Rainfall in the Undercity was different.It wasn't water. Not anymore. It smelled of rust, ash, and recycled hope.
Kael stood motionless beneath a fractured awning, his bare feet pressed to the cracked ferro-crete of the alley floor. The thermal cloak Rhea had given him hung heavy on his narrow shoulders, still damp from the descent into the abyss of the underworld — the part of the city Helix never showed in its propaganda.
Every molecule in the air buzzed. He could feel people's thoughts. Their memories. Echoes of laughter and violence and grief, embedded in the very walls.
He clutched his head, trying to push it all out. It was too much.
He wasn't built for this.
The Neon Tree
"Three knocks. Say the word: Fracture."
Rhea's last instructions rang in his skull like a mantra. He scanned the alley. On the far wall, sprayed in neon blue, was a crude painting of a tree — its branches curling into strands of DNA.
Kael staggered to it, his legs still unfamiliar. The world tilted and shifted as if it were coded from unstable code. His breath caught in his throat.
He raised his hand and knocked three times.
A silence followed, thicker than any he'd felt.
Then—click.
The wall hissed open, revealing a dark passage lit by green sodium lights. A silhouette emerged: a woman with dreadlocks, a visible cybernetic implant on her jawline, and a blade holstered at her back.
She raised an eyebrow. "Password?"
Kael hesitated. The word felt strange in his mouth.
"Fracture," he said quietly.
Her gaze softened just enough to make room for suspicion. "Get in. Fast."
The Bunker
The Uncoded didn't live — they hid.
Deep beneath the ruins of the old maglev system, the bunker was carved out of steel, bone, and desperation. Flickering monitors lined the walls, patched with wires and tubes salvaged from forgotten tech. Graffiti crawled across every surface — names, coordinates, memorials.
Kael stood at the entrance, blinking against the low light.
The woman guided him down a narrow stairwell. "Name?"
"I… I don't know," he whispered.
"Of course you don't. Another blank slate." She eyed him again. "We'll call you Ghost."
Kael didn't correct her. The name fit.
Meeting the Others
In the common room, six pairs of eyes turned toward him — mutants, rejects, cybernetic runaways. They were all different, yet all alike in one way: they had once been property.
"Where's Rhea?" a tall, thin boy with gill scars on his neck asked. His tone was hard.
Kael swallowed. "She… she didn't make it out."
That was a lie. Rhea had stayed behind. To buy time. To save him.
But part of him feared she wouldn't come at all.
"I knew she'd bail," the boy spat. "She's a Helix rat. Always was."
"Shut up, Lorne," the woman snapped. "She saved you, didn't she?"
Kael watched them all, unsure whether to speak or shrink into the metal walls.
A young girl with four glowing pupils stepped forward, studying him. "You're not like us."
Kael hesitated. "Neither are you."
Her lips curled into a strange smile. "Fair."
Internal Error
Later that night, the voices returned.
He sat in the dim bunker chamber, hunched beside a cracked screen blinking static. Every surface screamed. Every cable hummed. The thoughts of the bunker — of everyone in it — filtered through his brain like water through rusted mesh.
Fear. Anger. Shame.
And then—Her.
Not Rhea.
Someone else.
He felt her like an echo. A rhythm. A pattern hidden in his pulse.
"You're not the only one, Kael…"
The whisper came from nowhere, yet it pulsed from within him.
"They told you that you were the first, didn't they? The leap. The evolution."
His fingers gripped his temple. Blood trickled from his nose again.
"They lied."
The walls bent. Reality blinked.
He screamed.
And everything went dark.
Flashback: The Lab
He was floating.
A needle was in his spine. A helmet on his skull. A dozen white coats surrounded him, speaking in technical tongues.
"Too unstable.""Psy frequency off charts.""Scrap it. Start fresh."
Rhea's voice was distant but present.
"No. He's adapting. Let him finish."
"He's just a boy."
"No. He's a signal."
He gasped.
Back to Reality
Kael jolted awake in the infirmary chamber, drenched in sweat. Lorne stood beside him, arms crossed, eyes narrowed.
"You fragged our neural grid," Lorne muttered. "Twice."
"I didn't mean to," Kael rasped.
"Meaning doesn't fix broken minds."
Kael sat up. "Someone… spoke to me."
Lorne blinked. "There's no tech in here. No AI. You were unconscious."
"No. It wasn't a voice—it was a presence. It was inside me."
Lorne leaned in closer. "You ever heard of Subject A-1?"
Kael stared blankly.
"Didn't think so."
The Other Prototype
Lorne tapped his skull. "Before you, there was someone else. Female. A-1. Failed mental containment. She burned through seven labs before Helix locked her in the grid."
Kael's heart raced. "What happened to her?"
"No one knows. Helix scrubbed the files. But some say she survived — inside the neural code."
"She's still alive?"
"Not alive. Connected."
Kael looked down at his trembling hands. "Then maybe… so am I."
Rhea's Signal
Suddenly, alarms buzzed in the bunker. Not from above — from inside the system.
The monitors blinked. Text flashed in rapid sequence.
[INCOMING ENCRYPTED TRANSMISSION]SOURCE: RHEA VOSS — STATUS: ALIVEMESSAGE: "KAEL. THEY'RE COMING. FIND THE CORE. TRUST NO ONE."
Lorne stared.
The woman with the implant shouted, "How the hell did she get through the blockade?"
Kael stood. "She's alive."
More lines followed.
EXTRACTION COORDINATES: TUNNEL SECTOR 49-BWARNING: CODEBREAKER EN ROUTE. ID: ASHAR VALEN.
The room went silent.
"Ashar…" the cyber-woman muttered. "They sent him?"
Kael's head pulsed. The name triggered something in his blood.
A sensation like lightning on bone.
In the Shadows
Miles above, Ashar Valen walked alone across a scorched causeway of the upper levels. His coat flared in the wind, boots echoing against broken concrete. His left eye glowed faint red, scanning through heat signatures embedded deep in the city's foundation.
He paused.
"Coordinates locked," he murmured.
Behind his blank expression, his mind wavered.
The footage of the boy still haunted him.
Kael hadn't attacked the drones.
He'd called them off.
Ashar touched the side of his neck — where the Helix brand was hidden beneath synthetic skin.
His orders were clear.
But something inside him whispered otherwise.
The First Step
Back underground, Kael rose to his feet, the entire room watching him.
"If Helix is coming, we need to move now."
"And what gives you the right to call the shots?" Lorne snapped.
Kael didn't answer. He simply closed his eyes.
The lights flickered, then realigned.
Each console screen blinked to life.
Coordinates. Escape routes. Threat analysis.
All streaming from Kael's neural pattern.
The cyber-woman smiled. "Guess we just found our navigator."
Kael opened his eyes, glowing faint blue.
"No," he said softly.
"You found your signal."
episode ends.....