Oren

I remember the exact second my eye lip open everything stopped feeling like sleep and started feeling like a cage. My hand hit the glass first. I don’t even know where the strength came from something inside me just snapped. The tube cracked in a sharp line, then spidered outward as alarms suddenly ripped through the room. Red light flooded the rows of pods and wall and loud alarm like the whole place had been waiting for it. I hit it again and the glass collapsed outward, cold air rushing in like I was breathing for the first time. I fell hard onto the metal floor, coughing, shaking, while the entire facility woke up at once doors slamming, systems screaming, every capsule flickering alive in chaos. Oren broke out right after me, but it didn’t feel like escape for him it felt like confirmation. His tube opened too clean, too ready, before I ever touched mine. He stepped into the chaos calm as ever, eye patch covering his blurred eye that still caused him pain when things got too intense, but he never slowed down. We ran barefoot through cold steel corridors while retrieval units dropped in from hidden rails in the ceiling robotic bodies with huge swords built only for one purpose: bring us back, no matter what. They didn’t hesitate. They didn’t adapt. They just locked on and came. But something was wrong. The system wasn’t fully locking onto me. Doors hesitated half a second too long. Tracking lights flickered when I passed. Even the units stuttered like I didn’t fully exist in their target data. And Oren noticed his gaze kept cutting between me and the system like he was realizing I wasn’t just escaping it… I was breaking its ability to understand me. And somewhere deeper, he started seeing patterns in the control network familiar signatures in the code. His father’s mark. Meaning this wasn’t an accident. It was allowed… maybe even planned because his father couldn’t protect him any longer he has an tracker on him his father keeps watch.