Dr. Elara Voss first encountered the subject in a sterile lab, its air thick with the metallic tang of antiseptic. The man—Jordan, they called him—sat across from her, his dark eyes reflecting the flicker of a monitor. He didn’t speak,…
Dr. Elara Voss had never trusted the quiet. It was in the hush between the hum of her lab’s cooling system, the way the fluorescent lights pulsed like a dying heartbeat, that she first noticed the gap. A flicker in…
## The Algorithmic Bloom The rain tasted like iron. Not a metallic tang, exactly, but a memory of it – the damp chill clinging to unearthed shovels in my grandfather’s garden. I licked my lips, ignoring the grimace that tightened…