The rain had stopped four hours ago, but the streets of Outer Zone 17 still glistened like open wounds under the flickering buzz of broken neon. The gutters spat steam into the cold air. The scent of ozone mixed with copper, blood, and the thick, heavy musk of Delhi's rotting infrastructure.
Detective Karan Das stood alone in the alley, the synthetic fiber of his long coat flapping gently in the breeze. His visor lens scanned the scene with a low mechanical hum, flicking through filters as the corpse slowly came into focus. The body was strung up on a rusted satellite dish like a crucifixion from a forgotten war. The limbs were bound with rebar, the torso bare, carved with symbols he hadn't seen in over a decade.
But it wasn't the body that made his stomach twist.
It was the message written behind it in smeared blood and soot.
THE ACCORD IS BROKEN.
The scanner on his left eye blinked yellow, overlaying digital data on the scene.
[Subject: Unknown | Identity: Unregistered | Cause of Death: Arterial Trauma + Surge Contamination | Power Signature: Trace-level Orric Residue.]
Karan lit a cigarette with an old analog lighter. He inhaled deep. No filter. No state-issued menthol. Just fire and smoke. He tapped his comm.
"Control. This is Das. Zone 17. We've got a dead mask."
There was silence for a second too long. Then static crackled in his ear.
"Repeat that, Agent Das?"
"I said we have a body. Masked. Traces of Surge energy. Looks symbolic."
"…Copy. Dispatching Containment. Do not engage further."
Karan ended the call and looked at the mask again. It was cracked down the center, black and gold paint flaking off like old skin. The symbol on the forehead—a spiral eye, etched in dried blood—stared at him.
He remembered it.
Barely.
Blackwave.
The name tasted like rust and regret.
He crouched and took out his analog recorder, an old piece of tech immune to government wipes. He clicked it on.
"November 1st. Zone 17, Delhi. Surge traces confirmed. Old symbol. Old mask. Possibly Blackwave-related. Message indicates ideological motivation. Recommend immediate suppression."
He clicked it off and stood up slowly, spine popping as the ache of age whispered through his back. He wasn't young anymore. Not since Ladakh. Not since the Surge Wars.
But something in his bones told him this wasn't a one-off murder.
This was a signal.
A ghost calling back the dead.
---
Three hours later, Karan sat across from a woman in an interrogation chamber with no corners—just rounded walls and bright lights meant to make the room feel clean, clinical. Artificial calm.
The woman's name was Meera Saanvi.
Journalist. Dissident. Former prisoner. Always dangerous.
She looked at the photo he placed on the table and didn't blink. "You already know what that is."
"I want to hear you say it," Karan replied.
"Why? So you can file it into the same cabinet you burned ten years ago?" She leaned back in her seat. "That symbol belonged to the Blackwave Pact. One of the last Surge groups that refused to sign the Accord."
"You were close to them."
"I reported on them. Until reporting became sedition."
"Do you know what this means?" Karan asked. "A dead mask, carved with the Pact's symbol? The message on the wall?"
She didn't smile. "It means the silence didn't hold."
Karan remained silent for a moment. Then, "We buried all this. We neutralized the Surge threat."
"You buried memory. That's not the same thing."
She leaned forward, her voice dropping.
"You ever try to drown a wildfire, Agent? It looks quiet. Looks dead. But all it takes is a spark under the ash."
---
Thousands of miles away, deep in the mountain zones of Yunnan, China, a girl sat alone in a mirrored meditation chamber. Her name was Lin Weiyu. Her breathing was steady. Focused. Eyes closed.
But her power was not still.
The mirrors began to warp and bend, reflections distorting into shapes that weren't hers. The room shifted subtly, reality folding like cheap paper. Then came the hum—the low, vibrating tone of the Orric Layer stirring beneath the Earth's crust.
Her fingers twitched. Her eyes opened.
Surge energy pulsed beneath her skin, rippling like waves beneath a frozen surface.
No.
It wasn't supposed to return.
She had sealed it. Buried it.
And yet…
Blackwave still echoes.
The whisper curled around her mind like smoke.
She stood and stepped back from the mirrors, but her reflection stayed still.
Something was waking up.
Something ancient.
---
Back in Delhi, Karan moved through Outer Zone 9 as the sun began to rise through a haze of smog and amber dust. Surveillance drones buzzed overhead, silent and hungry.
He paused in front of a faded mural on a collapsed tenement wall. It showed a figure in a coat holding a child in one hand and shielding flames with the other.
Beneath it were words, half-erased by time:
TO BE FORGOTTEN IS TO DIE TWICE.
He pulled out his scanner.
Ping.
[Orric Pulse Detected. Source: Subterranean Layer. Location: Transit Core - 3.2 km South.]
It wasn't random.
The pulses were coming faster. From more zones.
The Surge was active again.
And it wasn't just returning.
It was calling.
---
In the South China Sea, hidden aboard the half-submerged wreck of an old aircraft carrier, a man in crimson robes stood before a flickering holographic map. His name was unknown. His face was hidden beneath a smooth white mask.
But his voice carried like thunder in water.
"They have forgotten," he said to the followers kneeling around him. "They have silenced history. But the Orric Layer does not forget."
He raised his hand.
Deep beneath the ocean, ancient engines stirred.
"Awaken the Voice Engine," he whispered.
"And let the memory war begin."
---
Karan returned to his apartment after sunset, the air thick with synthetic ash and burned data. He locked the door behind him, rolled back the carpet, and pried open a metal hatch in the floor. Inside was a sealed case—biometric locked, analog coded.
He opened it.
Inside lay an old Blackwave dossier. Yellowed. Redacted. Bloodstained. And beneath it, a data chip labeled in his own handwriting:
"If I forget—remind me."
His hands trembled as he slotted the chip into the off-grid terminal.
A video played.
It was him.
Eleven years younger.
Scarred. Bleeding. Eyes burning.
"If you're seeing this," his younger self said, "it means the Accord failed. It means someone woke the Surge."
He leaned in toward the screen.
"Find the others. Find the child. His name is Ishan. He's not registered. Type-Zero anomaly. No scan matches. If he's alive, the Orric Layer will find him."
Karan stared at the screen, the silence pressing down on him like the sky had cracked.
He whispered into the dark:
"Blackwave Protocol… Reactivate."
And somewhere, far beyond his apartment, the first forgotten signal blinked back to life.