HIDDEN FREQUENCIES

THE FIRST PULSE

ARIANA POV

The call came just after noon.

Ethan stepped out of his office with his phone still in his hand, his expression unreadable.

Focused.

Sharp.

Dangerous.

A few seconds later, his eyes found mine.

“You’re coming with me TO THE LAB .”

I didn’t ask why.

Somewhere deep inside, I already knew.

The lab.

The chair.

The thing I had spent years trying to bury.

I stood, picked up my tablet, and followed him toward the elevator.

Neither of us spoke on the way down.

The elevator numbers dropped slowly, each floor taking us farther from polished offices and closer to the part of Novaris that felt less like a company and more like a locked secret.

By the time the doors opened, the air had changed.

Colder.

Sharper.

Sterile.

The research floor was already alive with movement. Scientists crossed the hallway with tablets in their hands. Security guards stood near the inner lab doors. Red clearance lights blinked above reinforced glass walls.

Something was happening.

Something serious.

Ethan’s badge opened the first security door.

Then the second.

Then the third.

I followed him inside.

The main lab stretched wide and bright beneath white overhead lights.

At the center of it, sealed inside a circular reinforced chamber, stood the chair.

Not the original.

Not mine.

Not exactly.

But close enough to make my pulse stop.

The black-silver frame curved like a throne built by someone who didn’t believe in comfort. A neural helmet hung above the seat, its metal arcs folded open like a crown waiting for a head.

The spinal conduit glowed faintly behind the backrest.

The arm rails were locked.

And across the front, wrapped like a belt around the lower torso area, sat the core.

A round sphere.

Perfectly centered.

Blue light moved inside it like trapped lightning.

The frontal resonance core.

For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.

They had built it wrong.

Not completely.

But enough.

The core was too exposed. The belt frame was too rigid. The helmet alignment was off by a few degrees.

And most importantly, there was no human brain attached to it.

Instead, beside the chair, connected through dozens of silver cables, sat an artificial neural model.

A temporary substitute.

A synthetic brain pattern generator.

Cold.

Controlled.

Lifeless.

My stomach tightened.

That was the problem.

They had built something that could imitate brainwaves.

But imitation was not synchronization.

The chair didn’t want a signal.

It wanted a match.

Near the main console stood Lucian Vale.

Young.

Handsome.

Intense.

Too calm for a man standing beside something that could destroy the room if it rejected his theory.

He looked like someone who had spent years chasing a ghost and had finally caught its shadow.

The researchers around him looked tense but hopeful.

That hope scared me more than fear would have.

Hope made people careless.

The screens displayed layered waveforms.

Blue.

White.

Violet.

The artificial neural model pulsed in rhythm with the chair’s core.

Lucian had found something.

A beginning.

Not the truth.

Not the real connection.

But enough to make the chair listen.

That was dangerous.

Ethan moved closer to the glass.

I stayed behind him, my eyes fixed on the core.

The test began.

At first, nothing happened.

The artificial neural model released a low-frequency pattern. The signal moved through the cables and entered the frontal core.

The sphere glowed brighter.

Softly.

Slowly.

Like something waking from sleep.

The researchers leaned closer to their screens.

Every monitor began recording data at once.

The core accepted the first wave.

Then the second.

Then the third.

For one brief second, the lab became silent with awe.

The chair had responded.

A blue pulse spread from the core through the belt frame. It climbed into the spinal conduit, then into the helmet above the seat.

The sensors lit one by one.

Beautiful.

Terrifying.

Wrong.

My fingers tightened around my tablet.

The artificial neural model was holding for now.

But it wasn’t alive.

It couldn’t adjust.

It couldn’t resist.

It couldn’t feel the pressure building inside the chair.

The first warning appeared as a thin red line on the central screen.

No one reacted.

They were too busy staring at the response data.

The second warning came through the floor.

A vibration.

Soft at first.

Then deeper.

The glass chamber hummed.

The core pulsed again.

This time, the light was brighter.

Sharper.

Not blue anymore.

Blue-white.

My blood went cold.

That color didn’t mean success.

It meant rejection.

The artificial brain pattern was being accepted by the core, but it wasn’t being matched.

The chair was searching beyond it.

Looking for a living frequency.

Looking for something real.

The third pulse hit the lab like a silent wave.

Every screen flickered.

A researcher stumbled back.

One of the overhead lights shattered.

The sound cracked through the room.

Then the alarms started.

Red light flooded the lab.

Scientists rushed to shut down the system. Hands flew across consoles. Commands appeared and failed. Emergency protocols opened and collapsed almost instantly.

The chair ignored all of it.

The core kept glowing.

The artificial neural model began to overheat.

Smoke curled from one of the cables.

My ears rang.

This was no longer a test.

It was the beginning of a release.

During Evan Salvatore’s accident, the chair had a human brain to pull against. A living mind. A biological receiver.

It failed because Evan’s brain could not hold the match.

But this was worse in a different way.

There was no real brain now.

No living receiver.

No one to contain the response.

So the chair was pushing the waves outward.

Into the chamber.

Into the lab.

Into everything.

The glass walls vibrated harder.

A researcher screamed as sparks burst from the console.

Another fell to the floor, clutching his ears.

The air itself changed.

Heavy.

Electric.

Wrong.

Invisible pressure pressed against my chest, like the room was filling with a storm no one could see.

My skin prickled.

The chair was radiating.

Not light.

Not heat.

Something deeper.

A neural wave.

A frequency release.

Deadly if it broke containment.

Ethan shouted something.

I barely heard him.

Lucian was at the main console, trying to reverse the pulse manually, but the system rejected every command. The core had locked into response mode.

That meant the controls were useless.

