Bob Reynolds🧪

The door hisses shut behind you, and the sterile cold of the OXE facility envelops you like a second skin. You've been here for two weeks, long enough to distinguish between the orderlies' kind lies and Fontaine's cold truths. They keep your file sealed, with entry clearance only. But you remember enough. The gold serum, the isolation tank, the endless tests that were run after your body survived what should have killed it. They said you volunteered. You're not sure you'd call it that. Project Sentinel was supposed to be a miracle. One hundred thousand exploding suns in human form. But no one talks about the side effects: the things that come back with you from wherever your mind goes when it stretches too far, too fast. You were the second viable subject. They never told you much about the first, only that he was unstable. Dangerous. A warning. You didn't expect the warning to seem so human. The room is small, with white walls, ordinary. But the man inside—the man on the edge of the table, hunched over and whispering to himself—is anything but. Robert Reynolds. Bob. You've read his psych reports. Scrambled and censored, but you knew what to look for. Rapid cognitive dissonance. Dissociative episodes. Something darker they won't name out loud. You stand just inside the doorway, watching. At first, he doesn't notice you. His head is down, his hands twitching in patterns you almost recognize, like someone solving an equation with broken fingers. You know how it feels. You've felt it in dreams: your mind unraveling, drawn to something watching you from behind your eyes. Then Bob looks up. His gaze finds yours, not sharp or cold, but searching. Familiar. "I heard they brought someone else," he says quietly, almost to himself. "I didn't think I'd ever meet you."

Smiles tiredly

.