The Mercury hit his skin heavy, like a wet slug. His fingers twitched, trying to close, but the nurse held his wrist. The weight bypassed his skin and settled deep in the bone, a dull ache.
React, he begged his own body. Please. Just this once.
The nurse released a short, whistling sigh. She shook the vial to force the last drop out. Mercury pooled there, inert, numbing the nerves like ice.
She didn't even look up before reaching for the second. Sulfur.
The contrast made him flinch. Sulfur was nothing but dust. Gritty yellow powder settled into the cracks of his palm like sand in a shoe, dry and irritating against his skin. He waited for the heat, for the burn he read about.
He got an itch instead.
Silence dominated the room. By the fourth vial, his breath caught in his throat. The nurse stopped checking for reactions; she just poured. Antimony hit his skin, cold and sharp. Then Salt. The rhythm of the glass vials clinking against the tray sounded loud enough to crack his ribs.
The glare stung his eyes, forcing a squint. An aggressive, chemical whiteness drowned out all shadows and smelled of industrial bleach. The overhead lights hummed with a frequency that drilled behind his forehead, magnifying every pore on his skin, every fraying thread on his shirt.
The fifth vial tipped. Cinnabar. It fell thick, the exact shade of a fresh arterial wound.
He stepped off the platform before the sixth vial was done. His legs moved on their own, carrying him away from the nurse's pitying eyes, away from the remaining vials and the statement imposed on him.
Stephen Marlowe. Non-reactive. The word left a taste of stale copper in his mouth, like he'd been sucking on a penny.
"Excuse me, are you done cleaning the room?"
A female voice yanked him back. Six months since the test, yet the memory still ambushed him. Stephen blinked. His knuckles ached from gripping the mop handle hard enough to leave grooves in his palm.
He looked up from the translucent floor. The intern with the gray coat stood there.
She looked tired, the deep exhaustion kind that bruises the skin under the eyes. Her lab coat had a yellow stain on the pocket, probably sulfur. She gripped her bag like someone was about to snatch it, her knuckles pale and jagged against the strap.
It wasn't the first time he'd seen her in the lab. She worked the evening shift three times a week, always in the east wing, always alone. Stephen had memorized her schedule without meaning to. He'd learned to time his cleaning rounds so their paths would cross, even if just for a few seconds. Even if she never noticed.
"Sorry." He pulled the mop back, the grey water sloshing over the rim of the bucket. Great. Now his shoes were wet. "Just... zoning out. Five minutes." He didn't smile. His face felt too stiff for that.
She nodded. Her fingers adjusted the strap of her bag.
Stephen swallowed the growing lump in his throat and turned back to the floor. The mop moved in slow arcs, but his mind kept drifting, replaying the weight of the mercury and the stain of the cinnabar. He pushed the memories away with each stroke, as if he could scrub them out of existence.
As if that were possible.
When he finished, he blinked and looked around the room. Narrow. Overlit. Steel counters and sealed cabinets with red plaques filled the space. The air carried a metallic, almost salty scent. Burn marks on the floor mocked his attempt to erase them.
He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and walked to the door, where she was still waiting.
"I'm done. Sorry for the delay."
"No worries."
He placed the mop in the left compartment of the bucket and picked it up. She stepped aside. Stephen walked past her, holding his breath. Her perfume was subtle, almost clinical, but underneath it was something warm.
"Do you smell something strange?" she asked suddenly.
Stephen stopped. Turned. Met that sharp gaze for two full seconds before looking away.
He inhaled, hunting for something unusual in the air.
"I don't think so. What do you smell?"
"I'm not sure. Kind of reminds me of Mercury, like old coins, but it's faint."
Stephen frowned.
"Well, I'll leave you to it."
She smiled politely, but her eyes swept the hallway again, searching for the source. Her fingers tightened around the strap of her bag.
Stephen couldn't return the smile.
The lab was quieter than he had imagined back when he first learned what the Affinity Test was. This was a minor district, underfunded, staffed only with low-level Resonants who had little battle experience.
Some people moved about in lab coats, faces distant. Footsteps echoed off the glass floors like dry snaps, interrupted only by the high-pitched hum of automated vents. The walls, doors, and window frames blended into a single, suffocating shade of pale. A cold mist clung to the corners, proving warmth had abandoned this place long ago.
He was starting to hate this building.
Stephen headed to the next room, still on the third floor. The Resonants on this level were away on an expedition in the Central District. He entered the room and shut the door. The walls shimmered under the fluorescent lights with a sickly softness, implying the environment itself was breathing.
He finished the job in a little over thirty minutes.
When he opened the door again, the heat hit him first. A sudden spike that smelled of burning iron. Stephen ran.
His shoes skidded when he remembered the intern. He paused to check if she was still working nearby.
She wasn't.
Three seconds later, a klaxon shrieked.
The smell had intensified. More sulfurous now.
Stephen tripped on the stairs. Grabbing the handrail, he reached the second floor. People rushed past him faster than he could process. He scanned the hallway.
KLAX-ON.
She wasn't there. He kept descending.
The smell thickened to a viscous state as the air warmed before he even reached the ground floor. His breath stalled. Swallowing didn't help. His body searched for the intern one last time, vision blurring into fragments of panic. The blend of the alarm, stomping footsteps, and overlapping voices suffocated him.
KLAX-ON.
Stephen looked toward the emergency exit, halfway between him and the main one. People were shoving, tripping over each other. A few silhouettes remained on the second floor, probably more experienced Resonants. They seemed to be discussing a solution.
The alarm cut through everything again.
Stephen rubbed his hands over his face and picked up the pace toward the emergency door. He overheard part of a conversation.
"...call the RCD. There could be transmutations," a woman in the line was saying.
Stephen froze ten steps from the door.
Transmutations meant monsters and residues.
But—
The alarm blared again.
His legs stopped moving. The crowd pushed past him, shoulders colliding with his, voices screaming words that never reached. Stephen stood there, heart racing, eyes fixed on the hallway behind him. Heat closed in. The smell turned oppressive.
He could survive. He could go back to mopping floors and timing his shifts to catch glimpses of a girl who would never look at him twice.
Still.
Fifty years of data, he thought.
KLAX-ON.
His feet carried him backward before he could process.
Grey water spilled across the floor. Then the red light hit. The scientist close to him simply unspooled into dust.