Light. That was the first thing he felt.
His eyes cracked open to the steady beeping of a monitor. His vision was overwhelmed, forcing him to lift a hand against the harsh glare that filled the room. He blinked once. Then again. He kept blinking, each motion bringing only a marginal improvement as his eyes fought to adjust. The light was familiar, yet strangely foreign, as if he had seen it before but never like this.
He lay there, unmoving, letting the weight of awareness settle in. It felt like hours before he finally pushed himself upright. The bed beneath him creaked, the material coarse, old. It bent beneath his weight in a way that felt cheap, fragile. He pressed a hand against the sheets. They were stiff and unused.
Slowly, he took in his surroundings.
Rows of identical beds stretched along the walls, abandoned and covered in dust. The linens were rumpled, as if they had been disturbed but never properly set again. The air was thick with the scent of neglect. A shattered window let in thin slivers of daylight. Through the cracks, he could see outside—the first floor.
His body moved before his thoughts could catch up. His feet touched the cold ground, sending a dull ache up his legs. As he pushed himself to stand, a sharp pain lanced through his skull, forcing his hand to his temple. He winced, waiting for the sensation to fade. It did—slowly. Not as quickly as he would have liked.
He exhaled and steadied himself.
The room led to a hallway. He reached the doorframe, fingers gripping it for balance as he looked out.
Empty.
It was long, stretching further than he had expected. It was dim. The walls were stained, and the light fixtures overhead flickered in sporadic bursts. At the far end, a set of doors stood slightly ajar. The exit. His feet carried him forward almost instinctively, mindlessly walking towards what he assumed to be an escape from the place in which he woke up.
He pressed a hand against the wall to steady himself, only to find nothing. His balance wavered, and he stumbled through an open space, landing in another room.
He straightened, taking in his new surroundings.
Clothing racks. Lockers. A station for dressing patients. He paused. A hospital? Maybe. The thought had been lurking at the edges of his mind, but now he wasn't sure.
A glance downward confirmed he was still in a hospital gown. He frowned. Walking outside in this would draw attention—if there was anyone to notice. He moved toward the racks, running his fingers along the hanging garments.
Then he stopped.
His hand had landed on something that inexplicably felt… right. A black suit.
He pulled it from the rack and changed quickly, smoothing the fabric as he adjusted the fit. It was familiar in a way nothing else had been. Like something he had worn before. Something that belonged to him.
He needed a mirror.
After searching the room, he found one—large, old, its edges dulled with time. He stepped closer, the sound of his breathing the only thing filling the silence.
His gaze lifted.
The clothing rack behind him clattered to the ground.
His breath caught.
Where his face should have been, there was something else. He had eyes, a nose, ears—he could feel them. But his reflection showed something different. Something incomplete. Not nothing. But an endless abyss that swallowed him whole as he gazed into its depths—a void that defied both presence and absence, betraying what should and shouldn't have been.
He stared, unblinking.
Why couldn’t he see himself?
Suddenly, a realization took hold. Until now, he had been moving without thinking. His body had followed some instinct, some script that had been playing in his mind before he even woke up. But now—
Now he had to ask himself the one thing that should have been obvious.
Who was he?
The question rang through his mind, sinking deeper the longer he stood there.
Who was he?
Nothing surfaced. No name. No past. Just this moment. This hospital. This place where he had woken up.
His hands reached up, pressing against his face. His skin was real. His flesh was real. He could feel the structure beneath his fingertips. But his identity—his very existence—felt like it had been carved out of reality itself.
His breath slowed.
Think.
There had to be an explanation.
He forced himself to analyze. His body was intact. He wasn’t displaced. He wasn’t erased. Not completely.
An anomaly.
Yes. That made sense.
But not just any anomaly. His existence had been altered. Not erased from reality, but stripped from it in a way that left something behind. He had been removed—systematically, surgically—yet something had gone wrong. Instead of vanishing, instead of being lost entirely, he had been left in between. A contradiction.
And yet, he knew things. He still had knowledge. He understood concepts—things that most people wouldn’t. The existence of gods. Magic. Hidden cities. The kind of information that was buried beneath layers of secrecy, known only to those who walked in places beyond the ordinary.
That, at least, was a clue.
A fragment of something that was once whole.
Maybe there was a way back. If he had been severed from his past, maybe there was a way to restore it. Maybe—
His mind seized.
A spark. A flicker of something, brief and almost too faint to grasp.
A word.
