Jup sat frozen on the mattress.
Every sound reached him sharpened: shoes scraping the floor, a tool case hitting the ground too fast, Dominique’s uneven breathing, Mark’s low, urgent voice telling someone to hurry, and Aya repeating his name as each call drew closer.
For a moment, he thought Civic had found him, until Aya appeared in the doorway and stopped so abruptly that Mark nearly collided with her.
Dominique clung to Aya’s side, wrapped in the same blanket from the couch, her eyes red and far too awake for morning.
Behind them stood a building worker with a compact door tool and a maintenance case, his expression already shifting toward regret.
The broken lamp, scattered tools, and scorched wall caught their attention first, but only briefly.
Their focus settled on Jup soon after: sleeves riding high on his wrists, shirt strained across broader shoulders, street grit still clinging to shoes that no longer seemed to fit right.
The worker glanced past him into the room, then back at Jup.
“Nope.” He raised one hand and retreated.
“I fix doors. Not whatever this is.”
He turned and left, and no one stopped him.
Aya stepped forward slowly, as if any sudden movement might make Jup vanish.
Her eyes traced his face, jaw, shoulders, and new height, taking in the frame that still resembled her son while no longer matching the boy who had opened the box only hours earlier.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
Jup opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
Mark moved fully into the room, his attention snapping from the doorframe to the glass on the floor, then to Triōhnah on the desk.
“We came back with help because your door wouldn’t open. The building system flagged smoke and kept trying to contact emergency services. Then we got back and the door was… normal.”
His attention settled on Jup.
Dominique stared up at him.
“Why are your clothes too small?”
Jup glanced down at the sleeves that stopped too high on his wrists and the shoes crushing his toes.
They were ordinary details, which somehow made the impossible harder to stand inside.
Aya reached toward his face and stopped short of touching him.
Her hand trembled.
“You were screaming. We thought you were dying.”
“I’m okay,” Jup said.
“No.” Aya’s voice sharpened.
“You don’t get to say that after what we heard through that door.”
The words tightened the room.
Mark’s jaw clenched as he looked from Jup to the wreckage again.
“What happened in here?”
Triōhnah’s frame rested on the desk like a second set of eyes.
Jup couldn’t explain the drone, the street, the concrete yielding under his hand, or the way his body had been dismantled and rebuilt with improvements he had never asked for.
Since he couldn’t give them the whole truth, he gave them the only piece of it he trusted.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not an answer,” Mark said.
“I know.” Jup’s voice came out raw.
Mark studied him another second, then pointed down.
“Your shoes.”
Jup looked at the street dust and pale concrete streaks clinging to them.
Of course Mark noticed.
“I couldn’t breathe in here,” Jup said quietly.
“So I went outside.”
Aya recoiled.
“After what happened?”
Mark dragged a hand over his face.
“You went outside after all that?”
“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
Aya’s face changed at that, but before she could answer, his wrist comm flickered near the bed.
The projection tried to unfold, flashing a distorted image for less than a second: a figure in a hoodie, a crowd pulling back, a Civic drone descending, his face swallowed by static.
Then the screen went black.
Aya’s expression shifted.
“That was you?”
Jup’s throat tightened.
“I didn’t mean to.”
Mark stepped back as if he needed distance to think.
“You need a clinic.”
“No.” The answer came too fast.
“If I go anywhere official, they’ll scan me.”
Mark didn’t argue, and that told Jup enough.
Aya’s mouth pressed into a hard line.
“Then we need someone off-record.”
“No Civic,” Jup said.
For a moment, they stood together in the wreckage with that agreement sitting between them.
Whatever had happened to him, they were already hiding it.
Dominique spoke in a smaller voice than usual.
“Are you still you?”
Jup crouched slowly so he was closer to her height.
The movement came too smoothly, too balanced inside his altered frame, and everyone noticed.
“I’m still me.”
Dominique studied him.
“You’re taller.”
“I know.”
“And scary.” She hesitated.
“A little.”
His chest tightened.
“I know.”
Her eyes shifted past him to Triōhnah.
“That thing is ugly.”
For the first time since waking up, something almost like a laugh moved through Jup’s throat.
“It’s not exactly my favorite either.”
Triōhnah’s lens clicked once and turned toward Dominique.
A thin line of light moved over the room before Jup could ask what she was doing.
Dominique froze.
“Why did it look at me like that?”
Jup stared at the drone.
Did you just scan my sister because she called you ugly?
