then, with formality now fully returned:
"Malo Jorin, you are requested to speak plainly. Tell us what you know."
"When did you become aware of the power? And what, exactly, did you gain from the fracture?"