Chapter 6: Erosion

Pain stopped being something I reacted to.

That was the real change.

At some point—somewhere between the screaming nerves and the borrowed memories—I stopped thinking this hurts and started thinking this is happening. Pain became a condition, like gravity. Always there. Always pressing. Something to account for, not something to escape.

The researchers noticed.

Not directly. They never noticed the important things directly.

What they noticed was that my vitals stopped spiking the way they used to. That my heart rate stabilized faster. That I recovered from exposure windows sooner. That my eyes didn’t unfocus for as long after resonance sessions.

They called it adaptation.

They liked that word.

Adaptation was safer than the truth.

Adaptation implied growth. Progress. Something deliberate.

What was actually happening felt closer to erosion.

Every session scraped something away. Not memories exactly—I still remembered my parents’ faces, the sound of my mother humming while cooking, the way my father always read instructions twice before doing anything—but the weight of those memories thinned. Like copying a picture too many times until the colors faded.

Pain accelerated that process.

They never asked how much I remembered anymore. They asked how long I could last. How quickly I recovered. Whether my field stabilized sooner if stimuli overlapped instead of stacking sequentially.

I learned their language.

“Stable” meant I didn’t convulse.

“Success” meant I didn’t die.

“Necessary” meant someone else had already failed.

The other children stopped being names a long time ago. They became profiles. Frequencies. Sources. Sometimes I caught glimpses of them through observation windows, strapped into their own chairs, eyes dull or wild or completely gone.

None of us ever spoke.

We didn’t need to.

The AIM fields told me everything anyway.

“You’re responding remarkably well,” one of them said once, watching numbers scroll past on a monitor. “Your tolerance threshold keeps increasing.”

I didn’t tell him that tolerance had nothing to do with it.

You don’t become tolerant of pain like this.

You become empty around it.

That day’s experiment was different.

They told me that before it even started.

“Today will be… intensive,” Kihara Atsuko said, hands folded behind her back as she regarded me through the glass. “But it’s necessary.”

Necessary was another word they liked.

They strapped me into the chair more carefully than usual. Extra restraints. Dampeners along my spine. Sensors pressed into my temples, my collarbones, my wrists. The helmet lowered over my head with a soft mechanical whine, sealing the world into a narrow tunnel of light and sound.

Across the room, I felt them before I saw them.

Multiple AIM fields.

Layered.

Overlapping.

Children.

Too many.

My stomach twisted.

Their fields pressed against mine like hands through fog.

Some were sharp and unstable, crackling with feedback. Others were weak, barely coherent, stretched thin by overuse. One felt wrong—folded inward on itself, like someone had tried to compress too much power into too small a space.

I wondered, distantly, which one would break today.

When the helmet sealed fully, sound dulled to a low, distant thrum. My own breathing echoed too loudly inside my head. The restraints tightened in response to micro-movements I hadn’t realized I’d made.

They’d learned my tells.

The first pulse hit before I could brace.

I lost track of where my body ended.

The world dissolved into vectors and pressure gradients, every nerve lit up like exposed wiring. My vision fragmented into overlapping scenes—different rooms, different days, different screams—layered on top of each other until time itself felt meaningless.

I tasted iron.

Somewhere, someone calmly said my designation number.

Not my name.

“Begin phase one,” someone said.

The resonance hit like being dropped into freezing water.

My breath locked in my chest as foreign frequencies crashed into me—telekinesis, pyrokinesis, kinetic acceleration—raw, unfiltered, colliding all at once. My vision shattered into fragments, white rooms bleeding into each other, screams echoing over screams.

I bit down hard enough that my jaw ached.

Don’t scream.

That was instinct now.

Screaming made them take notes.

The pain escalated in waves, each one stripping something away—thought, sensation, time. My body convulsed violently against the restraints as my nervous system overloaded, every signal misfiring at once.

And then the memories came.

Not one at a time.

All of them.

A girl floating helplessly as gravity inverted around her, bones cracking under invisible pressure.

