The dream always started the same way.
Aryan stood in the hallway of his school, the pale blue walls flickering under failing fluorescent lights. Silence buzzed in his ears—unnatural, electric, like radio static. He'd come to call it the hum—the same eerie frequency he now always heard before things went wrong.
He turned toward the end of the corridor. A large glass window shimmered faintly, like it was under heat. But there was no heat. Just time thinning out.
He didn't know how he knew that. He just did.
The moment repeated: a cricket ball burst through the glass, shattering it like a slow-motion explosion. Shards flew. His classmate Priya stepped into the storm of broken glass, her white uniform soaking red—
And Aryan jolted awake.
Heart pounding. Sheets drenched. No surprise.
He was used to this.
Fifth time now. Same dream. Same outcome.
But this time, he would stop it.
Aryan sat on the edge of his bed, breathing heavily. The bedside digital clock blinked 5:47 AM in dull blue. Right below it, a tiny black device, the size of a SIM card, glowed briefly and dimmed. He didn't notice it—he'd never seen it before.
That chip had been under his skin until last week, and he still didn't know it.
He left for school early. Didn't eat. Didn't speak. All day, his thoughts raced—not just about the dream, but about the way his brain felt lately. Like it wasn't just seeing the future—but syncing with it. Like pieces of a program clicking into place.
A month ago, it started small. Dreams that predicted events hours before they happened.
But now… now they were more vivid. Hyper-detailed. His dreams began with the hum—and ended with disaster.
Was his brain… receiving something?
It was third period—science lab—when the dream timestamp approached. Aryan excused himself and moved to the hallway, steps matching the dream's rhythm like a preloaded simulation.
He waited.
At the far end, the glass window caught a strange shimmer in the light again—subtle, like a heat mirage. A glitch in reality?
No. That sounded crazy.
But he couldn't shake it.
He counted. 30 seconds.
The thwack of a bat hitting a ball came from the cricket field outside. The ball was airborne.
Aryan ran.
Ten seconds.
He dashed past Priya as she turned the corner, pulled out her headphones, and stared at him in shock. He didn't explain.
Four seconds.
He tackled her out of the path just as the cricket ball came crashing through the window.
Glass flew. Screams erupted.
But no blood.
This time, no one died.
As teachers and students gathered, Aryan sat on the floor, hand bleeding slightly from a cut. But his eyes were locked on the rolling cricket ball.
He'd changed it. He knew it. He felt it in his bones—like a system rebooting around him.
Priya asked him how he knew. He couldn't answer. Not fully.
But that night, when he finally collapsed into sleep…
…the dream was different.
It wasn't just a vision.
It was a data stream.
He stood by a highway. A bus overturned. Fire raging.
A voice echoed from nowhere, synthesized and alien:
"Subject 14 deviation detected. Neural interference exceeding threshold. Containment risk imminent."
He turned—and saw himself.
But not just himself. A version of him—wires in the spine, glowing veins pulsing blue.
And beside that other him… a man in a lab coat, mouth moving silently.
Aryan screamed.
And woke up.
To be continued in Chapter 2: "The Code in the Fire."