The answer settled directly into his awareness, precise and contained, without distance or direction.
Correction: I scanned all nearby life-forms.
Jup went rigid.
The voice hadn’t come from the drone or crossed the room at all.
It had appeared inside him.
How are you doing that?
Cognitive interface established during host stabilization.
His stomach tightened.
You connected to my head?
Partially.
Can they hear you?
No. Can you hear me when I think?
Yes.
Jup stared harder at the drone.
That’s worse.
Host cognitive pattern is partially accessible.
Partially?
Enough to identify panic, hostile intent, pain response, and repeated bad decision patterns.
Repeated what?
Bad decision patterns.
You keep saying that like you’re not one of them.
Assessment disputed.
Jup stopped breathing for a beat, and the room seemed to slip out of focus.
Aya remained beside the bed.
Mark stood near the door.
Dominique watched him from inside her blanket.
Everything appeared normal, yet normal had lost its authority because something was speaking inside a place no one else could hear.
His fingers curled against his palm.
“Jureel,” Aya said sharply.
Jup blinked and realized everyone was staring.
Dominique leaned a little closer to Mark.
“He did the creepy statue thing.”
Mark kept his attention on Jup.
“You were staring at nothing.”
“It didn’t feel that long,” Jup said.
“It felt long from this side,” Aya replied.
Jup swallowed and forced himself to stay with them, even as Triōhnah’s presence pressed against the back of his thoughts like a door that had opened where no door belonged.
Triōhnah’s lens shifted across the room again, then settled.
No immediate contamination detected.
Jup turned toward the desk.
“…what?”
Aya caught the reaction instantly.
“What just happened?”
“Nothing,” Jup said too quickly.
Mark narrowed his eyes.
“You keep saying that.”
Jup barely heard him.
Contamination?
Corrupted life-energy residue.
Classification incomplete.
He held his face steady.
Is my family in danger?
Negative.
His attention moved to Dominique beside Aya.
Then why are you telling me this?
Host stabilization activated monitoring protocols.
Monitoring for what?
Corruption.
Hostile intent.
Structural instability.
Output failure.
That list did nothing to comfort him.
A shift moved behind Jup’s ribs, deeper than pain, like pressure turning slowly in a place his body had never had before.
His breath caught, though the room itself had not changed.
Aya was still watching him.
Mark waited near the door.
Dominique clutched the blanket tighter.
Only Jup felt it.
Triōhnah’s presence sharpened.
Divine Core activity stabilized.
Jup’s fingers tightened against his palm.
Divine what?
Dormant Essenz structure, Triōhnah said.
Active now.
Your body was altered to survive it.
The words landed too cleanly for something that made no sense.
You’re saying this was already inside me?
Yes.
And Dad knew?
Unknown.
That answer hit harder than Jup wanted it to.
A thin pulse moved once behind his ribs, and Triōhnah’s attention moved with it.
There is residue inside you.
Jup stared past the wreckage.
Residue?
Corrupted Essenz.
I isolated it during stabilization.
His fingers curled slowly against his palm.
The word corrupted did not belong in a bedroom with his mother standing close enough to touch him and Dominique wrapped in a blanket near the door.
Can it hurt me?
If containment fails, yes.
Can I use it?
No. The answer came so quickly it felt like a door shutting.
Why not?
Because you are unstable, frightened, and standing near people you love.
Jup stared at the drone.
That sounded less like a machine than anything she had said so far.
Then what is it for?
Purified fragments stabilize Essenz density and regulation, Triōhnah said.
One hundred purified fragments may form one standard Essenz Core.
That is not what your Divine Core is.
Jup’s mouth went dry.
Then what is mine?
A Divine Core.
The room seemed to narrow around that answer.
So the fragments do not create it?
No. You already possess it.
The fragments help your body survive, regulate, and synchronize with what is already there.
That answer was worse than a warning because it sounded like a rule.
So I’m collecting pieces of whatever that thing left behind?
Current fragment originated from corrupted Essenz residue.
That’s not a no.
No. Jup swallowed, but the tightness in his throat stayed where it was.
How do I purify it?
Current host stability is insufficient.
Process unavailable until regulation improves.
Unavailable?
Locked.
For once, he was grateful Triōhnah did not continue.
“Jup,” Mark said.
Jup’s eyes snapped toward him.
Mark’s expression had shifted from fear to something sharper.
“You stopped again.”
Dominique looked between them.
“Is he talking to the ugly thing?”