A boy sobbing as fire burned up his arms again and again, told to keep going because the data wasn’t clean yet.

Hands strapped down. Numbers shouted. Dials turned.

I felt my consciousness start to tear at the edges.

This was too much.

Focus, I told myself desperately. Match. Don’t absorb.

I reached inward—not outward—and anchored myself to the structure beneath the chaos. The patterns I’d learned. The rules hidden inside the pain.

AIM fields weren’t random.

They were shaped.

And shape meant control.

I forced my breathing into a steady rhythm, even as my muscles screamed. Slowly—so slowly—I began to separate the frequencies. Not stopping them. Just… sorting.

The pressure shifted.

Just a little.

Enough that one of the monitors spiked sharply.

“What was that?” someone asked.

“Her field just—adjusted,” another replied. “Interesting.”

They increased the output.

The helmet vibrated.

My thoughts scattered.

The pressure didn’t just push—it pulled, dragging at my awareness, trying to stretch it thin enough to tear. I felt myself slipping sideways into someone else’s perspective, hands that weren’t mine clawing at restraints, a throat screaming until it bled.

I forced myself back.

Anchors.

I imagined lines. Shapes. Boundaries.

AIM fields weren’t emotions. They weren’t memories. They were expressions of will filtered through physics. That meant they could be mapped.

Even if mapping them felt like carving diagrams into my own skull.

The pain didn’t lessen.

I nearly blacked out.

Something tore through my chest, white-hot and blinding. I felt myself slip—falling inward, losing coherence—

And then—

The lights flickered.

Once.

Twice.

The hum stuttered.

The pressure wavered.

Someone swore.

“What was that?”

A distant sound rolled through the facility.

Not an alarm.

Not a scream.

A deep, concussive boom.

The floor trembled.

The restraints loosened just a fraction as the system recalibrated.

My heart slammed against my ribs.

Again.

Closer.

Gunfire.

Real gunfire.

Automatic.

Disciplined.

The room shook again as something detonated down the corridor.

“Shit—!”

“Lock the doors!”

“Secure the subjects!”

I sagged forward, gasping, vision swimming.

Someone ran past my bed.

Someone else tripped.

I wrenched my arm.

Pain flared white-hot as skin tore where electrodes ripped loose.

I screamed and pulled again.

Something snapped.

The restraint gave.

I rolled off the table and hit the floor hard, air blasting out of my lungs. I lay there for half a second, stunned—

Then forced myself up.

My legs shook violently.

I almost fell again.

Move.

I staggered toward the door as another explosion rocked the hallway. Emergency lights flashed red, bathing the corridor in stuttering crimson.

The door slid open halfway, then jammed.

I shoved.

Screamed.

Shoved again.

It gave with a shriek of protesting metal.

The hallway beyond was chaos.

Smoke.

Shattered glass.

Blood smeared across white walls.

Researchers ran in every direction, shouting into communicators, panic ripping through their carefully curated calm.

I moved against the flow.

Someone grabbed my arm.

“Get back—!”

I turned instinctively.

Telekinetic resonance from the test earlier surged just enough.

Not a blast.

A shove.

They flew backward into the wall and slumped, unconscious.

My head screamed in protest.

I staggered.

Kept going.

Cells were opening.

Some manually.

Some because the locks had failed.

Children spilled out—crying, screaming, silent with shock.

I stopped when I could.

Pulled restraints loose.

Yelled directions.

“Run.”

“Follow the lights.”

“Don’t stop.”

Some listened.

Some just stared.

People thundered past me in full riot armor, weapons raised, moving with terrifying efficiency. One of them slowed when she saw me—bloodied, barefoot, shaking—but another shouted something I didn’t hear, and they kept moving.

Good.

I didn’t want to be stopped yet.

That’s when it hit me.

Anti-Skill.

The police force of Academy City.

They weren’t supposed to raid places like this. Not underground facilities. Not projects buried this deep.

Which meant something had leaked.

Public pressure, maybe.

Too much to ignore.

Another explosion.

