Last Cycle

He sat at the end of the bed — the same bed he’d been sleeping in since he was twelve years old. Back then, it was the perfect size. Nowadays, he likened it to sleeping in a matchbox — sleeping, more often than not, replaced by thrashing around trying to find a position that didn’t resemble amateur contortionism.

With feet on the floor and knees at his ears, he hauled himself upright. It always seemed like the worst way to say “good morning” to your joints. Rubbing the wound on his left wrist, he glanced down through glassy eyes and picked up his bloodied implant.

“This ends today,” he sighed.

In the pale morning light of a sun as haggard by time as he was, Visuvrial Aesthea prepared for his last cycle.

The Guild had existed since 2031. Visuvrial had been a member since differentiating in 2479 — ninety cycles ago.

In the wake of a viral pandemic that decimated the human population from 2020 to 2025, a pharmaceutical titan known as Klorvet Inc. developed an implantable device to monitor the body’s biochemical environment. The global fear of another uncontrolled pathogen outbreak ensured swift endorsements, and Klorvet’s Eavesdrop Program rolled out worldwide.

For the first five years, the program appeared to work. Ninety-five percent of the global population was implanted. Infectious disease cases plummeted.

But it was around this time that life, as humanity knew it, began to come undone.

It started in Belfast, Northern Ireland. A thirty-three-year-old woman with no history of illness collapsed and died in a city centre coffee shop. En route to the Royal Victoria Hospital, she split in two — to the horror of the paramedics.

When she awoke, she was confronted by two panic-stricken medics and what she later described as “a ghost-like version” of herself. By the time they reached the hospital, she had passed out again. The ghost-like entity sat silently beside her, visibly unsettled.

Soon, it was happening everywhere — Portsmouth, Sacramento, Osaka.

The dead returned, and they weren’t alone.

The media went into overdrive. Murders, thefts, arson — an unrelenting spiral of terror, all seemingly perpetrated by individuals accompanied by translucent doubles. The term differentiation emerged to describe this process: the separation of a human from its soul.

Not everyone differentiated — but those who didn’t were quickly wiped out by those who did.

The phenomenon was eventually traced to the Eavesdrop implant. Specifically, it amplified a hormone known as cormetone, triggering catastrophic activity in the amygdala — the brain’s fear centre. This hyperactivation manifested as a separate physical entity, a distorted soul externalised.

Rarely, a person would undergo hippocampal-dominant differentiation instead, producing an alter ego driven by reason rather than fear.

These were the ones who would form The Guild.

For over five centuries, The Guild fought a losing war against Klorvet Inc., whose grip tightened with every decade. While Klorvet’s military and technological dominance grew, The Guild’s resources dwindled. Their attempts to resist were met with relentless brutality.

By the time Visuvrial’s final cycle was initiated, The Guild had become little more than a whispered legend — its fighters scattered, its mission nearly forgotten.

“This is my last one, cadets,” Visuvrial said, his voice barely audible above the approaching cacophony.

Forty-seven cadets stood around him in the ruins of their home, the last bastion of the old world. They understood what was coming.

“Klorvet has destroyed the very essence of what we are. Our wives, husbands, and children — gone. Look out there. This violence, this fear — it feeds on itself. We are out of time.”

As the sun fell, casting a blood-red haze over the city’s broken skyline, Visuvrial took a deep breath.

“Today, we enact the final protocol. We cannot allow this affliction to spread. The Guild’s last act will be to ensure that the legacy of humanity’s folly ends here, on this forsaken planet.”

He activated the failsafe — an override buried deep within the original Klorvet network. A low, resonating hum filled the air, like the planet itself was mourning.

The cadets stood silently, their fate accepted, their unity absolute.

As the device reached its apex, a blinding light consumed everything.

And so, differentiation — the phenomenon that tore humanity apart — became the catalyst for its final act of resolve. A conscious choice to vanish, leaving behind only silence.

No cries. No war. No remnants.

Only a quiet warning to whatever might be listening:

A species that, in its quest for control, lost the ability to coexist with its own soul.