novelraw Chapter 392: You Can Feel It?
Chapter 392: You Can Feel It?
Sera’s creature watched what passed through her then—flashes all she could see was teeth, hands, white rooms. They weren’t these rooms, but older ones. She could hear the sound of drills, the weight of chains.
Her creature seemed to be cataloguing every memory and it did not flinch at what it found.
"What scares me is other people holding leashes," she admitted finally. "Thinking they can tug until I choke and I’ll just... obey."
Kearns had gone very still.
Mercer didn’t apologize. "Leashes work on dogs," he returned. "On wolves, they’re a mistake. I’m trying to determine which you are."
The creature inside of Sera bristled, amused and faintly offended all at once. We are neither. We eat both.
Sera’s lips curved. "You’re going to need better questions."
"Then we move to better tools," Mercer concluded.
He tapped something out of view.
On the ceiling, a panel Sera hadn’t noticed before irised open. A slender arm descended, different from the restraints—finer, flexible, ending in a cluster of tiny nodes that glowed faint blue.
Kearns’s face tightened. "Director, that’s cognitive mapping gear. We usually reserve it for—"
"I know what we reserve it for," Mercer cut across her gently. "You want to understand what she is. So do I. Begin mapping."
The arm drifted lower, angling toward Sera’s forehead.
Her creature leaned forward, curious. Now this is new.
The nodes brightened as they neared her skin, the air around them buzzing with a frequency that tickled her teeth.
Kearns swallowed, stepping closer, tablet at the ready, as the mapping device hovered a breath away from Sera’s brow.
The device hovered a breath from Sera’s skin.
Close enough that the fine hairs at her hairline and arms rose. Close enough that the faint static prickle crawled along her forehead like something testing the temperature before stepping into a pool.
The nodes pulsed, soft blue shifting toward a low violet at the edges.
The creature purred inside her. Pretty colors. Let’s see if they sting.
Dr. Kearns braced her tablet against her ribs, thumb hovering over a control she clearly wasn’t supposed to touch unless something went wrong. Her shoulders were locked so tight her elbows trembled.
The two soldiers on guard adjusted backward a step—not a retreat, just a recalibration of distance. They lifted their rifles a fraction higher, not pointed at her, but poised. Ready to respond. Ready to fail.
Mercer watched from above.
Still hands. Still posture. Still certainty. He didn’t need to lean close to the glass or crane his neck. He saw everything from where he stood.
"Begin mapping," he instructed.
The device obeyed him, not her.
The nodes brightened.
A sound followed—thin, high, almost clean enough to be pleasant. Not a hospital beep. Not the hum of containment shields. Something finer, like glass vibrating.
Sera’s creature sniffed. It tastes old. Not your kind of old. Their old. Human old. Built from fear pretending it’s science.
The nodes descended the final millimeter.
And touched her skin.
Not a strike. Not pain.
A bloom.
A pressure that spread outward across her forehead like roots searching through soil. It crawled over her temples, across her scalp, down toward her ears in feather-light filaments. It wasn’t inside her mind—not yet—but it wanted to be.
It pressed gently, seeking paths that Sera didn’t want it to take.
Kearns monitored the tablet with rigid focus. "Initial contact confirmed. Neural echo stabilizing. Mapping baseline... normal." A pause. "Well—normal for her."
The soldiers held still.
Sera tilted her head slightly, feeling the currents moving under her skull.
"It tickles," she commented.
Kearns didn’t look away from the screen. "It isn’t meant to."
Mercer didn’t correct her. "Proceed."
The mapping arm shifted, nodes sliding in small arcs. The field deepened. She felt something reach—not a physical probe, not heat, but something like cold fingertips brushing the underside of thought.
Her creature’s tone sharpened. Careful. They are looking for doors into our mind. We do not open doors for strangers.
Sera’s lips curved. "If you break something in there," she warned lightly, "I’ll expect you to fix it."
Kearns flinched. "The mapping is non-invasive."
Both Sera and her creature snorted at that statement. Everything is invasive if you do it wrong.
The nodes pulsed again.
This time the pressure pushed deeper, like a small ripple passing through the surface of her thoughts. A fast dip into memory—not pulling anything out, just tapping to see what would move.
Sera inhaled once, quietly.
And the device stuttered.
Kearns blinked. "That’s... unusual."
Mercer’s voice dropped an octave. "Define unusual."
"The mapping field lost cohesion for two frames." She checked the feed twice, then again. "It’s reading interference."
Sera lifted a brow. "From me?"
"No," Kearns breathed. Then corrected herself with a swallow. "Yes. Maybe. I don’t know."
The creature laughed in a deep, smug rumble. Of course she doesn’t know. Their tools were built for minds with walls. You are more like a river.
The arm steadied, adjusting power. Mercer didn’t tell Kearns to stop.
Of course he didn’t.
He wanted to know what kind of river.
"Resume," he ordered.
The device pressed deeper.
This time, it searched.
She felt it sift through the top layer first—present sensations, the room, the restraints, the cold metal under her heels, the smell of antiseptic and human nerves. Then it probed lower, toward memory threads.
It touched—
—Luci’s fur brushing her cheek
—blood in snow
—Lachlan’s laugh muffled by a mask
—the ice beneath a horde’s feet
—the hum of a data pad in Elias’s hand
—a wolf pup curled against her ribs
—hands in the dark holding her down
—the crack of bone against metal
—the taste of iron behind her teeth
Every time it touched, the creature nudged back.
Not enough to break the device, just enough to say ’no’.
The mapping arm flickered.
Kearns nearly dropped her tablet. "Director—her neural resistance is measurable."
Mercer’s posture sharpened by a hair. "Specify."
"She’s pushing back." Kearns’s voice was a thin wire. "The system can’t get a clean read. It’s detecting feedback in the mapping field."
"Is she disrupting the signal consciously?" Mercer asked.
"No," Kearns breathed. "That’s the problem."
Sera smiled faintly. "My creature doesn’t like strangers touching the furniture."
Kearns stared at her. "You—you can feel it working?"
"Yes."