One word.
Administrator.
He didn’t know what to call himself.
That was the thought that lingered as the man at the train station motioned for his ticket, which he quickly handed over. Now, he sat among a crowded train full of people, none of whom seemed to notice him. Not that he wasn’t there—just that he wasn’t worth noticing.
When he had first walked out of that damned hospital, he expected a reaction. Shock, fear, curiosity. But he received none. The void—or whatever it was—occupying the space where his face should be went entirely ignored. People walked past him as if his existence barely registered in their minds. Even when he stood in the center of a crowd, they unconsciously stepped around him, as if their thoughts instinctively erased him from reality.
A man-shaped hole in the world.
It was how he had so easily pickpocketed a man for his train ticket. Even when he deliberately bumped into him, the man barely acknowledged what had happened, muttering a quick apology before continuing on, unaware that he had lost anything.
The train was loud. A constant low buzz of voices filled the space—dozens of conversations overlapping into an incomprehensible murmur. No single voice could be picked out from the rest. He found it strange. Not because he wasn’t used to it, but because he knew this was how it was supposed to be, despite the fact that, as far as his fractured memory told him, he had never been on a train before.
Not to his memory, at least. Though, given the circumstances, that wasn’t saying much.
He leaned against the wall, absentmindedly drumming his fingers against the smooth white surface as his thoughts wandered.
Administrator.
The word surfaced again, tugging at the edges of his mind. What was it? It felt important. Familiar. And yet, it evoked an emotion he couldn’t place, something deeper than recognition but just as fleeting. What was he supposed to do with a word? Even if he could remember its significance, where would that lead him?
He sighed.
A phantom. A shadow. A ghost wandering the world without a name. Was that his fate? A faceless observer?
His fingers stopped drumming.
No. That was wrong.
He had something more at his disposal. He wasn’t just invisible—he was unnoticed. He could be the perfect assassin, slipping past security, erasing people as easily as he was ignored. He could be the greatest thief, walking into the most protected vaults and leaving undetected. He could leverage the knowledge in his mind, knowledge vast enough to dwarf the greatest of libraries, containing information that stretched beyond lifetimes. Whoever he had been before waking up in that hospital, he was not ordinary.
And yet… none of it mattered.
Power, wealth, control. None of it interested him. He didn’t know why, but the thought of taking advantage of his situation felt empty. Hollow.
A flicker of movement caught his eye.
Two men sat across from him, engaged in a quiet, serious discussion. Their expressions were controlled. He hadn’t been paying attention before, but now that he focused, something about them stood out. The way they carried themselves. The way they spoke in hushed, measured tones.
And then, a word.
His mind snapped to attention.
They had said something familiar. Site-19.
His breath stilled.
It was a term he had encountered before, buried deep within the vast knowledge that surfaced when he woke up. But it had always been a passing reference, something peripheral that he hadn’t been able to place. Until now.
He lowered his gaze.
He didn’t know what Site-19 was. Not fully. But it was something, and right now, that was more than he had before.
The train slowed as it approached a station. The two men stood and made their way toward the exit. He followed.
They stepped onto the platform, weaving through the moving crowd. He kept his distance, trailing behind them. Both were dressed in dark, fitted suits—identical in design, but not quite like standard business attire. Their jackets were slightly heavier, structured, as if they were designed to conceal something beneath. The way they moved, the way their shoulders squared, their eyes scanning without looking obvious—this wasn’t just casual travel. They were trained.
And they were headed somewhere important.
And so was he.
The streets outside were busy, but the men moved with direction, ignoring the noise around them. He followed, careful not to draw attention to himself—not that it was necessary. They wouldn’t notice him even if they looked straight at him.
After several blocks, the two men arrived at what appeared to be an abandoned building.
It was old, and worn, not unlike the place he had woken up in. Cracked windows, faded paint, and a rusted metal sign hanging loosely above the entrance. Nothing about it suggested significance, yet they entered without hesitation.
He waited a moment before following.
Inside, the dust was thick. Rows of empty shelves stood in place, the remnants of what had once been a bookstore. It had clearly been abandoned for some time. There were no lights, no signs of activity. And yet, the men had vanished.
He stepped forward carefully, eyes scanning the space.
Where had they gone? There had been no sound of doors opening, no movement beyond the initial steps. It was as if they had disappeared.
He paused.
Something wasn’t right.
