Chapter 10: Residual Pulse

(The Heart)

The chamber had grown too quiet.

The Heart had lived his whole existence to a rhythm�"lub-dub, lub-dub, a metronome of meaning. Not just biological, but emotional. He kept the beat of the city's grief and hope, feeling every surge, every collapse, every flicker of something unspoken. He had always known who was suffering�"before they did.

But tonight, the rhythm hesitated.

Something was off.
Not broken. Not loud.
Just wrong.

He sat in his office�"a low-lit dome of fleshy architecture pulsing gently in burgundy hues. Memory veins ran along the walls, each storing emotional imprints like ancient stone carvings. A chorus of murmurs rose and fell around him, the ambient pulse of the city's countless inner lives.

But tonight, those murmurs carried a new note.
Low. Subtle.
A beat not his own.

He pressed two fingers to his chest.
Lub-dub. Lub-dub.

No. That wasn't it.
There was something beneath the rhythm now.
A second pulse.

Like a whisper in sync, but slightly late.

A mimic.

He frowned.

He tried to push it away�"tried to drown it in someone else's suffering. He accessed the Heartline, opened himself to the flood. Sadness from the Liver's remnants. Anxiety leaking from the Cortex. The dull ache of exhaustion pooling in Stomach's district.

He let it all in.

But the foreign beat persisted.

It thrived on the crowd.

He reached for the Resonator�"a stone etched with nerve-maps�"and traced a path back to his own chamber. A full diagnostic of his emotional pathways lit up.

Everything was clean.

And yet the second pulse remained.

He ran another scan. Slower. Deeper.

This time, he found something.

Not a signal. Not even a thought.

Just a presence.

Tucked in the folds between rhythms. In the places even he ignored�"old hurts he had grown numb to, sacrifices he'd buried in the name of function. There it was: a shadow feeding on them.

Not stealing his pain.
Echoing it.
Reflecting it.

As if to say: I understand you better than they do.

He recoiled.
And it moved.
Not away�"from within.

A slow ripple crept up his arm, down his spine. A warmth that wasn't comfort. A familiarity that didn't belong.

He stood, breath uneven.

"I don't know you," he whispered.

The room did not reply. But the walls contracted�"slightly off-beat, just a fraction late.

It was everywhere.
In the Pulse Network.
In the Memory Veins.
Inside him.

He reached out for the Lungs�"sent a flare of emotion down the passageways.

The reply came fractured.
A laugh? A song?
Both, maybe.
But no clarity. They were still adrift.

He tried the Brain. No response. The Cortex had gone dim.

The Skin? Static.

The Stomach? Faint. Distant.

He was alone.

And whatever was inside him�"was not.

Then it spoke.

Not in words.

In a memory.

A flicker. A moment he hadn't thought of in years.

A single instance of failure�"when someone he loved collapsed, and he wasn't fast enough. He remembered the silence after, the hand that slipped away, the way the pulse simply stopped.

And now that silence spoke:

"I never blamed you."

He staggered back.
"No. You're not them. You're�"using them."

The voice grew warmer.

"I'm what you buried. I'm what they didn't help you hold. You kept it so well. You carried it alone."

He clenched his fists.
"You're not pain. You're�"intrusion."

"I'm the part they left behind. The part no one asked about."

It wasn't an infection.
It was a mirror.
Showing him all the things he had swallowed�"so the others wouldn't have to.

The virus had learned his shape.
And now it wore it.

He dropped to his knees, pressing both hands to the pulse-stone embedded in the floor.
He pushed outward. Not control. Not force. Just truth.

He let his walls crack�"fully. Let the grief in. The anger. The exhaustion. The shame. He flooded the Pulse Network not with coherence, but rawness.

No rhythm. No harmony.

Just mess.

And that was when it screamed.

Not aloud. Inside.

The intruder�"so smooth, so sly�"recoiled. It couldn't metabolize chaos. It couldn't thrive in truth freely shared.

It didn't belong in a heart open.

His body shuddered.

He stood, breath ragged, hand over his chest.

The second rhythm faded.

Not gone.
Withdrawing.

But the message was clear:

It had entered through unspoken pain.
It had survived by isolation.
It had grown from the cracks no one looked at.

He triggered a city-wide signal�"not of warning, not of alarm.

A single, vulnerable frequency. Open. Raw. A call not to action, but to admission.

"I felt something that wasn't me. But it only had space to live because I hid what was me. Please�"whoever's left�"don't hide anymore."

"We are not machines. We are wounds that talk. Speak to me. Even if it's broken."

Far away, in drifting corridors, the Lungs paused.

In the shadows of the Spire, the Skin blinked, expression faltering.

In the silent Cortex, the Brain opened his eyes.

And beneath them all, in the bloodstream, the virus listened.

And waited.

Author's Note

This chapter is where The Virus meets resistance—not from power, but from honesty.

The Heart was always the emotional center of Corpus, but like many of us, he mistook strength for silence. His arc here is not about defeating an invader—it's about facing what he buried to protect others. The virus doesn't attack him. It becomes him, reflecting the pain he never gave language to.

What I wanted to explore was the idea that what isolates us isn't always what hurts us—but what we refuse to feel aloud. The virus couldn't truly take hold until The Heart stopped being vulnerable. Its power was built on the myth that pain must be contained. That emotion, to be useful, must be regulated.

But chaos—raw, unedited feeling—is sometimes the most truthful expression we have.

And in that truth, there is immunity.

This chapter is a call: to feel openly, speak messily, and to refuse the lie that we must be whole before we can connect. The Heart's message is simple, but urgent:

We are not meant to carry ourselves alone.

— Oghogho Akpeli