Anomaly

Chapter 17 -Before

The world hadn’t always hummed.

Elias used to wake to the smell of coffee drifting up from the kitchen, sunlight falling crooked through the blinds of his bedroom. His sneakers would be half-buried under discarded clothes, his homework spread uneven across the desk, a chaos he never minded.

Simple. Familiar. Safe.

He remembered mornings where his biggest fear was being late for class. Mara waiting outside, tapping her foot with exaggerated impatience, only to smile the moment he appeared. She’d shove his shoulder, tease him for dragging, then loop her arm through his as if that was the natural order of things.

Back then, the world felt solid. Puddles were just water, glass was just glass, the ground beneath his feet never shifted or betrayed him. He could laugh without the sound bending strange in his ears. He could cry without worrying the walls might shake with him.

He remembered sitting with Mara in the small café by the school, steam fogging the windows in winter, their hands brushing over the table in shy, clumsy touches. He remembered the way she’d tilt her head when she listened, as if every word mattered, even when he was only talking about homework or a game he’d played the night before.

He remembered dinners at home — his mother asking about his day, his father’s tired jokes, the television murmuring in the background. His sister throwing peas at him across the table. Normal, ordinary chaos.

The kind of chaos that didn’t tremble with unseen power.

Elias closed his eyes now, standing in the shadow of the city that no longer felt like his. For a heartbeat, he let the memory wash through him, sharp and sweet, a wound he pressed on anyway.

Because it was easier to remember when the world was simple.

When he was just a boy.

Not a variable. Not Omega.

Just Elias.

One memory clung sharper than the rest, so real he almost smelled it again.

A late summer afternoon, the air heavy with the hum of cicadas. He and Mara had skipped the bus home, deciding to walk instead, the long stretch of cracked pavement carrying them past the old park.

She had a melting ice cream in one hand, her other free to wave as she told a story he only half-heard. Something about her brother locking himself out of the house again. Elias remembered nodding, smiling, not because he cared about the story, but because he cared about her.

She caught him staring, mid-sentence. Rolled her eyes. “You’re not even listening.”

He laughed, raising his hands in surrender. “I am. Something about doors and your brother being—”

“Hopeless,” she finished for him, grinning despite herself. She shoved the ice cream into his hand and took his instead, her fingers sticky and cool against his skin. “There. Now you’ll pay attention.”

Elias remembered how his chest had tightened, not with fear, not with panic, but with something simpler, purer.

The memory ached now.

Because in that moment, the world had been solid. His skin hadn’t shimmered, the air hadn’t bent, the ground hadn’t whispered. Mara’s hand had been just that — warm and real, no more, no less.

He longed for that simplicity with a desperation that burned more fiercely than hunger.

If he could step back into that afternoon, he would have told her everything. He would have told her that she was the only thing that made him feel real, even before the world started breaking.

Instead, all he had was the memory, sharp enough to cut, fragile enough to vanish if he held on too tightly.

The hum stirred inside him again, faint but present, as though the memory itself was fuel. Elias pressed a hand to his chest, forcing it down.

Not here. Not now.

But the truth clung to him like her hand had that day: Mara was the last piece of his life that tethered him to who he had been.

And if the Directorate tore her away, there would be nothing left to hold him back.

The memory of Mara’s hand lingered, but others pressed in too, uninvited. Fragments of a life that already felt stolen.

His sister’s laughter, sharp and high-pitched, bouncing down the hallway when she chased him with a pillow. The smell of burnt toast in the mornings because his father always forgot the timer. His mother’s voice, humming tunelessly while folding laundry, filling the house with a comfort he never thought to name until it was gone.

He remembered homework spread across the kitchen table, half-finished, Mara leaning over his shoulder pretending to help but really doodling in the margins. He remembered the dog whining at the back door, nails scratching against the wood, impatient for someone to let him out.

The ordinariness of it all made his chest ache.

He wanted to go back to those moments — not the rooftop, not the alley, not the fractured glass and trembling streets. Just the quiet chaos of family, the safe rhythm of Mara’s voice, the way the world had once fit neatly around him instead of pressing in, begging to be bent.

For a heartbeat, Elias let himself believe he could. That if he closed his eyes tightly enough, breathed deeply enough, he could wake tomorrow and find it all waiting.

But when he opened his eyes, the city stared back — hard, gray, trembling faintly under the hum he couldn’t escape.

And the ache in his chest sharpened into something dangerous.

Because remembering what he’d lost didn’t soften him.

It made him want to burn down the world that had taken it away.

The memories tangled together until they felt almost real — the sound of his sister’s laugh, the smell of burnt toast, the weight of Mara’s hand. For a heartbeat, Elias swore he heard them around him, layered over the muffled noise of the city.

He clung to it. Let it wrap him. Let it trick him into believing.

The ache softened, almost bearable, almost enough.

But then the hum stirred again.

The brick wall behind him trembled, dust sifting down across his shoulders. The faint shimmer of light warped in the puddle at his feet. Reality cracked at the edges of the memory, sharp and insistent, tearing him back into the present.

He opened his eyes.

The alley was empty. The city pressed close, indifferent, alive. The smell wasn’t coffee or toast but damp stone and gasoline. The sound wasn’t laughter but tires hissing through wet streets.

The memories slipped away, leaving only their weight.

Elias lowered his head, fists clenched against his knees.

The world had been simple once. He had been simple once. But that boy was gone, scattered like the rooftop fall, never to be gathered again.

And what remained was something the Directorate could never cage.

The hum deepened, steady now, as if waiting for his command.

Elias exhaled slowly, eyes narrowing in the dark.

If he couldn’t go back to before, then he would make sure no one could ever drag him further away from what was left.