CTS TIME: RE250.05.24
LOCAL SYSTEM CLOCK: 9:30 PM
FACILITY: DNA ORGANISATION — INTERNAL STRATA
The corridor lights softened as they walked.
Not dimmed adjusted as if the environment itself anticipated Dr. F's pace and recalibrated around it. Panels shifted tone beneath their feet. The distant hum of Mechatopia's machinery fell into a quieter register, less industrial, more… composed.
Sophia noticed everything.
She always had.
This place moves for him, she thought.
Not reacts—moves.
Dr. F slowed slightly so she could keep up. Her body still ached despite the medkit's intervention, every step a reminder of how close she had come to not walking at all.
"You should eat," he said evenly. "Not as a requirement. As recovery."
She nodded once.
Dinner.
The word felt unreal.
She had expected isolation. Processing. Another chamber.
Not this.
As they walked, he spoke again, casually almost disarmingly so.
"Guess my age."
Sophia blinked, caught off guard.
"…What?"
He glanced at her sideways, expression neutral.
"Guess."
Her brows knit together.
Is this a test? she wondered.
Or is he just… talking?
She studied him more carefully now—his posture too controlled to read, his face unmarked by age in any conventional way. No visible lines. No tension. No fatigue.
"Thirty-five," she guessed cautiously.
"No."
"Forty?"
He shook his head.
She frowned slightly, trying again. "Early forties?"
He stopped walking.
Turned to face her fully.
"Younger than you," he said.
The words landed harder than expected.
Sophia stared.
"You're saying you're under twenty-six?" she asked slowly.
"Yes."
That… broke something.
Her mind reeled.
"That's not—" She stopped herself, then tried again. "You don't look—"
"Guess," he repeated.
She hesitated, then said, "Twenty-four."
Dr. F smiled.
Not faintly.
Not tightly.
He laughed.
The sound startled her.
It was low, brief, genuine—gone almost as soon as it appeared.
"Calm down," he said, amused. "I stopped my biological aging at twenty-four."
Sophia's mouth opened slightly.
"I'm fifty-four," he continued evenly. "Chronologically."
Her breath caught.
"When I was actually twenty-four," he added, "you weren't even born."
Shock rippled through her—deeper than pain, sharper than fear.
This man… is not what he appears.
She nodded slowly, absorbing it.
"Okay," she said quietly. "That… explains a lot."
They resumed walking.
When they reached the dining hall, Sophia felt it again—that subtle wrongness she'd noticed earlier.
As Dr. F moved, the environment followed.
Tables adjusted height. Chairs aligned themselves. Ambient lighting shifted to match his position. Gravity itself felt… smoother. Less resistant.
It wasn't theatrical.
It was automatic.
The chamber. The corridors. Even now, she realized.
He doesn't command the space.
He is the reference point.
Curiosity burned in her chest.
She wanted to ask.
She didn't.
Not yet.
They sat.
The table formed seamlessly, surface warm beneath her palms. Plates appeared not conjured theatrically, but materialized with elegant precision. The food smelled rich, unfamiliar but inviting.
Sophia picked at it cautiously.
Her thoughts spiraled.
I thought I'd be dead by now.
Instead I'm having dinner with a man who bends reality and calls it routine.
She stole a glance at him.
I don't even know his full name.
She ate slowly, measuring each bite, mind racing.
What are you doing, Dr. F?
Why keep me alive? Why bring me here?
She lowered her gaze to her plate.
I know one thing, she thought.
I have to stay cautious.
Across from her, Dr. F set his utensils down.
"You're thinking," he said calmly, "that when you were captured, death was the expected outcome."
Sophia stiffened.
"That this organization," he continued, "should not feel like this after one day."
She looked up sharply.
"And that you don't know my name," he added, "but you know enough to be afraid."
Her heart skipped.
"You're wondering," he said, voice steady, "whether this is a longer manipulation or something worse."
She swallowed.
"I—"
"And you're telling yourself," he finished, "that you must remain alert, even while eating dinner with me."
Silence fell.
Sophia let out a slow breath.
"You read minds too?" she asked dryly.
