The interview room was quiet.
The harsh, blinding halogen lights of the containment cells were gone. The room was lit by a dull, dim amber glow. There were no visible cameras, though the walls were undoubtedly lined with them.
He sat in the steel chair at the center of the room.
He didn't ask why.
He didn't ask where the rest of the squad was, or why the air smelled like stale coffee instead of ozone and blood. He just sat, his hands resting on his lap.
The heavy door unlocked.
A woman walked in.
She didn't wear a sealed, rubberized hazard suit. She didn't wear ballistic armor or a tinted visor. She wore a standard white laboratory coat.
She didn't stand with her back pressed against the door. She didn't keep a sixty-foot quarantine distance.
She pulled a metal chair out and sat directly across the narrow table from him.
"You can hear me, right?"
It was a simple question. Spoken like a human.
He didn't answer.
She didn't write anything down on her datapad. She didn't signal the guards outside to apply an electrical shock. She just looked at him.
"Do you remember dying?"
He didn't respond. His blank eyes stared straight ahead.
She didn't raise her voice. She didn't press the issue. She simply shifted the angle.
"Does it hurt?"
The silence in the room thickened. He remained perfectly still.
"You don't react like the others," she said quietly.
She leaned forward. She closed the distance between them, bringing her face inches from the catastrophic, stitched ruin exposed beneath his torn collar.
"You should be in shock."
He wasn't.
"I think—"
She spoke.
The rest came late.
Her voice lagged behind. The audio materialized in the quiet room a fraction of a second after her lips had completely stopped moving.
She didn't blink. She didn't flinch. She didn't realize the reality around her had just dropped a frame.
He saw it.
She tilted her head slightly, studying his face.
"Are you aware of what happens around you?"
He didn't speak.
He looked at her.
It was a microscopic shift. His neck didn't move, but his pupils tracked her. His dead, unblinking eyes met hers.
She picked up her stylus. She looked down at her digital pad.
She wrote his designation.
Then crossed it out.
Then wrote it again.
Slower.
Her hand stopped.
Mid-word.
The muscles in her forearm simply locked, entirely disconnected from her biological intent. The stylus hovered a millimeter above the glass screen. Then, the movement snapped back, the pen violently striking the pad.
She frowned slightly, rubbing her wrist, but she didn't stop.
She looked back up at him. Her voice dropped lower, carrying a heavy, dangerous weight.
"When you survive… do you notice anything change?"
He looked at her.
He didn't answer. The quiet hum of the room pressed down on them.
She stared into his pale face, waiting for a response that would never come.
She stopped.
Just for a second.
The life behind her eyes completely vanished. The gentle, rhythmic sway of her breathing froze entirely. A biological offline.
One second.
Two.
Then, she blinked.
She resumed breathing, completely unaware she had just ceased to exist for two seconds.
He watched her.
She closed the digital pad and stood up, pushing her metal chair back.
"We'll talk again."
She walked toward the heavy steel door.
She reached for the handle.
She looked back.
A fraction too late.
The physical motion of her head turning was completed, but the visual image dragged behind, tearing the air.
She opened the door and stepped out into the cold white light.
Nothing had changed.