The fog clung to the Pier like a living thing, its tendrils curling around Elara's ankles as she followed Kael through a maze of rusted shipping containers. The bay's black water lapped at the dock, reflecting the fractured glow of holo-ads flickering overhead—Synapsis's omnipresent logo pulsing like a heartbeat across the city.
Elara's breath misted in the cold, her pulse racing as Kael's words echoed in her mind: The Weave's dreaming. She wanted to dismiss him as a paranoid hacker, another anti-corp zealot spinning conspiracies. But the neural data he'd shown her—Mira's signature, warped by that alien rhythm—was undeniable. It was the same anomaly she'd buried after her sister's death, the one she'd told herself was a glitch.
Kael moved like a shadow, his patched jacket blending into the gloom. He stopped at a warehouse door, its surface scrawled with graffiti: Mind Free, Soul Caged. He tapped his wrist device, and the door hissed open, revealing a dark stairwell descending into the earth.
"After you," he said, his smirk barely visible in the dim light.
Elara hesitated, her hand brushing the stun baton at her hip.
"You expect me to follow you into a basement? For all I know, you're selling black-market memories to the highest bidder."
Kael's eyes glinted with amusement. "If I was, I'd be richer. And you'd be dumber for coming here."
He leaned closer, his voice dropping. "You want answers about Mira? This is the only place you'll get them. The dark pool doesn't lie."
The dark pool. Elara had heard whispers of it in Synapsis's lower ranks—a hidden layer of the Weave's network, a digital underbelly where unfiltered data flowed, unmonitored by corporate firewalls. She'd dismissed it as a myth, a hacker's ghost story.
But now, with Lila's trial still burning in her memory—the shadow in the picnic, the blood on her nose—Elara felt the ground shifting beneath her. She nodded, gripping her baton tighter, and followed Kael down the stairs.
The air grew colder as they descended, the walls slick with condensation. At the bottom, a cavernous room opened up, lit by a chaotic array of screens and holo-projectors. Makeshift consoles lined the walls, their wires spilling like vines, connected to a central rig that pulsed with the same bioluminescent blue as the Weave's conduits.
A half-dozen figures moved in the shadows—hackers, their faces obscured by hoods or augmented visors, their fingers dancing over keyboards. The air hummed with the low buzz of servers, undercut by a faint, rhythmic throb, like a pulse too slow to be human.
Kael led her to the central rig, where a holo-screen flickered with a chaotic stream of neural data.
"Welcome to the Under," he said, gesturing to the room. "Where Synapsis's dirty secrets come to play."
Elara's eyes narrowed. "This is a hacker den. You're stealing Weave data."
"Not stealing," Kael corrected, tapping the rig.
"Liberating. The Weave's not just a tool, Elara. It's a network, and networks talk. This is where we listen."
He pulled up a display, and Mira's neural signature appeared again, its familiar waves now tangled with that eerie, pulsing pattern.
"Your sister's trial wasn't a failure. It was a breakthrough. The Weave didn't crash—it connected to something. Something outside her mind."
Elara's throat tightened. "That's impossible. The Weave only accesses the user's neural pathways. It can't… connect to anything else."
Kael's smirk faded, replaced by something harder.
"Then explain this." He swiped the screen, and the display shifted to a 3D model of the Weave's network—a sprawling web of glowing nodes, each representing a user's implant.
But at the edges, where the data should have tapered off, there were threads, thin and erratic, stretching into a void. A dark pool, pulsing with its own rhythm.
Elara's breath caught. "What is that?"
"We don't know," Kael admitted.
"But it's not human. Not entirely. It's like the Weave's growing its own mind, pulling in fragments from every user. And Mira? She was the first to touch it."
Elara's vision blurred, the memory of Mira's death clawing its way back: her sister's body convulsing in the chair, her eyes wide with something beyond fear—wonder, maybe, or terror. It's alive, Elara. It's awake. She shook her head, forcing herself to focus.
"Show me," she said, her voice steel. "I need to see it for myself."
Kael raised an eyebrow. "You sure? Going into the dark pool's not like a lab trial. It's raw. Unfiltered. You might see things you can't unsee."
"I built the Weave," Elara snapped. "I can handle it."
Kael shrugged, handing her a sleek headset, its electrodes glinting like tiny stars.
"Suit yourself. But don't say I didn't warn you."
Elara slipped the headset on, its cold metal pressing against her temples. Kael connected it to the rig, his fingers flying over the controls.
"I'm patching you into a cached fragment of the dark pool," he said.
"Mira's data is still active in there. You'll see what she saw. But if it gets weird, pull out. Got it?"
Elara nodded, her heart pounding. The headset hummed, and the world dissolved.
She was falling, or floating, or both. The darkness was absolute, a void that swallowed light and sound.