Power cuts were useless.

Shutdown commands were useless.

Once awakened, the chair didn’t obey electricity.

It obeyed resonance.

And the resonance was wrong.

The chamber pressure climbed.

The reinforced glass began to c***k.

A thin line appeared near the top.

Then another.

The lab went still for one impossible second.

Everyone understood at the same time.

If the glass failed, the wave would release.

It wouldn’t just damage the lab.

It would blow through the entire research floor.

It would tear apart every system connected to the core.

It would hit every living brain close enough to receive the pulse.

People would die.

Again.

My body moved before fear could stop me.

I ran toward the chamber access panel.

Ethan caught my arm.

Not hard.

Only enough to stop me from walking into death.

I pulled free.

For once, I didn’t look at him.

I couldn’t.

If I looked at him, I might hesitate.

And hesitation was how people died.

The radiation warning screamed across the main screen.

CORE WAVE RELEASE IMMINENT.

The air burned against my skin as I reached the access panel.

The outer lock refused entry.

Of course it did.

The emergency system had sealed the chamber.

I entered the override.

My fingers moved faster than thought.

Old codes.

Old patterns.

Old instincts I had no right to remember.

The lock blinked red.

Denied.

I tried again.

Denied.

The core pulsed harder.

The c***k in the glass spread downward.

Behind me, someone yelled for everyone to move back.

I ignored them.

There wasn’t time.

The chair was not overloading randomly.

It was cycling.

Pulse.

Search.

Reject.

Release.

Pulse.

Search.

Reject.

Release.

If I could break the cycle before the final release, the wave would collapse inward instead of exploding outward.

But the system wouldn’t stop from outside.

It needed a counter-frequency.

Not a full match.

Not enough to connect.

Just enough to confuse the resonance and force the core to fold back into itself.

A temporary interruption.

A dangerous one.

I opened the side panel beneath the chamber controls.

Inside, three manual regulators glowed violet.

They were not supposed to be touched during activation.

Touching them during activation could burn the nervous system through feedback.

I knew that.

I also knew there was no other way.

The glass screamed.

A long, sharp sound.

The first panel cracked fully from top to bottom.

The wave pressed harder against the room.

My vision blurred.

The pressure in my skull became unbearable.

I tasted metal.

The researchers were moving back now.

Some were running.

Lucian stood frozen near the console, staring at me like he had finally realized the theory he loved had teeth.

Ethan was moving toward me again.

I didn’t wait.

I placed my hand against the manual regulator.

Pain shot through my arm.

White.

Hot.

Immediate.

I nearly fell.

But I held on.

The core responded.

The pulse shifted.

Not enough.

I gritted my teeth and turned the first regulator.

The blue-white glow flickered.

The second regulator burned worse.

My fingers trembled as I adjusted it.

The wave stuttered.

The alarms distorted.

The chair fought back.

Not consciously.

Not alive.

But searching.

Always searching.

The core wanted a frequency.

And for one terrifying second, it brushed against mine.

My breath stopped.

The lab disappeared.

Sound vanished.

All I could feel was the pulse.

The chair’s frequency moved through me like cold fire.

Familiar.

Too familiar.

A perfect circle trying to close.

No.

I forced my hand to the third regulator.

My vision blurred at the edges.

The core brightened again.

Final release was seconds away.

I turned the regulator hard.

Then reversed the wave.

The effect was instant.

The blue-white light snapped inward.

The core shook.

The belt frame sparked.

The helmet sensors burst one by one, tiny flashes of white light raining behind the glass.

The artificial neural model cracked down the center.

Every monitor in the lab went black.

Then silence.

Complete.

Violent.

Silence.

The core dimmed.

Once.

Twice.

Then the light died.

The pressure vanished from the room so suddenly that several people stumbled.

I stepped back from the panel.

My hand burned.

My legs weakened.

For a second, I thought I would fall.

Then Ethan was there.

He caught me before I hit the floor.

His hands were firm around my shoulders.

Careful.

Not controlling.

Careful.

The difference almost broke me.

I pulled in a breath.

Then another.

The lab slowly returned around me.

Alarms faded.

Emergency lights flashed.

Smoke drifted from the artificial neural model.

The chair sat still behind cracked glass, dark and silent.

Safe.

For now.

No one spoke.

Every researcher in the room stared at me.

Lucian Vale stared too.

But his expression was different.

Not shocked.

Not only shocked.

Recognition had begun to form there.

Not of my face.

Of my knowledge.

Of the way I had moved.

Of the fact that I had not guessed.

Ethan’s voice was close to my ear.

Low.

Unsteady.

“You stopped it.”

I looked at the chair.

At the dark core.

At the cracked glass.

At the almost-disaster everyone would call a malfunction because that sounded safer than the truth.

My burned hand curled slowly against my side.

“I guessed.”

The lie sounded weak even to me.

Lucian stepped closer.

His eyes moved from the regulators to me.

No smile now.

No confidence.

Only something sharper.

“You didn’t guess.”

The room went colder than before.

Ethan looked at me.

Lucian looked at me.

Everyone looked at me.

My throat tightened.

I had done too much.

Shown too much.

Remembered too much.

But no one had died.

That had to matter more.

It had to.

I straightened, ignoring the pain in my hand.

“That test should never be repeated.”

No one argued.

Not even Lucian.

Ethan’s jaw tightened as he looked at the ruined artificial neural model.

Then at the chair.

Then at me.

For the first time since I had returned to his life, he didn’t look like he wanted an answer.

He looked like he was afraid of one.

And maybe he should have been.

Because the chair had nearly destroyed an entire lab.

But the more terrifying truth was this:

For one second, before I stopped it, the core had recognized me.