Shinjuku Surge

Tokyo was breathing too fast that morning.

Hina felt it before she even opened her eyes. Not like a jolt or an explosion, but as tension—a taut silence beneath the city, like a muscle refusing to relax. The tatami beneath her feet vibrated barely perceptibly, enough to make the skin on her soles tingle.

Something was wrong.

Renji’s phone rang almost simultaneously. Too sharp. Too fast.

“It’s not an alarm,” he said, glancing at the screen. “Nothing… familiar.”

Haruto was already standing by the window, curtains slightly parted. His face was tense. “The whole block has unstable power. No outage. Fluctuations. Like someone… is testing the response.”

Hina was already crouched on the floor, palm flat against the tatami. The current wasn’t wild. It was fragmented. Divided. Too organized to be random.

“This isn’t a single point,” she whispered. “It’s… a network.”

Renji swallowed. “Bait.”

As if in response, sirens blared somewhere in the distance. One. Then another. From different directions.

Haruto looked at his tablet. “Five separate incidents. Elevators, automated gates, public screens. All low-level. No one’s hurt—yet.”

“Yet,” Renji added.

Hina stood. “It wants a reaction.”

“Exactly,” Haruto said. “And if we don’t respond, it will escalate.”

The silence that followed was not a question. It was a decision.

Shinjuku Station was packed with people when they arrived. Overcrowded. Too much metal, too many screens, too many currents crossing and sliding past one another. Hina could barely catch her breath. The floors were fractured—layers of concrete, cables, hollow spaces. Hard to find a single point of purchase.

On the platform, a group of people was trapped between two trains. The doors weren’t responding. Screens flashed warning loops.

And over it all, electricity sang. Quiet, high, taut.

Renji froze. “Too much.”

“Don’t pull,” Hina said quickly. “Not yet.”

But someone screamed. A child. A short, panicked sound that cut through concentration.

The current reacted.

Lights flickered. A metal pole at the edge of the platform glowed with a thin blue-white line. People began to move, pushing and shoving.

“Renji!” Hina called.

Too late.

Renji raised his hands reflexively, as if trying to catch falling glass. The electricity responded instantly, snapping violently, too eagerly. His shield expanded before him, clear, visible, undeniable.

People froze.

Someone recorded it.

Hina felt the current beneath them tense—not toward Renji, but around him. Like water flowing around a stone, deciding to avoid it.

“Wrong,” she whispered. “This isn’t the direction.”

But the current had already shifted elsewhere.

At the other end of the platform, automated doors exploded outward. The metal frame bent, sparks shot low and dangerously. Two people fell.

Hina sprinted. Barefoot, without thinking, she dropped to her knees and slammed her palms against the floor. The current hit her like a punch to the chest. Not hot. Heavy. Fragmented.

“Down,” she hissed. “Down, down, down.”

The electricity refused to gather. It was split into too many branches, each with its own intention. Some obeyed her. Others slipped past, as if they knew her but refused her control.

Renji felt it. His shield vibrated. Not under pressure, but under attention.

Something was watching him.

“He’s here,” he said, voice low, tense.

Not in the space. In the system.

Haruto shouted into the comm, trying to direct security, but his voice was lost in the chaos. People began to run. Someone fell down stairs. Another screamed in Renji’s direction.

“He wants it,” Hina said through gritted teeth. “He wants you to choose.”

Renji looked toward the broken doors. Toward the crowd. Toward Hina, kneeling, her hands raw from scraping against concrete.

He chose wrong.

Instead of pulling back, he pushed.

The shield expanded. No longer defensive. Directed. Electricity flowed from him in clean, controlled lines. The doors died. Sparks faded. The system stabilized.

For three seconds.

Then the lights went out across the entire hall.

Complete darkness.

Panic exploded.

Hina screamed, but her voice didn’t carry over the noise. The current collapsed inward, pulled deep, as if someone had closed a valve. Her connection snapped. For a moment, she felt nothing.

Then pain.

Something shoved her from the side. She fell, hitting her head on the edge of the platform. The world tilted.

By the time the emergency lights flickered on, the cameras were already pointed away.

Renji stood on the platform, hands still slightly raised, fingers surrounded by dying sparks. He looked… guilty.

Sirens were closer now. Heavier. Not ambulances.

Military.

Later, hidden in an abandoned underground service room, silence hurt more than the earlier noise.

Hina sat against the wall, head bandaged, eyes closed. The current beneath her was restrained, cautious, as if afraid of her.

Renji did not sit. Did not move.

“I did this,” he said. Not an apology. A statement of fact.

“You’re not the only one,” Hina said quietly. “But… yeah. That wasn’t the right flow.”

“He pushed me,” Renji said. “Made me feel like I could finish it. That it was… the solution.”

Haruto glanced at the screens. The news was already spreading. Footage. Slow-motion. Renji. Light. Darkness.

“The official explanation will come soon,” he said. “And it won’t be kind.”

Hina opened her eyes. “He wanted you to show yourself.”

Renji finally sat. Covered his face with his hands. “And I gave him exactly that.”

Above the city, the current settled. Too much. Like held breath.

Deep in the network, someone closed another loop.

And this time, it was no longer a test.