Chapter 13: The Resistance

Devon’s livestream had forty-three viewers at 3 AM, but the comments were coming fast and desperate.

They’re in my basement too Heard the singing all night My daughter says she’s “remembering” something Government experiment???

He leaned closer to his phone camera, the blue light harsh on his unwashed face. He’d been broadcasting from his apartment for six hours straight, surviving on energy drinks and rage.

“Listen to me,” he said, his voice hoarse. “This isn’t spiritual awakening. This isn’t some cosmic shift. This is psychological warfare.”

The humming had been getting louder all night, seeping through his apartment walls like poison gas. Every time it swelled, his stomach cramped and his hands shook. His body was rejecting whatever frequency they were broadcasting, and he was grateful for it. It meant he was still sane.

“They’re using subsonic manipulation to break down our critical thinking,” he continued. “Making us compliant. Making us think we need to ‘surrender’ to something.”

But the power grids are failing naturally, someone commented.

“NOTHING IS NATURAL ABOUT THIS.” Devon slammed his fist on his desk, making the camera shake. “Cascading infrastructure failure along geological lines? You think that’s coincidence? They’ve been planning this for decades.”

He pulled up the photos he’d taken outside Priya’s apartment building. Blurry shots of tall figures moving through shadows, faces that seemed to glow in the darkness. His hands had been shaking so badly he could barely hold the camera, but he’d gotten enough.

“Look at these. LOOK.” He held the images up to the camera. “Tall, pale, moving like they’re not quite human. Classic signs of genetic modification. Underground breeding programs. They’ve been preparing an invasion force while we were distracted by social media.”

The comments exploded.

Holy shit Those aren’t human Where was this taken? We need to organize

That last comment made Devon smile for the first time in days. Organization. That’s what separated humans from animals—the ability to plan, to strategize, to fight back against threats.

“Exactly,” he said to the camera. “We need to resist. The people who are ‘awakening’? They’re being programmed. Turned into sleeper agents. My ex-girlfriend is one of them now.”

His chest tightened saying it. Priya with her wild eyes and her paintings that seemed to move in candlelight. The way she’d closed the curtains without explanation, dismissing him like he was nothing. She’d been so normal just a few weeks ago—scattered, maybe, but human. Now she looked at him like he was a stranger.

“She used to be sweet,” he said, his voice softening. “Confused sometimes, but sweet. Now she won’t even talk to me. She’s been taken.”

Can they be saved?

Devon considered this. “Maybe. If we act fast. The neural reconditioning might not be permanent yet.”

He switched to a different app, one that encrypted communications and couldn’t be tracked. In the past six hours, he’d found dozens of others who were experiencing the same thing—family members acting strange, mysterious figures appearing, that constant humming that made your teeth ache.

@PatriotDad2024: My wife keeps talking about ‘remembering who she really is.’ She won’t listen to reason.

@FreeThinker99: Brother called me crying, saying his career was all fake. Kid’s a successful lawyer, why would he think that?

@TruthSeeker: Anyone else notice how they all use the same language? ‘Awakening,’ ‘remembering,’ ‘authentic self’? That’s programming.

Devon typed quickly: Meeting tomorrow night, Federal Hill Park, 9 PM. Bring photos, evidence, any documentation. We need to coordinate response.

The responses came immediately. Twelve people confirmed, then fifteen, then twenty-two. All of them afraid, all of them angry, all of them watching their loved ones slip away into something they couldn’t understand.

His phone buzzed with a direct message from someone called @SaveOurKids:

I’m a child psychologist. What you’re describing matches textbook cult recruitment tactics. Mass hypnosis, isolation from support systems, rejection of previous identity. This is extremely dangerous.

Devon’s pulse quickened. A professional. Someone with credentials who could validate what he was seeing.

Can you speak at tomorrow’s meeting?

Absolutely. We need to document everything and get law enforcement involved before more people are compromised.

Another message popped up, this one from @ChurchOfSacredHeart:

Pastor here. I’ve lost half my congregation this week. They say they don’t need church anymore, that they’re connecting directly to ‘source.’ This is demonic influence.

Meeting tomorrow night, Devon replied. Federal Hill Park, 9 PM.

By dawn, he had forty-seven confirmed attendees and a growing list of stories that all followed the same pattern: normal people suddenly rejecting their lives, talking about transformation, hearing music that wasn’t there. Some had been seen with the tall pale figures. Others had simply vanished.

Devon finally fell asleep at his desk around 6 AM, his phone still buzzing with messages from frightened relatives and concerned professionals. In his dreams, he saw Priya’s face—but not as she was now, luminous and unreachable. As she used to be, when she still needed him to make sense of the world.

When he woke three hours later, the humming had stopped.

The silence was worse than the sound had been. It felt like holding your breath underwater, waiting for something terrible to surface. He checked his phone—no new messages since he’d fallen asleep. The emergency broadcasts had gone quiet. Even the distant sounds of traffic had faded.

He went to his window and looked out at Providence spread below. People were moving in the streets, but differently now. Slowly, deliberately, like they were listening to something he couldn’t hear. Some of them were gathered in small groups, and even from this distance, he could see they were singing.

His phone buzzed. A message from an unknown number:

Devon, this is Dr. Sarah Martinez, psychiatrist at Rhode Island Hospital. I saw your livestream. I have seventeen patients who’ve experienced similar “awakening” episodes in the past 48 hours. All showing signs of shared psychotic disorder. We need to meet before tonight’s gathering. This could be an epidemic.

Devon typed back immediately: Yes. Where?

My office, 2 PM. Bring any evidence you have. And Devon? Be careful who you trust. This kind of mass delusion can spread through social contact.

He spent the morning organizing his photos, his recordings, his screenshots of people’s testimonies. By afternoon, he had three full folders of documentation. Proof that something was systematically targeting the population of Providence, turning ordinary people into something else.

Something that looked human but moved like they were dancing to music only they could hear.

Something that smiled when they saw him coming, like they knew a secret he would never understand.

Something that used to be the people he loved.