THE WAKEPOINT
1117 Words
The night cracked open like a faulty streetlight. That buzzing hum you hear when the world feels wrong? Yeah — that was the air around him. William stepped out of the corner store with his usual calm that never quite matched the storms in his head. Neon dripped across the wet pavement in colors that didn’t belong to this city, like the sky was trying to whisper something under its breath.
He felt watched.
Not in the paranoid way. In the I-know-you’re-there way.
That’s when he first saw her.
Missy wasn’t dramatic about her entrance. No thunderclap, no slow-motion glamour shot. She was just… there. Leaning against the brick wall like the night fit her body perfectly. Dark jacket, hair tied back like she didn’t care about anything except what she chose to care about. Eyes sharp enough to slice open the silence.
“You’re late,” she said.
He blinked. “Late for what?”
“For the thing that’s about to ruin your week.”
Before he could fire back something smart, the street behind them warped. No metaphor — it bent. The air folded like paper around a shape stepping forward. A figure in grey. No face. No name. Just that presence that made William’s instinct flare like a blade unsheathed.
Missy grabbed his wrist. “Move.”
They ran, but the figure didn’t chase. It just watched, like it had already read this chapter and knew exactly where they’d go.
Around the corner, they ducked behind a dumpster that smelled like old decisions and expired apologies. William tried to catch his breath, but his heartbeat had other plans.
“Alright,” he muttered. “You wanna explain why a cosmic origami monster is stalking me?”
Missy didn’t smile. Not yet. But there was something in her expression — something like she already liked him, even if she wasn’t supposed to.
“It wasn’t stalking you,” she said. “It was testing you. And you passed.”
He frowned. “Passed what?”
“The Wakepoint Protocol,” she said. “And trust me, you don’t want to know the consequences of failing.”
Her voice dropped low. Not scared. Honest.
“That thing back there? It’s tied to the truth you’ve been circling for years. The one no one wanted to tell you. The one you already felt in your bones.”
William stared into her eyes, and for the first time, he realized Missy wasn’t running from the figure. She was running toward him.
“And what truth is that?” he asked.
She leaned closer. The distance between them felt charged, like a fuse right on the edge of ignition.
“That you weren’t chosen randomly. Someone selected you. A long time ago. And now… they want you back.”
The streetlight above them flickered, once, twice.
Then it blew out.
Darkness swallowed the alley.
The hallway shouldn’t have been that dark. Not in a building wired like a nervous system, every sensor twitching awake at the faintest heartbeat. Yet as he stepped forward, the lights fizzled out one by one, rippling toward him like a curtain dropping for the final act no one rehearsed.
Behind him, the door groaned shut. Not slammed. Not clicked. Groaned — like something old was finally getting its way.
His pulse quickened, but his breathing stayed level. He’d been here before. Not this place, not these flickering walls, but this feeling. That quiet tremor under his ribs. That knowing something was about to step into the light and call him by a name he never told it.
A sharp hiss erupted.
Then a silhouette broke loose from the pitch.
Missy.
Her hair was wild, soaked with sweat and something darker. Her chest rose and fell like she’d been running from something that had her scent memorized.
“You weren’t supposed to follow me,” she said, voice raw, trembling in a way that made the air feel charged. “Not here. Not tonight.”
He stepped toward her, but she lifted her hand and the whole hallway shivered, distortion rolling across the walls like heat waves.
“You don’t understand.” Her eyes locked onto his, hungry and terrified all at once. “They opened it.”
A siren murmured awake somewhere deep under their feet — too soft, too low, like it was purposely trying not to be heard. A warning meant only for the damned.
Then the floor trembled.
A scratch echoed through the vents. Slow. Curious. Intelligent.
Missy grabbed his shirt and pulled him against her, breath hot at his ear.
“It remembers you.”
The vents went silent.
Then something whispered his childhood name — the one he’d buried, the one no file ever recorded — in a voice that sounded like his own spoken backward.
And the lock behind them clicked open again.
Not by human hands.
By invitation.
The whisper didn’t just know his name.
It echoed it.
As if the thing in the vents wasn’t calling to him… but calling itself through him.
Missy’s grip tightened. For the first time since he’d met her — sharp-tongued, fearless, almost reckless in her confidence — she looked small. Like she’d finally run out of places to hide.
“Tell me,” he said, voice low. Controlled. But something under it cracked like ice under too much weight. “What’s in there?”
Missy swallowed. “Not what. Who.”
The lights at the far end of the hall flickered back on. One by one. Closer. Closer. Like footsteps wearing electricity as shoes.
“This place,” she whispered, “wasn’t built to keep something out. It was built to keep something from coming back.”
A cold pressure pressed against the vents again… but this time the whisper didn’t come from inside the walls.
It came from inside his head.
“We are incomplete without you.”
Missy stepped back, shaking. “That… thing… it isn’t a creature. It’s a fracture. A break in a person. A piece of consciousness that never belonged in one mind. They tried to split it when you were a kid — the tests, the gray headphones, the cognitive drills — all those ‘early aptitude’ checks?”
She met his eyes.
“They were trying to divide you into two.”
The hallway pulsed, like reality itself inhaled.
“You’re not remembering wrong,” she said. “The part they cut out — the part they thought they could isolate and cage—”
She hesitated, then said it:
“It’s you.”
The lights snapped off.
Only his voice remained… except it wasn’t his anymore.
“Let me in.”
- Writer
