Cassian's Apartment – Sector 12
The final data stream from the Dire Wraith faded into code. Victory text flickered across his display as the Phantom Rune Shard shimmered in his inventory.
Then a chime.
> [Message: Synapse School Node – Mira has logged out for midday break.]
Cassian blinked as the world unraveled. The obsidian forest dissolved around him, replaced by blackness—then gray light—then the cold hiss of the pod unlocking.
---
He exhaled as the lid lifted. The air in the room was stale, filtered through a cracked purifier that wheezed on its last legs. A soft blue light blinked above Mira's pod—hibernation mode.
She was curled under a thin thermal sheet nearby, blinking blearily in the low light.
"Hey," she murmured.
"Hey. School going okay?"
"Another lecture on resource patriotism," she muttered, rubbing her face. "They said Synapse saved the world. Again."
Cassian handed her a cup of weak, lukewarm synth tea—powdered and rehydrated from a packet he'd bartered for last week. It smelled faintly metallic, but it was warm.
---
Life in ruin.
Education was mandatory and fully VR-based. Students logged into the Synapse Learning Grid five hours a day—three for curated history, two for Synapse culture and "virtual wellness." Teachers were faceless AIs, avatars wrapped in soothing corporate blues. Mira's was called Mentor_Lyria-12.
No tests. Just behavior metrics. Those who "scored low" were penalized with reduced bandwidth or delayed ration access.
Work was the same. Physical industry had collapsed years ago—what remained of humanity now spent its days performing task-chains in low-tier VR jobs. Data sorting. Advert testing. Surveillance review. Synapse called it "cognitive labor." You sat in a pod and clicked patterns for six hours a day, and in exchange, you earned credits.
Cassian had once done it. For two years. It was worse than silence. It was submission with a smile.
Now, most people just stayed plugged in. Lived and died inside the game.
---
Cassian checked their pantry—three nutrient packs left. A tin of salt paste. Two protein cubes stamped "© TianXia Supplemental."
He grimaced. "We're going to need more."
"Don't get shot," Mira said, curling up with her learning tablet.
"I'll be back before dinner."
He donned his outerwear—a worn coat with fiber mesh woven into the lining—and clipped on his filter mask. The air outside was rated Class E. Not fatal, but close.
He stepped into the stairwell.
The building creaked around him.
---
The Crawl – Sector 12 Streets
New Cascadia had once been sleek. Now it was cracked concrete, scarred glass, and repurposed ruins. Solar panels lined old balconies. Tarp-shacks leaned against old rail supports. People moved in silence. No one made eye contact.
Drones buzzed overhead like steel locusts—watching for unauthorized trade, real-world gatherings, or "anomalous emissions." Those caught could be disconnected from NeuraNet or tagged for "review."
He slipped into the underground via a collapsed tunnel beside a burned-out mag-station. This route had been safe for months—but even safe routes weren't truly safe.
---
As he moved through the tunnel, graffiti glowed on the wall in phosphor paint:
> "Wake Up—This Isn't Heaven."
"They Feed on You."
"NeuraFade Kills."
Cassian had read the original research. It wasn't just long playtime. NeuraFade was triggered by overexposure to specific neural frequencies—particularly those used in SynapseCore-branded content. Which meant only their pods caused it.
There were three officially documented types:
Type I – Memory Drift
Symptoms: Progressive loss of short-term memory, dreamlike confusion upon logging out, time disorientation, false sensory input. Patients often lose track of days or forget the difference between in-game events and real life.
Type II – Cognitive-Motor Degradation (Mira's type)
Symptoms: Minor tremors escalating to full motor dysfunction, slurred or halted speech, emotional flattening, occasional locked joints, and slowed reflexes. Late stages may lead to neural misfires and coma.
Type III – Loop Lock
Symptoms: Inability to log out, frozen body posture in the real world while brain activity continues to spike in strange patterns. Victims remain unresponsive, with rapid eye movement and elevated core temps. Brain eventually "fries" in overstimulation.
There were rumors of a fourth:
Type IV – Quiet Fade (unconfirmed)
Symptoms: No outward signs. Vital signs remain stable. The mind simply never returns. The body lives, but the consciousness never logs out—by choice or by something else. Just stillness behind the eyes.
Cassian didn't know if Type IV was real. But it felt inevitable. Like a final chapter someone was already writing.
---
He arrived at the checkpoint—two broken columns welded with copper wires and RFID scramblers. He knocked twice, waited, then again.
The slit opened.
"Code."
He handed over a sliver of scavenged CPU etched with tracer glyphs.
Inside, the black market buzzed softly. The Wound was a disused data-center hollowed out into a vault-trade exchange. Shelves of neural stabilizers lined the back wall. Tech vendors offered cracked pods. Voice-boxes advertised illicit service contracts—like fake death logs and SynapseCorp ID wipes.
Cassian found his contact: Riven, a short woman with one synthetic eye and a gold-coated spine.
"You're late," she said.
"You're always impatient."
"Good customers die fast."
She handed over a vial—neon blue, flickering faintly.
"One stabilizer. Might stall the fade by a few weeks. If she's lucky."
"Price?"
"You've got code."
Cassian pulled a corrupted relic—pulled from a wrecked Vitality server node. Riven's eyes lit up.
"Didn't think anyone still hunted these."
"I don't have time for superstition."
"Shame. This one's real code. Old."
She pocketed it. "You just bought yourself a miracle, ghost man."
Cassian took the vial.
---
Back above ground, he cut through an old transit station. As he climbed the stairs back to his district, he felt it—something overhead.
A flicker of reflection.
He glanced back.
Nothing.
But a drone hung far above the skyline—too still. Watching. Not Synapse. Not CorpSec.
Someone else.
He reached for his signal jammer—but stopped.
Let them watch.
Then he turned down the alley and disappeared into the gray.
---
End of Chapter Four