Elara stared at Kael.
And this time, her smile was gone.
"Let's wait for Draven to come before deciding on what to do next. This could be a bigger deal than we think."
"Oh, trust me, it definitely is going to be." The lady responded
At this point, Kael was just quietly standing there after getting off of the platform. 'I feel like some sort of scientific experiment guinea pig.'
They waited around for half a dozen minutes before the man himself arrived.
Draven strode in briskly, his coat trailing slightly behind him, boots echoing on the polished floor.
He looked from Elara to the array of floating holograms and narrowed his eyes. He took note of how tense everyone in the room was, except for Kael, who was very calmly standing by Elara's side now.
You'd think he is not the cause of the tension.
"What's going on?" Draven asked.
Elara glanced at him. "We ran body scans. You might want to see this on your own." She walked towards the screen.
Draven stepped up beside her, peering at the scan outputs. He frowned. "Is that a dream core, but he did not have dream energy the last time I scanned him?"
"That's just it," the lead tech replied. "He doesn't have one, not in the traditional sense. We've triple-checked. No Dream Core. No Circuits. That much we have concluded."
Draven's brows furrowed. "Then why does this show that the Dream Force is reacting with him? That shouldn't be possible without a dream core."
The young technician, clearly overwhelmed but fascinated, piped in. "It's not reacting with him, sir. It's reacting to him. And not like a host, like a predator meeting a bigger predator."
Draven stared at the scan. "That's not possible…"
"I said the same thing," the lead technician replied. "But the Dream Force is avoiding him. Or more accurately, it's being repelled, or maybe even consumed, by something inside him. It looks like instead of a dream core, he has something else entirely."
Elara crossed her arms, her voice lower now. "The scans show that something's occupying the space where his Dream Core should be. It's generating its own field. Not just inert, active. Whatever it is, it doesn't just cancel dream energy. It... overwrites it."
Draven's eyes flicked from the display to the tech. "Define overwrite."
The woman tapped the screen. "Dream resonance moves like a waveform. Harmonious, normally. But when it encounters Kael's core, the waveform collapses. No distortion. No conversion. It's not even converted to raw energy. It's gone. We're measuring total energy loss."
Silence.
"I don't completely understand," Draven said, " But this has been blown way out of proportion. This was supposed to be just another body scan and registration. And looks like this is way above my pay grade. What were you going to do next? We might need to consult the admin before we proceed."
"We decided to wait for you before running more tests, nothing major though. I want to analyse his core for longer and thoroughly to see more."
"Ungh, that should be fine then." Do proceed with caution.
"Yes, sir."
"And Kael, you alright?"
"Uhm, maybe a bit too late to be asking, but I'm doing just fine."
"That's good. You look rather calm, but I'll say it anyway: Hang in there. " Draven nodded to the lady, signalling her to start her procedure.
The tech lad approached Kael, looking more like a dog in heat if anything, she looked very excited.
"Now, now, little boy, why don't you come a bit closer?" She said, a light, but creepy smile on her face.
'I don't know why, but I suddenly started to feel very cold.' He thought. Kael gulped audibly and nodded his head as the lady led him to a machine in another room.
"Lie down like before, and relax."
This machine looked like an MRI scanner.
Unlike the crude, mechanical MRI machines of the past, this one felt eerily alive, its pulse syncopating with an energy Kael couldn't quite sense, but instinctively recognized.
The humming deepened as the cylinder hissed shut around Kael, isolating him in a narrow, claustrophobic tube lined with glowing rings.
He shifted slightly on the padded platform, eyes fixed on the soft teal glow lining the curved ceiling.
A faint vibration passed through the machine and into his bones, followed by a cooling sensation that started at his chest and radiated outward.
He wasn't sure if the cold was coming from the machine or from inside himself. 'It's comforting for some reason.'
Outside, the lab had gone quiet.
Elara stood rigid at one end of the chamber, flanked by two senior technicians and several junior ones manning various stations, assisting with the controls. All eyes were on the displays.
"Cycle three complete," the lead tech muttered, his fingers dancing across a transparent screen. "Initializing resonance mapping sequence now."