"No," Dr. F replied. "I read patterns."
He met her gaze not invasive, not cold.
"You are cautious," he said. "That is good. DNA does not reward blind faith."
A pause.
"It rewards awareness."
Something about the way he said it with her, not at her sent a quiet tension through her chest.
She hesitated, then asked the question she had been holding back.
"What are you?" she asked softly.
Dr. F considered that.
Then he answered—not fully, but honestly enough.
"I am someone who stopped letting systems define what is possible."
Their eyes met again.
The moment stretched—charged, uncertain, intimate in a way neither named.
Sophia looked down at her plate, heart beating unevenly.
This is dangerous, she thought.
Not because he's powerful.
But because, slowly, impossibly
She was beginning to trust that he wasn't pretending to be human.
He simply remembered how to be one—
and had chosen, inexplicably, to let her see it.
Sophia ate slowly.
Not because the food was unfamiliar—though it was, layered with subtle flavors she couldn't name—but because her attention kept drifting away from her plate.
To him.
Dr. F ate with a precision that felt almost unreal.
Each movement was economical. Controlled. His posture never shifted unnecessarily. The angle of his wrist, the timing between bites, the way he set his utensils down exactly parallel to the edge of the plate—it all followed an internal rhythm so exact it bordered on ritual.
No hesitation.
No excess.
If precision had a physical form… she thought, watching him from the corner of her eye, it would look like this.
She chewed, swallowed, then paused again, pretending to examine her plate while her thoughts spiraled.
Is he always like this?
Or is this restraint?
The idea unsettled her.
She had trained for years to be disciplined. ISA had drilled structure into her until it felt like second nature. And yet—what she had learned was imitation.
What he embodied was essence.
He wasn't trying to be precise.
He simply was.
Sophia lifted her glass, hands still slightly unsteady despite the medical intervention. She noticed that even the way he drank—measured, minimal—followed the same pattern. No indulgence. No waste.
If he's this precise in something as small as eating… her mind continued, unbidden, what is he like when he decides to act?
The thought sent a quiet shiver through her.
She realized then that she wasn't afraid of his power.
She was afraid of his intentionality.
Because nothing about him was accidental—not his cruelty, not his restraint, not even this dinner.
She glanced up again, this time less discreet.
He noticed immediately.
He always did.
"You're studying me," Dr. F said calmly, without accusation.
Sophia stiffened slightly, then exhaled.
"I can't help it," she admitted. "You do everything… perfectly."
He paused, fork hovering briefly above the plate before setting it down.
"Perfectly?" he repeated.
She nodded faintly.
"The way you move," she said. "Eat. Sit. Even breathe. It's like you're calibrated to the world instead of reacting to it."
Dr. F considered her words while she spoke, not interrupting.
"Precision," he said finally, "is not perfection."
She frowned. "Then what is it?"
He looked at her directly now.
"It's control over variables," he replied. "So that emotion does not interfere with outcome."
Sophia's chest tightened.
"And does it work?" she asked quietly.
For the first time, he did not answer immediately.
His gaze drifted—not away from her, but inward.
"Most of the time," he said.
That hesitation told her more than the sentence itself.
She lowered her eyes to her plate again, heart beating unevenly.
Even he isn't immune, she realized.
He just hides it better.
She took another bite, slower now.
"ISA trained us to suppress emotion," she said after a moment. "But they never taught us what to do with it when it leaks out."
Dr. F resumed eating, movements still precise—but she noticed something new.
A fraction of softness.
"They taught obedience," he said. "Not understanding."
She looked up.
"And DNA?" she asked. "What does it teach?"
He met her gaze across the table.
"To confront what systems label as flaws," he said, "and decide whether to erase them… or weaponize them."
The words lingered between them.
Sophia felt her pulse quicken.
Is that what I am to him?
A flaw? A weapon?
Or something else entirely?
She didn't ask.
Instead, she watched him take another careful bite, his composure intact, his presence steady—and felt a strange, unfamiliar warmth bloom beneath her caution.
Not trust.
Not comfort.
But something dangerously close to connection.
And that realization unsettled her more than anything else he had done to her all day.