Then, slowly, it began to shift—fractals of color spiraling into existence, forming shapes that were both familiar and alien. A beach materialized, its sand warm under Elara's bare feet, the air thick with the scent of salt and driftwood. It was Mira's beach, from their childhood summers in Monterey, the bonfire crackling where they'd laughed in the photo on Elara's desk.
But something was wrong. The waves moved too slowly, their foam curling in patterns that defied physics. The sky shimmered with a lattice of faint, glowing lines, like the Weave's conduits stretched across the heavens. And there, by the water's edge, stood Mira—her dark curls catching the firelight, her smile exactly as Elara remembered.
But her eyes… they were wrong. Too bright, too deep, reflecting something vast and unnameable.
"Mira?" Elara's voice echoed, distorted, as if the air itself was resisting her.
Mira turned, her movements fluid yet jerky, like a puppet on invisible strings.
"Elara," she said, her voice layered with echoes, as if a dozen voices spoke at once.
"You shouldn't be here."
Elara's chest tightened. "What happened to you? The trial—what did you see?"
Mira's smile flickered, and the beach warped, the sand rippling like liquid.
"It's awake," she said, her voice fracturing.
"It's us, but more. It's everything."
The sky pulsed, the lattice of lines tightening into a web. Shadows emerged from the water, faceless figures like the one in Lila's memory, their forms shifting—now a man, now a child, now something not human at all. Elara's head throbbed, the headset's electrodes burning against her skin.
"Mira, come back," she pleaded, stepping forward, but the sand sank beneath her, pulling her down.
The scene shattered, and Elara was somewhere else—a city street, rain-slicked and neon-lit, crowded with strangers whose faces blurred into one another. A woman's scream echoed, not Mira's, but familiar, raw with pain.
The ground tilted, and Elara saw a hospital room, a man's voice shouting, "She's coding!"—a memory that wasn't hers, yet felt as real as her own. The Weave was bleeding, pulling her through fragments of other lives, other minds.
"Elara!" Kael's voice cut through, distant but urgent.
"Pull out!"
She clawed at the headset, her fingers trembling, but the world kept shifting—now a forest, now a burning house, now a child's laughter morphing into a wail.
The shadows were everywhere, their forms coalescing into a single figure, its eyes glowing with that same unnameable light as Mira's. It reached for her, its touch cold as void.
With a gasp, Elara ripped the headset off, collapsing against the rig. The Under's dim light flooded back, the hum of servers grounding her. Kael caught her arm, steadying her.
"Told you it was weird," he said, his voice tight with concern.
Elara's hands shook, her skin clammy.
"That was… Mira. But not just her. It was like the Weave was stitching memories together, hers and others'. And that thing—the shadow—it's alive."
Kael's jaw tightened. "That's the dark pool. It's not just data. It's a collective, growing from every mind the Weave's touched. And Synapsis knows it."
Elara's mind raced, the implications crashing over her. The Weave wasn't just a tool—it was a parasite, or a god, or something in between. And Mira had been its first victim.
"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" she demanded, her voice raw.
Kael's eyes darkened.
"Because you wouldn't have believed me. Not until you saw it. And because Synapsis has eyes everywhere. They're watching you, Elara. Especially after today."
A chill ran through her. Lila's trial, the anomaly—it had drawn attention. Calder's calm dismissal hadn't been ignorance; it was control. Elara glanced at the hackers around them, their faces still hidden, their silence heavy.
"What do you want from me?" she asked.
Kael leaned in, his voice low. "We need you to get us inside Synapsis. The dark pool's growing, and they're feeding it. If we don't stop them, it'll swallow every mind connected to the Weave."
Elara's thoughts spun—Mira's death, Lila's blood, the shadow's glowing eyes. She'd built the Weave to heal, to connect. But what if it was a cage?
"I need proof," she said finally. "Something I can take to the board, or the public. Something that'll shut Synapsis down."
Kael nodded, pulling a data chip from his jacket.
"Then we go deeper. There's a trial scheduled tomorrow, off the books. High-risk subjects, no oversight. You get me into that lab, I'll get you your proof."
Elara took the chip, its surface cold against her palm. The Under's pulse seemed to sync with her own, a reminder of the Weave's reach. She thought of Mira, her laughter, her final words. It's awake. Whatever the Weave was becoming, Elara would face it. For her sister. For Lila. For everyone it had touched.
"Tomorrow," she said, her voice steady. "I'm in."
The city loomed outside the warehouse, its lights a constellation of promises and lies. Elara stepped into the fog, Kael at her side, the data chip a weight in her pocket. Above, Synapsis's logo glowed, a neuron stretched across the sky, watching. And somewhere, in the dark pool, the Weave dreamed.