On the screen, Kael's body glowed with a soft blue outline. A ripple of red energy, representing Dream Force, was being forcefully projected toward his core.
As it made contact, the red fractured like glass and dissolved into nothingness.
"What the hell…" the older technician whispered.
Elara narrowed her eyes. "That shouldn't happen. Dream Force doesn't just… disappear."
A second pulse hit Kael's body. The same result. Total disintegration on contact.
Elara was already reaching for the comms when the lab door hissed open.
The room grew heavier with each second that passed. Even the humming of the machine seemed to take on a more ominous tone.
"Sir!" a junior tech called from a side console. "Field frequency has spiked again, core pulse just surged to 9.8!"
"That's above resonance limits for non-ascended!" the older tech barked. "That's not sustainable. He should be—"
"He's not even sweating," Elara cut in, glancing toward the chamber.
Draven's voice was calm, but it carried weight. "Get a full field signature. Run a full scan on that core inside him next. I want to know if this thing inside him is stable."
"Already running it," the lead technician replied. "But it's not behaving like any known core type. It doesn't use Dream circuits. It's… I don't even think it's alive in the conventional sense."
"Then what the hell is it?" Draven asked.
Elara stepped back from the console, her tone thoughtful, almost cautious. "It might be a new classification. A divergent evolution. Maybe something that adapted while he was in stasis."
"Or something put there while he was in stasis," Draven said grimly. They all knew what he was thinking. Maybe Kael was a walking bomb, or maybe there was another bad reason, some part of a larger plot, why he had been left so close to Raventhorne.
"Sir," the older woman said, voice shaky now, "if this energy is stable… if it can be replicated or awakened… this could change everything we understand about the Dream energy. This isn't just an anomaly. It's a paradigm shift."
One of the junior techs jumped in, eyes wide with excitement. "If he's not using dream energy, maybe it's a counter-force. Like anti-matter to matter. A new energy system entirely!"
"Or an old one," Elara added, her eyes distant. "Something buried. Lost. Forbidden."
Draven pinched the bridge of his nose, pacing for a moment. "We're getting ahead of ourselves. We don't know what it is. And more importantly… he doesn't know what it is."
Another pulse echoed through the room, this one deeper, almost like a heartbeat. The lights dimmed for half a second. A cold draft swept through the lab.
Everyone paused.
They had all felt it, that disconnect, for only a millisecond, the dream energy they had come to love so much had vanished, for a millisecond.
"What was that?" the young tech asked nervously.
The machine powered down slowly. The scanner's hum faded. Inside, Kael sat up, blinking under the harsh overhead lights, looking pale but otherwise unbothered.
Draven's voice returned to its commander's edge. "Shut it down. No more scans. Not until we understand what we're dealing with."
The technicians hesitated.
"That's an order," he barked.
Reluctantly, they powered everything down, screens fading into transparency.
Kael stepped out of the machine, pulling on the top of the plain grey uniform left for him. "So... did you manage to find anything?" He had heard bits and pieces of what they were saying, but nothing conclusive.
Draven studied him for a moment, then smiled faintly. "Let's call it... inconclusive."
Kael raised a brow. "That bad?"
"No," Elara said quickly, stepping forward. "Just... strange. Unprecedented, really. You're fine. We're just being cautious."
Kael didn't buy it, but he didn't push. Not yet.
"Can I go?"
Draven nodded. "Get something to eat. Rest. If we need anything else, we'll call for you."
Kael gave a short nod and walked out, throwing one last glance at the cold, quiet machine before the door slid shut behind him.
Once he was gone, the room fell into a tense silence again.
Draven turned to Elara. "No one else hears about this. Not yet. No reports outside this lab."
"You think someone would act on it?"
"I think everyone would act on it. Hard. Fast. And without asking permission."
Elara nodded grimly. "And Kael?"
Draven looked at the door for a long moment. "We keep him close. We observe. But we don't interfere. He doesn't even know what he has. Let's keep it that way, at least until we do. He could become either very useful to us, or very dangerous."
"I don't like the sound of that Draven, Elara replied.