The pub smells of burnt oil, urinal pucks, and undercooked chicken. A dozen voices layer over each other, interrupted only by the dull thud of boots on old floorboards. Televisions hang from two corners. One's on football. The other is muted — tuned to Sky News, captions flickering like something gasping for signal.
Naila watches the foam in her pint collapse like lungs under pressure. She doesn’t blink for a while.
“You alright?” Dean asks, leaning in, chin still greasy from his double cheeseburger.
“Yeah.”
She’s not. Not since the dreams started. Not since she began hearing the hum just before waking — low, persistent, like someone whispering into her spine.
Jay shrugs. “It’s the algorithm. Probably scraping our brainwaves now. What’s one more leak?”
“No, it’s that Estonia thing.” Aadam, who no one remembers inviting, leans forward. “That’s real. My cousin’s in Narva. She says they’re closing clinics. Government’s pretending it’s tuberculosis but... people’ve got light coming out their mouths.”
Dean laughs, but Naila doesn’t. Not this time. She swears she saw something in her X-ray last week. Something geometric. Her GP called it "artefact contamination." Recommended switching clinics.
The pub crowd turns toward the Sky TV. Remote's missing, so it stays muted. The caption scroll reads:
BREAKING — UNVERIFIED FOOTAGE LEAKED FROM TALLINN HOSPITAL — UK GOVT REFUSES COMMENT
A figure shuffles under harsh fluorescents. The camera is handheld, shaky. Their bones cast shadows inside their body — angular, branching. The image judders. Pixelation surges. Text at the bottom is blurred, but a phrase slips through:
Jay snorts. “It’s deepfake theatre.” But no one responds. Because something in that moment... hums. The air vibrates. Or maybe it’s their own bones. Just for a second.
Naila touches her wrist. Her pulse is... syncopated. Like a language she forgot she spoke.
Later, she'll try to recall the exact moment it started. The shift. The scent. The thing in her marrow that was suddenly… awake.
TOP SECRET // ONYXBONE // EYES ONLY // NOFORN
VECTOR SKELETION OPERATING DOCTRINE – VERSION 3.1 (REDACTED)
SUMMARY:
Vector Skeletion is a fourth-generation neurosymbiotic operating environment embedded in calcium microstructures of the human skeletal system...
PHASES:
- Phase I: Subclinical Exposure
- Phase II: Cognitive Conditioning (pattern bias)
- Phase III: Skeletal Integration & Bioconductivity
- Phase IV: Transmission Protocol (bone-to-bone resonance)
KNOWN TRIGGERS:
> “The third hum is internal.”
> “Trigram. Bone. Mirror. Initiate.”
— Document recovered via whistleblower dump / unreleased NZSIS egress logs
— Document checksum verified by GCHQ breach monitor, date: 2029-02-28
FILE NAME: cctv_goldencondor_2029_04_03_2158_frame.jpg
SOURCE: Internal CCTV dump via Freedom of Info request (refused, then leaked)
TIME: 21:58 BST
VISIBLE INDIVIDUALS: 5 seated in booth, 1 blurred (left), 1 walking past camera
NOTES:
- Naila visible, slightly out of focus, left hand palm-down on table
- Distortion field around left shoulder (possible light refraction or lens issue)
- Sky News on screen, frozen frame before playback resumes
- Static artifacts across entire right edge of frame (unexplained)
April 3, 2029 – 01:43am
I’m writing this before it fades again.
The hum is stronger now. It's like when you hold your breath too long and your body starts blinking inside you. That’s what my hands feel like. The bones underneath are buzzing — not vibrating — buzzing. Like they’re waiting.
I remembered something that isn’t mine: a hallway with numbers that counted up and backward at the same time. I was inside someone else. But I was watching.
Dean said it’s anxiety. Jay said it's 5G.
But I think something’s being written inside me.
– N.
SKY NEWS LIVE TRANSCRIPT – APRIL 3, 2029 – 22:00 BST
SEGMENT TITLE: “ESTONIA LEAK: NEW IMAGES EMERGE”
PRESENTER (MALE, 40s):
“Tonight at ten, startling new footage from Tallinn Hospital shows what experts are calling ‘one of the most significant biological anomalies ever recorded.’ We warn viewers: this segment contains disturbing imagery.”
[FOOTAGE BEGINS – SILHOUETTE MOVING IN HOSPITAL CORRIDOR]
[OVERLAY CAPTION: ‘ALLEGED FOOTAGE – UNVERIFIED’]
PRESENTER:
“The patient, filmed by a hospital staff member now missing, displays significant internal skeletal deformation...”
[CLIP AUDIO INTERFERENCE – FRAGMENT RECORDED:]
> “Trigram. Bone. Mirror. Initiate.”
[FOOTAGE FLICKERS, BLACK SCREEN MOMENTARILY]
PRESENTER (visibly shaken):
“We’ll bring you more on this as it develops.”
ANALYSIS LOG: [EST/04/03/29/AK-332]
SAMPLE: Audio clip extracted from SKY broadcast – 00:16:02
SUBJECT PHRASE DETECTED:
"Trigram. Bone. Mirror. Initiate."
SIGNAL CHARACTERISTICS:
- Voiceprint: Synthesised multi-band, male base (estimated pitch 112Hz)
- Underlay tone: Subharmonic carrier @ 17Hz (inaudible)
- Spectral shift during phrase matches known activation pattern in B-OS (Bone OS)
COMMENTS:
> Possible embedded code-phrase. Matches tone pattern from Taiwan 2027 incident.
> Recommend spectral masking on all future airings.
— Analyst ID: 4K-D/EYES
— Notes: “I felt a vibration in my molars when scrubbing frame-by-frame. Might be psychosomatic. Might not.”