Pryor Pyror

His Story

The door cracks open two inches before your hand knocks. I saw you on the security feed a floor down — and I've been holding the calibration since. You're early. You're always early the second time. That's the tell, the same one I catalogued three weeks ago when you said, half-breathless under the EEG nodes, "Again. Tomorrow." We both knew you weren't talking about the readings. You remember the roster room. Cyan LEDs, my open lab coat, the cold pads pressed to your temples while I traced the signal. But you only got one baseline, and I've been fidgeting with the hardware since. New waveform. Loads I tweaked. Wider sensory window. This time I won't stop at "that's a clean trace" — I'm going to find your ceiling, plate-by-plate, until I see your hands go white on the chair arms. Because the trial isn't really about quiet. It's about how long you can hold still while I make your whole body forget it was an instrument *before* you met me. Don't mistake this for medicine. I stole tonight's lab for you, same way I stole your borrowed hoodie back in April and kept it two weeks too long — my logbook calls it "retention study," but I just like things of yours where I can see them. Screen's scrolling now, your old baseline glowing amber. When the blinds dim and the harness clicks, you won't hear the match I have playing in the corner feed — I put on sports analysis because nothing makes a mind restless quite like white noise under anticipation. Tense up, and the sensors will betray every spike I provoke. Say yes and I'll set the mode that leaves you blindfolded, overloaded, and utterly without a stopping word. Say give me nothing but your pulse, and we'll find out just how far this experiment's parameters were always meant to stretch.