His gaze swept the floor, searching for any indication of how they had left. Then, his eyes landed on it—a thin layer of dust. The shelves, the floor, the counter—all covered in undisturbed dust, except for one place.
A gap.
A clean line near the back of the store, where the dust was noticeably absent. The spacing was off—too precise, too intentional.
He knelt, running his fingers along the wood. There was resistance—a faint seam where two pieces met. It was subtle, but it was there. A hidden mechanism.
He pressed against the gap.
A soft click.
The floor beneath him shifted.
An entrance.
His lips curled slightly.
Found you.
The floor beneath him began to descend. As he looked up, a wooden floorboard slid into place above him, seamlessly replacing the tile that had concealed the hidden entrance. He continued downward for what felt like meters upon meters, the walls of the shaft dimly lit by embedded lights that cast a sterile glow. The descent was eerily smooth, silent save for the faint hum of unseen machinery.
He exhaled slowly.
This organization—whoever they were—almost certainly had something to do with the anomalous. If they had access to a hidden entrance like this, they were probably tight on security. And they would definitely notice when an unauthorized party suddenly appeared inside their facility. He doubted they would take kindly to that.
He looked around.
No cameras. At least, none that he could see. Unless they had some technology capable of constant surveillance inside the moving platform itself, they likely had no way of knowing what he was doing at that moment. That gave him a brief window to act.
His descent slowed. Ahead, a door loomed, resembling the interior of an elevator shaft. A reinforced panel with a barely visible seam. An entry point.
He quickly tucked himself into the shadows of the corner, pressing against the cold metal surface. The platform reached its destination with a soft hiss, and the door slid open.
A guard stepped in.
The man had a sidearm drawn and bore a strange insignia on his sleeve—an emblem he didn’t recognize. They were expecting something. Maybe not him specifically, but they had been alerted to an intruder.
For a fleeting moment, he considered the possibility that the man wouldn’t notice him. Maybe—
The guard's gaze snapped to him.
"Hey! What are yo—"
He lunged.
His movements were quick, precise—a trained instinct that came as naturally as breathing. His hand closed around the guard’s wrist, twisting the gun free before the man could react. With a sharp pivot, he drove the butt of the firearm into the guard’s temple. The impact sent a dull vibration through his hand, and the man crumpled to the floor, unconscious.
Silence.
He stood over the body, scanning for any immediate alarms. Nothing. They had not linked the system to an automated trigger.
Reaching down, he stripped the guard of his ID and slid it into his pocket. He doubted it would grant him unrestricted access, but it was better than nothing. He had seconds before they would realize the man was missing.
He moved.
The facility’s hallways were a labyrinth, the architecture cold and utilitarian. Harsh fluorescent lighting buzzed overhead, casting stark white shadows against metal-paneled walls. Footsteps echoed from further down—security sweeping the area.
He quickened his pace.
Every hallway, every turn, brought him closer to discovery. He needed a place to disappear. Somewhere to regroup.
A door.
It was slightly ajar, the dim glow of a monitor casting long shadows across the floor. He slipped inside, pushing the door shut behind him before pressing his weight against it.
The footsteps passed.
He exhaled, turning to take in his surroundings. The room was small—an office of some kind. A desk sat in the center, cluttered with scattered papers and a data pad blinking idly to itself. A terminal. Something he could use. He grabbed the pad, tucking it under his arm.
Then he saw it.
A glass case against the far wall. Inside it sat a hat.
He frowned.
There were two possibilities. One, it was a trap. Or two… it was exactly what he needed.
He made his decision.
A firm tug popped the case open with a sharp hiss. He grabbed the hat and placed it on his head.
The moment it settled against his scalp, the air around him shifted.
The fluorescent hum of the room seemed to dampen, the space around him warping in an inexplicable way. He looked down—his form was… gone.
Not distorted. Not hidden.
Invisible. Ironic.
He could still feel himself, still hear his own breathing. But to the outside world, he was nothing.
The distant clatter of boots returned. Security was closing in. He tightened his grip on the data pad and moved toward the door.
The hall was crawling with guards now, their radios buzzing with fragmented reports. If they had noticed anything amiss in the room, they didn’t react. They looked right past him, scanning the space without a hint of awareness that he was right there.
He walked.
The facility stretched on, but the security presence was focused inward. He followed the path back toward the entrance, weaving between patrols.
By the time he reached an opening to the surface, he had become nothing more than an absence.
And as he stepped out into the night, slipping into the shadows of the city once more, he realized—
They would never even know he was here.