The floor buckled.

I fell, catching myself on trembling hands.

My vision blurred violently as too many AIM fields overlapped at once.

I pressed my forehead to the floor and breathed.

In.

Out.

Focus.

I pushed myself upright again.

And that’s when I saw her.

Kihara Atsuko stepped out of a side corridor, tablet clutched to her chest, coat still immaculate despite the chaos. Her eyes flicked over the destruction with irritation more than fear.

Then she saw me.

She stopped.

For a heartbeat, the world narrowed to just us.

“…You’re still alive,” she said calmly.

Something inside me snapped.

I charged her.

She barely had time to react before I slammed into her, driving her into the wall hard enough to crack tile. The tablet shattered as it fell. She gasped, the sound sharp and startled.

I hit her again.

And again.

My fists moved without thought, every strike fueled by months of pain, stolen memories, every child who had screamed in these halls.

She tried to speak.

I didn’t let her.

She fell.

I followed.

Pinned her.

My knee slammed down on her forearm.

It broke with a wet, horrible sound.

She screamed.

That—finally—was fear.

I grabbed her collar and slammed her head into the floor once, twice. Blood smeared across sterile white.

She laughed through it.

“Kill me,” she rasped. “Go on. I failed. My father will never forgive me. I might as well die.”

My hands tightened around her throat.

One push.

One decision.

My entire body shook with the effort not to do it.

“My parents wouldn’t want that,” I said, voice shredded.

Her laughter turned sharp, hysterical.

“HAHAHAHA—!”

“I can’t believe you thought those videos were real,” she choked out. “They’re dead, you stupid child.”

The words hit slower than they should have.

Didn’t register.

She kept going.

“They tried to get you out. You should know we can’t have that. It was in the papers, after all.” Her eyes gleamed. “So we took care of them.”

Something inside me collapsed.

“You didn’t sign anything,” she continued, grinning despite the blood. “So we took some roundabout measures. Didn’t matter anyway.”

I screamed.

Not words.

Just sound.

My grip loosened just enough—

And then hands ripped me backward.

Anti-Skill.

Multiple.

Armor slammed into me, pinning my arms, forcing me away.

I fought.

Kicked.

Bit.

Screamed until my throat tore.

“She broke my arm!” Kihara shrieked from the floor, half-laughing, half-sobbing.

“Secure the child!” someone shouted.

They dragged me back, boots skidding, my nails scraping uselessly against the floor.

Kihara lay there, clutching her shattered arm, laughing weakly to herself as alarms screamed and the facility burned around her.

For a moment—just a moment—I hoped she’d look afraid.

Not of me.

Of what she’d done.

But even broken and bleeding on the floor, Kihara Atsuko looked satisfied. Like this was still data. Still a result she could rationalize.

That hurt more than her words.

When Anti-Skill dragged me away, my vision tunneled. The alarms blurred into a single, continuous scream. My body finally began to fail, every injury I’d ignored crashing down at once.

I thought of my parents then.

Not their faces.

Their voices.

The way they’d sounded nervous but hopeful when Academy City representatives came to our house. The way my mother had squeezed my hand under the table when the contracts got confusing.

This is good for her, they’d said.

I wondered if they’d thought that right up until the end.

And then I couldn’t think anymore.

The world blurred.

My strength gave out.

And then—

Darkness.

I woke up restrained.

Different restraints.

Padded.

Firm.

Human.

A gray ceiling loomed above me, cracked and imperfect. The air smelled like smoke and antiseptic instead of metal.

Armor shifted nearby.

A helmet came off.

Sharp eyes.

Tired.

Determined.

“I’m Yomikawa Aiho,” she said. “Anti-Skill.”

She studied me for a long moment.

“…You did a lot of damage,” she added.

I stared at the ceiling.

My chest hurt.

Everything hurt.

“You’re safe now,” she said.

Safe.

The word felt unreal.

As my eyes slid shut again, one thought lingered.

I didn’t escape.

I endured.

And someone finally came to stop it.