The director’s shoulders tensed at the sound.
“Again?
He’s still holding that anchor?”
The tech checked the neural map.
A cluster of nodes in the temporal region sat lit up red.
“Yes, sir.
The core memory isn’t dissolving under the wipe.”
Nobody spoke for a moment.
Just the filtration system, cycling overhead.
“Run the diagnostic again,” the director said.
“We’ve run it twice since the morning shift.”
“Run it again.”
The researcher wiped his palms on his coat and hit the key.
The progress bar crawled.
Then the screen went gray.
He shook his head.
“Nothing.”
“Define nothing.”
“It’s not what the office is asking for.” He kept his eyes on the display.
“The extraction logic isn’t pulling the core data.”
The director stepped closer to the pod, one hand on the frame.
“Then where is it?”
“We haven’t located the sector.”
“You told me you had coordinates before we started.”
“We thought the emotional peak would surface it on its own.” He finally looked up.
“We’ve been through every system we can touch without doing permanent damage.”
“Go through them again.
Remap the block.”
“We need more time to calibrate.
This isn’t a machine, sir.”
“You don’t have time.”
Nobody answered that.
A tone started up from inside the pod’s speaker, thin and insistent.
The researcher’s eyes went to the rising lines on his monitor. Follow the newest chapters on novelping.com.
Some of the color left his face.
“Director.
His neural activity’s past the safety margin.
The neural construct is coming apart from the inside.”
“Give me a number.
How long until he wakes.”
“I can’t.
The readings are breaking down faster than I can track them.”
“Then keep him under.
Use the emergency line.”
“We’re trying.”
“Try harder.”
A third technician came over from the side terminal, tablet in hand.
“Primary containment’s dropping, sir.”
The director turned.
“Percentage.”
“Thirty down.
And it’s still going — two percent every ten seconds.”
For a moment the director didn’t say anything.
His eyes went to the reinforced doors at the end of the corridor, then back to the glass.
“Clear the room if it hits ten percent.
Everyone to the secondary sector.”
“And you, sir?”
“Just run it.”
He stepped up to the plexiglass.
Behind the visor, Goutam’s eyes stayed shut, but his lips moved, one word, almost nothing.
“Shweta…”
The director’s jaw worked once.
He didn’t repeat it, didn’t ask who she was.
“Find the Seed.”
“We don’t know where it sits in his architecture.”
“Then find it before he opens his eyes.”
The researcher glanced at the readings again.
Through the tap.”
The director looked through the glass at Goutam, twenty-two years old and floating in the fluid.
“And if the tap doesn’t hold?” the researcher asked.
Nobody filled the silence that followed.
“Do it anyway,” the director said.
The machines climbed in pitch.
The monitor by Goutam’s head sped up until the beeps ran together into one note.
The researcher went still.
“Director.
We’ve got a hit.
Localized.”
“Where.”
“Not in the memory files.
It’s in his active consciousness.” He looked up.
“The Seed’s awake.”
The director turned to the glass.
Goutam’s eyelids had started to move.
“Cut the line.
Get it out.”
The restraints locked around his wrists and ankles with a dull clack.
His body jerked against them once, hard.
The sound that came out of him didn’t hold together as a scream — the current cut through it halfway, reducing the scream to a dry, rattling sound that carried through the glass.
None of the three moved from their stations.
Hands stayed on the keys.
“Hold the lock,” the director said.
“Trying.” The tech’s boots slid on the floor as the pod shuddered against its housing.
“The feedback’s shaking the frame.”
“Increase the current.”
The transformer beside the berth climbed another notch, its hum sharpening into something that sat behind the teeth.
Goutam’s spine arched, every muscle locking at once.
It wasn’t one point of pain anymore — it had spread past anything that could be isolated or named, and his body kept moving without any of it seeming to reach him.
The back of his skull struck the inside of the visor.
Once.
Then again.