Anomaly

Chapter 5 - Collapse

By the time the rain began to thin, his body was past its limits.

His legs ached with every step, his shoulders slumped beneath the weight of his soaked backpack, and his eyes burned from forcing themselves open for too long. Each breath scraped his chest raw. Hunger clawed at him, sharp and insistent, but exhaustion dulled even that.

He turned down another side street, barely knowing where he was anymore. The city was a blur of wet pavement and closed shutters, every block the same as the last. Only when he saw a half-collapsed stairwell dipping beneath an old office building did he stop.

The door at the bottom of the stairs was locked, but the awning overhead kept the space dry enough. It wasn’t comfort, but it was cover.

He slid down against the cold concrete wall, knees drawn tight, water dripping from his hood. The hum of the city dulled here, distant enough that he could almost imagine he’d escaped it.

Almost.

He let his head fall back against the wall, too tired to fight the thoughts pressing in. His body felt heavier than it should, yet at the same time too fragile, as though the molecules holding him together were still deciding whether to cooperate. A shudder rolled through him, and he hugged himself tighter, afraid that if he loosened his grip, he might come apart again without meaning to.

Sleep came in fragments. His mind refused to surrender fully, twitching awake at each scrape of tires or distant horn. But slowly, steadily, exhaustion overcame fear. His eyelids sank, breath evening out as the city blurred into darkness.

For the first time since the rooftop, he was still.

Sleep wasn’t gentle.

It came in jagged waves, dragging him under only to hurl him back toward waking with a jolt. In half-dreams he was falling again, the wind tearing at him, the city yawning below. But this time, there was no pavement waiting. He scattered endlessly, his body dissolving into dust that the night carried away piece by piece. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t pull himself back together.

He woke gasping, clutching at his arms, his chest, needing to feel solid. His skin was damp, slick with sweat despite the cold concrete pressing against his back. For a moment he thought he saw his hand blur at the edges, the outline unsteady, like heat rising off asphalt.

He yanked it close, pressed it against his chest, held it there until the illusion faded.

“Hold it together,” he whispered to himself, the words rasping from a dry throat. “Just hold it together.”

The city outside was quieter now. The rain had thinned to a drizzle, the occasional hiss of tires breaking the silence. Somewhere, a neon sign buzzed faintly, blinking in uneven rhythm. It was almost peaceful — until he realized that peace was just emptiness. A pause before whatever came next.

His body trembled with exhaustion, but there was something else beneath it. A current. A hum that wasn’t entirely his heartbeat. It thrummed through his veins, tugged at his bones, like every part of him was vibrating to a rhythm the world had only just revealed.

He tried to push it away. But in his half-conscious haze, it slipped free.

The raindrops clinging to the stairwell railing shivered. Slowly, almost gracefully, they slid upward against gravity, beading together into a larger drop before collapsing back into the metal.

He stared, too tired to panic, too drained to do anything but let it happen. His eyes fluttered shut again.

This time the dreams were quieter. Less frantic. He drifted through them weightless, a thousand fragments bound by a single thread, pulled toward something he couldn’t name.

And for a while, that was enough.

For a while, he slept.

His breathing evened out at last, shallow but steady. Yet even in sleep, he couldn’t escape.

The dreams deepened.

He stood in a vast black void, weightless, without body or boundary. At first it was silence — then he felt it: vibrations, faint ripples shivering through the dark. He reached toward them, and the void bloomed into light. Points glittered everywhere, infinite motes suspended around him. They pulsed faintly, like stars, but he knew they weren’t stars.

Atoms.

He could feel them. Each one humming its own rhythm, vibrating in time with others, forming invisible bonds. It was overwhelming, terrifying — but beautiful.

When he lifted his hand, the motes answered. They drifted toward him, clustering, swirling like a constellation pulled into orbit. The motion filled him with a dizzying sense of control, of possibility. A thought was all it took, and the swarm reshaped itself, forming patterns, spirals, shapes that twisted and reformed at his command.

But the more he pulled, the louder the vibrations became, until they weren’t music anymore but noise. Deafening, crushing noise. The motes screamed against each other, their bonds breaking, the light fracturing. The swarm buckled and collapsed, scattering into chaos that tore at him from every direction.

He cried out, but no sound came.

Then he was falling again. Always falling.

His eyes snapped open, heart slamming in his chest.

The stairwell was dark. His body trembled, sweat chilling his skin despite the damp night air. For one disoriented moment he thought he was still falling, but the wall pressed solid against his back. He forced his hands flat against the concrete, grounding himself.

A faint glow shimmered on the steps in front of him. He blinked hard.

The puddles left by the rain were vibrating. Not rippling outward like normal water, but pulsing in unison, as though responding to his heartbeat. Tiny concentric waves rose and fell, delicate but steady, perfectly in rhythm with his racing pulse.

“No,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “Not now.”

As soon as he said it, the shimmer broke. The puddles stilled. Only silence remained.

His chest heaved. Every muscle felt spent, like he had run for miles inside his own mind.

He dragged his hood over his face and forced his body to stay still, to surrender. His mind screamed at him to move, to flee, to never close his eyes again. But his body betrayed him, sinking back into restless sleep.

And this time, he didn’t dream.

When morning came, it arrived not as light but as sound.

The city stirred above him — delivery trucks grinding over wet asphalt, a garbage bin slammed into place, muffled voices trading curses and greetings. Each noise cut through his half-sleep, dragging him reluctantly upward.

His eyes opened to a thin blade of daylight slicing through the stairwell c***k. The drizzle had stopped, but the air smelled of damp concrete and rust.

Every bone in his body ached. Not the pain of injury, but the heaviness of exhaustion, like he’d been running in his sleep. He shifted stiffly, his damp hoodie clinging to clammy skin, and pushed himself upright against the wall.

For a moment, he just sat there, listening to the city breathe. The night before felt distant, unreal — until his gaze fell on the puddles along the steps.

They were still. Ordinary.

But he remembered. The synchronized pulses, the impossible rhythm with his heartbeat. He pressed a shaking hand against his chest, as though feeling for proof that he was still bound together, still himself.

His stomach growled, sharp and hollow. Hunger had returned with full force, curling like a fist inside him. He dug through his backpack: the half-empty water bottle, a packet of gum, notebooks useless to him now. Nothing that could ease the gnawing void.

He leaned his head against the wall, teeth clenched. Normal problems. Normal needs. Stay human.

But the echo of the night’s dream — the scattering stars, the swarm of atoms — clung to him. It felt less like a dream and more like a memory, a truth revealed while he was too tired to resist.

He wasn’t sure if the thought comforted him or terrified him more.

A bus rumbled past overhead, shaking dust loose from the ceiling. He flinched, instinctively bracing for collapse, but the building held. Just another sound in a city full of them.

He wiped a hand down his face, smearing away sweat and rain-dried grit. He was still alive. Still unnoticed. For now.

But he knew the reprieve wouldn’t last.

The man on the rooftop hadn’t been bluffing. Someone wanted him. Someone had been waiting for him to break.

And now that he had, they wouldn’t stop until they had him again.

He pulled his hood lower, gripped the straps of his backpack with trembling hands, and forced himself to stand. His body protested, but his legs carried him up the stairs anyway.

One step. Then another.

Toward daylight. Toward the unknown.

Toward the hunt that had already begun.