Two weeks had passed. And April was back in her childhood house-- the same house that she suffered for almost all her life.
In her first 3-day's in the house April had begun to map her prison of silence and shadow. She memorized steps, traced walls with her fingers, and tapped her cane against the floor.
The apartment was no longer a blur of void but a place she could navigate by memory.
But the silence gnawed at her.
She had gotten used to the hum of the refrigerator, the murmur of distant neighbors, the quiet patter of rain.
But now there was only the suffocating emptiness of a world that no longer spoke to her.
Until tonight.
It began with a tremor.
A faint vibration brushing the edge of her awareness.
April stilled, breath held.
A whisper. The faintest rustle of cloth. The creak of wood beneath her foot. The rhythmic throb of a pulse.
"My... pulse?!," Her breath caught.
"I can hear?"
"No. Am not hearing. It's almost like---"
This was not hearing. Not the way it used to be. This was something else—deeper, sharper.
April turned her head, and the darkness shifted. Lines formed. Outlines.
"My room?," April questioned herself, her desbelief quite audioble.
The shape of her room emerged in faint strokes: the walls enclosing her, the table at her side, the window rattling against the night breeze.
But it wasn't sight. It was resonance. And--
"--Echoes," April desbeliefly questioned.
She raised her hand, waved it through the air. The movement rippled outward, tracing each finger in her mind as though the world itself painted her shape in return.
April's heart pounded.
"What… what is happening to me?"
___
Sleep never came.
April tested the strange sense.
A snap of her fingers, and waves of perception spread across the walls.
A tap of her foot, and the floor answered, outlining the furniture and doorways.
She was not blind. Not anymore. She was seeing in a way no one else could.
It was not natural. It could not be.
"It's coming from my... skull?," April questioned herself.
Something in her skull… something they had left there… was awake.
The city was alive.
April stood on the roof of her apartment, the world below unfolding in ways she could not have imagined weeks ago.
Engines hummed in the distance, their forms traced against her mind's eye. The shuffling of footsteps painted trails of strangers across the pavement.
The heartbeat of the streets pulsed, steady and alive.
It was overwhelming. Terrifying yet somehow really beautiful.
Every sound sketched her world in strokes invisible to others.
A car door slammed, revealing the hollow shell of a vehicle.
A bird beat its wings, carving fleeting arcs through the sky.
Even silence rippled with the weight of hidden details.
For the first time, she felt as though she could breathe.
April slowly raised both her arms up to her ears in one synchronized motion. Her hands stopped right at her earlopes, then the next second she begun rocking her head in accordance to the worlds ripple. A happy smile on her face.
But later on...
That illusion shattered on a rain-slick street.
___
April was walking back home, groceries clutched to her chest. The city's chorus surrounded her—the hiss of tires on wet asphalt, drunken voices spilling from a bar, the soft click of a bicycle chain.
Lately, for reasons she couldn't explain, April's appetite—once practically nonexistent —had grown nearly sevenfold over the past two weeks.
"My stomach's practically an abyss now," she muttered, pressing a hand against it.
"Luckily for me, Mom and he had plenty of money tucked away in savings."
Then—footsteps.
Quick and erratic. Closing in fast.
Her bag was jerked violently. April stumbled forward, instinctively pulling back. A hand tore at the strap.
"No—!"
Her world shifted. Everything sharpened.
April felt the strain of the attacker's grip, the taut pull of his muscles preparing for another yank. The air split—a fist whistling through the night.
April moved before thought.
She ducked. The blow tore past, missing by inches.
Her assailant grunted, confused.
But April could see him—his body drawn in strokes of resonance, his stance heavy, his breath ragged.
April moved again. A strange sensation maybe Instinct guided her elbow into his ribs.
The impact forced a sharp gasp from him.
Unsteady steps retreated. Then—the sound of him fleeing, his weight fading into the night.
April stood frozen, chest heaving.
That was no accident. That was not luck.
She had seen him. Through sound. Through vibration. Through something inhuman.
April pressed trembling fingers to her temple.
"What's wrong with me? What am i becoming? I-i need answers."
And there was only one place to find them.
"~Saint john hospital."
___
Hospitals were chaos by design. And saint john hospital was no different.
April slipped inside under the cover of busyness, her head tilted as though lost.
No one noticed her. No one suspected the blind girl who walked with too much confidence.
Her memory guided her, step by step, back to the place she feared.
Corridors twisted, but she traced her path by echo and recollection until she reached a door she remembered but had never entered.
She tilted her head.
A pattern of tiny mechanical movements revealed themselves—pins, tumblers, a map of the lock whispered into her mind.
April's fingers turned the knob.
Snick.
The door gave way.
Inside, paper rustled like brittle bones.
The smell of ink and sterilization lingered. She traced her fingers along folders, patient numbers, reports—until she found her own.
Her hands moved slowly, reading the raised grooves of printed ink.
[Subject: Emergency cranial procedure discovered during emergency surgery.]
[Discovery: Unidentified nano-tech lattice integrated into occipital lobe.]
[Classification: UNKNOWN ORIGIN. Authorize retention.]
April's breath hitched.
"They used me?!"
"They didn't save me because it's their job but instead they used this as an opportunity to plant an unknown nano-tech in my freaking skull!"
Something alien had been placed inside her skull. A technology without name, without origin.
And now… she was something else.
Not blind. Not deaf.
Something beyond.
A ghost in the dark.
A weapon waiting for a master.
But who?
Then suddenly-Footsteps.
Voices outside the door. Sharp, hurried. Security?
April's heart raced.
She stuffed the file back, turned, and slipped into the shadows.
The echoes guided her way.
She would not be caught.
Not yet.