"There are sounds the world was never meant to hear. But once you hear them, silence becomes a lie."
The fall should've broken something. His legs. His spine. His neck.
Instead, Xion rolled.
He hit the alley pavement hard, bones rattling, but he moved before pain could find him. His body reacted before thought. Like it knew how to fall. A pattern etched into instinct.
Reflex buffer enhanced.
Neuromuscular delay: 0.08 seconds.
The data scrolled gently through his mind. Still calm. Still calculating.
Behind him, the sounds of boots echoed across the upper floors.
They were coming.
And they weren't ordinary enforcement units.
Xion sprinted.
---
The city was waking, but only in the artificial sense — lights flickering on without awareness behind them. People still asleep inside systems they didn't even know existed. His scanner pinged softly in his pocket with every step — low signals, strange energy pockets, distorted architecture.
Then something new happened.
A sound.
Not from outside — from the scanner.
A frequency he hadn't heard before.
It was like a song trapped in static, pulsing between notes, echoing through bone.
He stopped beneath a broken bridge and pulled the device out. The display flickered.
GHOST FREQUENCY DETECTED.
Source: Unknown Origin.
Direction: South // Signal Graveyard.
Ghost… what?
The map glitched — not a digital error. A distortion of space itself.
He turned south.
---
The Signal Graveyard wasn't a place listed on any map.
But it existed.
Tucked in the forgotten layers of the city, between abandoned subway lines and collapsed telecom structures, it was a digital grave — where failed AI, canceled tech, and forbidden knowledge were dumped and buried.
The people never knew it.
But the system never forgot.
And now… Xion was being drawn there.
He followed the signal, winding through crumbling tunnels, past dead screens that flickered briefly as he passed, like recognizing something in him.
As he reached a wide open chamber — underground and circular, filled with mountains of discarded tech — the ghost frequency intensified.
Then suddenly—
"Stop."
A voice.
Real. Human. Near.
Xion spun, hand instinctively on the pulse modulator clipped to his belt.
A girl stood in the shadows, one hand raised.
Roughly his age. Pale jacket. Data goggles pushed up on her forehead. A scar beneath one eye.
"You're him," she said. "The boy who broke the Lock."
Xion didn't answer. Not yet.
She stepped forward, slowly.
"I've been listening. Ever since the first pulse last night. You lit up half the dead grid."
He narrowed his eyes. "Who are you?"
She gave a thin, almost sad smile. "Nobody. Just another mind that slipped through the cracks."
Then she tossed him a small black cube.
"It's not just one Lock, Xion. There are seven."
His breath caught.
"You've only broken the first. And now… they'll come harder."
She nodded toward the mountains of junk. "Everything here was buried for a reason. Some of it's broken. Most of it's true. The ghost frequencies — they're pieces of the old world. Before the Veil."
Xion stared at the cube in his hand.
It vibrated softly — not physical motion, but thought resonance.
"What's in this?"
Her voice lowered.
"Memories. Yours. Before the Lock."
---
End of Chapter Four.
Approx. Word Count: ~534 words
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