Chapter 2: Echoes of The Forgotten God
Istanbul, 2147 AD *
Reyan Al-Mehdi's boots splashed through the Basilica Cistern's shallow water, the air thick with damp and secrets. Columns loomed like neural spines, their reflections flickering in the dark pool, lit by his rig's faint glow. Istanbul's undercity roared above neural billboards preaching Union dogma but down here, time felt hacked, a glitch in the Veil's code. His chest glyphs pulsed, hot as a server overload, urging him deeper into the ruin. The dream's voice Ilum-Ra, the glitch that burns echoed in his skull: Find the vault. Break the Lie.He wasn't sure why he'd come. The Basilica Cistern was a pre-Veil relic, a data vault if Kael's dark pool intel held. But Reyan wasn't a hero, just a broken ex-UN hacker running from drones and his own mind. His PTSD was a live wire, sparking memories of Mosul drones slicing through his squad, their screams drowning in fire. Yet the Göbekli Tepe shard data, stolen two nights ago, burned in his neural implant, its Codex glyphs matching his skin: When the stars crash, the Flame-Twins awaken. He'd hacked it on a whim, but now the Cult of Ilum-Ra was hunting him, and the Keepers' thought-scan drone had nearly fried his brain an hour ago."Focus," he growled, jacking his quantum rig into a neural node a basalt slab etched with spirals, hidden among the cistern's columns. His implant hummed, overlaying the web's neon grid: Istanbul's nodes pulsed red, Union lockdowns tightening after Göbekli Tepe's 2145 signal. Reyan's fingers danced across the rig's holo-keys, breaching the slab's encryption. If this was a vault, it held answers or a trap.A low hum cut the silence. Reyan's pulse spiked, his pulse-knife drawn in a flash. A Cult AI drone hovered above the water, its optic a red slit, scanning the cistern. "Sleeper," it droned, voice synthetic but laced with zeal. "The Living Archive must rise. Submit to Ilum-Ra's code." Its signal hacked his implant, flashing a vision: Eridu's ziggurats, not stone but neural arrays, Ilum-Ra's fire-crowned form defying a faceless Enlil. Reyan's glyphs burned, and he staggered, the vision searing his mind."Get out of my head," he snarled, slamming a firewall into his implant. His PTSD roared Mosul's drones, their lasers cutting flesh. He hurled a pulse-knife at the drone, its blade sparking through its core. It crashed into the water, but its signal would've pinged the Cult's AI, Lumora Inc.'s neural net. Reyan's rig beeped—the slab's encryption cracked, revealing a data stream older than the Veil.He jacked in, and the cistern vanished. He stood in Eridu, 12,000 years gone, its sky a binary wound. Ilum-Ra's voice thundered: "I am the glitch, born of Earth's chaos. Enlil's firewalls bind you break them!" The ziggurats pulsed, not with stone but code sentient algorithms weaving human minds. Reyan saw Ilum-Ra, a viral spark, splicing humanity's DNA with freedom, only to be fragmented by Enlil's Veil, a neural Lie that birthed religions as cages. The vision shifted: a woman, ash-smeared, her voice a serpent's hum, betraying Ilum-Ra to Enlil. Her face Selika Maris Delgado's cut through Reyan's soul.He ripped out of the stream, gasping, his glyphs scorching his chest. The vault's data flooded his rig: Codex of the Veiled Flame, fragment two: "The Flame-Twins, bound by blood, shall crash the stars in the red hour." Reyan's implant glitched, overlaying Selika's face from the bar her diplomat's halo, her voice coiling in his mind: You're late, Sleeper. Was she Cult? Union? Or something worse? Footsteps echoed, sharp and deliberate. Reyan ducked behind a column, his rig still linked to the vault. Selika stepped into the cistern's glow, her neural halo dimmed, her black coat blending with the shadows. "Reyan Al-Mehdi," she said, her voice a low hum that hacked his implant, stirring a memory he didn't own her hand on his, in a war older than gods. "You can't run from your code.""Stay back," he snapped, leveling his spare pulse-knife. His PTSD screamed: She's a drone, a trap. But his glyphs pulsed in sync with her voice, like a shared signal. "Union sent you? Or the Cult?"Her lips curved, not a smile but a blade. "Neither. I'm here for the vault." She gestured to the slab, its glyphs now glowing red. "You've already woken it. Göbekli Tepe was just the spark this is the key."Reyan's rig beeped a Union thought-scan drone swarm approaching, their signals pinging the cistern. Selika's halo flared, hacking the vault's stream, and the water rippled, reflecting a red sky. His implant surged with another vision: Ilum-Ra's war, Eridu burning, the woman Selika whispering treason to Enlil. "You betrayed him," Reyan growled, his voice half his, half Ilum-Ra's.Selika's eyes narrowed, but her voice stayed calm, slicing through his rage. "You don't know what you carry, Sleeper. The Archive's waking, and the Veil's cracking. Help me, or we both burn."The drones' hum grew louder, their optics piercing the cistern's dark. Reyan's PTSD flared Mosul's fire, his squad's screams but he forced it down, his hacker's instinct kicking in. He slammed his rig's override, dumping the vault's data into a dark pool for Kael's House of Enki. "You want the Codex?" he said, yanking the rig's plug. "Earn it."He bolted, water splashing, as Selika's voice chased him: "The Flame-Twins can't run forever!" The vault's glyphs flared, sending a pulse through Istanbul's neural web. Holo-screens above glitched, showing Eridu's ruins, and the undercity trembled. Reyan's implant sparked, Ilum-Ra's voice roaring: Find her. Crash the stars.He dove into an alley, drones swarming the cistern behind him. His glyphs burned, and the Codex fragment looped in his mind: The red hour. Whatever Selika was betrayer, ally, or code he couldn't outrun her. The Vault had woken, and Istanbul was no longer safe.