Static Heart. The Silence That Remembers, #1

The city hums before sunrise, a soft grid of light trembling beneath the fog, as if the skyline is breathing in its sleep. I wake to the familiar hush inside my skull - the engineered silence of CalmSync smoothing every sharp edge of thought. No tremors. No grief. No memory out of place. They say this quiet is freedom. They say a steady mind is a safe mind. They say we're better off forgetting the things that once made us human.
But sometimes, just before the signal takes hold, I feel something flicker. A pulse. A warmth. A crack in the quiet. Like my heart remembering a language it isn't supposed to speak anymore. This morning, the silence feels too deep, too heavy - as if it's not calming me but burying something alive inside my chest. And in that muffled darkness, a single thought, small and trembling, forces its way through:What if the signal is failing?What if the silence isn't protection.
but a cage?When the city exhales, I rise - thumb aching, breath unsteady - and for the first time in years, I hear it:A sound beneath the system's perfect quiet. A heartbeat out of sync. My own.