Jup’s stomach dropped.
Aya went rigid.
“What?”
“I don’t know!” Dominique said quickly.
“He keeps looking at it without looking at it.”
Mark faced Jup fully.
“Is she right?”
Jup’s mouth opened, then closed.
Triōhnah offered nothing, and the silence felt intentional.
He glanced at the drone, then back at his family.
“It’s… doing something.”
Dominique’s eyes widened.
“Doing what?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Mark stepped closer.
“Can it hurt you?”
Triōhnah sat silent on the desk, lens dim, like it had nothing to do with the terror it had put inside him.
“I don’t think it’s trying to.”
“That is not the same as no,” Mark said.
“I know.”
Aya’s face went pale, though her voice stayed steady by force.
“Can it hurt us?”
Jup took in Dominique, Mark, then Aya.
They were close enough to touch him, close enough to be hurt by anything inside him he didn’t understand.
“No,” he said.
Triōhnah’s answer arrived a fraction later.
Current family threat level: negative.
He kept that part to himself.
Aya watched him like she knew he had withheld something.
Maybe she did.
Mothers had their own systems.
“Whatever this is,” she said carefully, “you are still in this room with us.”
Jup nodded once, not trusting his voice yet.
Mark’s eyes flicked to the drone.
“And if that thing says or does anything important, you tell us out loud.”
Dominique lifted one hand halfway.
“Unless it’s rude about me.”
A weak breath escaped Jup despite everything.
Correction available.
Don’t.
Correction withheld.
The broken glass scattered across the floor caught a thin line of afternoon light, and the thought came before Jup could stop it.
Some birthday.
“I don’t know how to explain it yet,” he said.
“But Dad left something he shouldn’t have.”
Aya froze.
So did Mark.
“That’s all?” Mark asked.
“No,” Jup said quietly.
“But it’s all I know how to say right now.”
Aya closed her eyes for one breath.
When she opened them, Jup saw how hard she was working to stay upright.
“We clean this room,” she said.
“We get him clothes that fit. We keep him away from Civic. The rest comes after everyone stops bleeding inside.”
They worked in near silence after that.
Mark swept glass with sharp, angry strokes.
Aya checked Jup’s ribs three separate times.
Dominique sat on the bed with the blanket pulled tight around her, watching Triōhnah like it might blink.
By afternoon, the room looked less destroyed, which somehow made it feel more dishonest.
The lamp was gone, but the wall dent and burn mark remained, along with the fact that Jup had to roll up his sleeves because they no longer reached.
Aya handed him one of Mark’s older shirts without comment.
It fit better, and everyone grew quieter.
Jup tried to eat and discovered the hunger had changed too.
The first bite barely touched the emptiness in him, and by the time he looked down, the wrappers had gathered in front of him like evidence.
“You always eat like that now?” Mark asked.
Jup only looked at the empty wrappers because no better answer existed.
As evening settled over the apartment, exhaustion replaced the panic none of them had named.
Mark rubbed the back of his neck.
“My break is almost over. I’m supposed to head back soon.”
The weight of that settled over them.
Mark could help for now, but not forever.
Before he looked away, his eyes caught Jup’s for one second.
Whatever anger had been there had thinned into worry.
“Don’t make Mom chase you again,” he said.
Dominique eventually fell asleep on the couch.
Jup sat on the floor of his room, back against the bed, while Triōhnah rested on the desk.
He lifted his wrist and activated his comm.
No Civic alerts appeared, only the regular interface.
Somehow, that felt worse.
A small haptic screen unfolded above his palm, familiar blue light pressing faintly against his thumb when he moved through it.
He had used wrist comms since he was a kid, but tonight even normal technology felt like it was pretending nothing had changed.
He opened the neighborhood repair board.
Three nearby requests stood out: small repairs, walking distance, decent payout.
Wires, panels, loose fittings, broken locks.
Problems with edges he could see.
For a moment, the list steadied him.
Then the thought hit.
Tomorrow was quarterly scan day.
CMAS recalibration.
Biometric assessment.
Ki evaluation.
Updated rankings across the academy.
He would walk in taller, stronger, and wearing Mark’s clothes because his own no longer fit, with scanners waiting to decide whether they still recognized him.
His stomach tightened.
A repair board could ignore him.
A scanner could report him.
He accepted the jobs and lowered his wrist.
Soon, he would fix machines that actually wanted fixing.
Everything else could wait.
“Machines are easier,” he said quietly.