The sky above Edom Central flickered.
It was a glitch too subtle for most to notice—just a momentary skip in the pulse of the aerial grid, where the drones' lights blinked out of sync. But Lyra saw it. She had started seeing things most others ignored, and now she couldn't unsee them.
That morning, she didn't rush. Every movement was calculated to appear habitual, but inside her chest a quiet war had begun: between the safety of routine and the pull of something real.
The fragment of the message—"Be ready"—echoed beneath her skin.
In the housing corridor, silence reigned. People passed without acknowledging one another, just as always. But now Lyra noticed the tension in their shoulders, the way some glanced at security nodes too often, or not at all. Fear could not be expressed, but it leaked from their bodies like static from a frayed wire.
When she stepped onto the transport, the daily affirmations were still there, pulsing overhead:
"The Oracle watches so you may rest."
"Emotion creates division. Order creates unity."
But today, there was a delay between lines. A flicker. Then a repeat. The same phrase twice.
"Emotion creates division…"
"Emotion creates division…"
She scanned the others, looking for a reaction.
Nothing.
But one man—a sanitation technician sitting two rows away—tensed. Maintenance drones popped out of a compartment, like appendages tirelessly searching for any deviation, analyzing. His hands trembled in his lap. His eyes darted up, then down, and finally met hers for half a second too long.
She looked away immediately. But it was enough. He had seen it too.
The drones sounded an alarm when they detected a woman in her twenties, curled up to hide her fear, at the other end of the car.
—Alert: Deviation detected.—
In the next few seconds, one of the drones extracted an immobilizer. The woman began to scream and sob. Shortly after, heavily armed regime guards stormed into the car. They dragged her away, begging for mercy and pleading for death.
Lyra looked away to avoid the whole scene. No one intervened. No one raised their voice. Any deviation brought cruel consequences.
And so the journey continued, as if nothing had happened.
Sector 4-C was quieter than usual. A few workstations sat empty.
"Routine maintenance," said a voice through the intercom. "Temporary personnel reassignment."
A lie.
Lyra had learned to recognize the subtle shift in tone when the system was fabricating something. Not a flaw in programming, but the unmistakable inflection of concealment.
At her terminal, she linked to the neural grid. The moment the data stream opened, a flood of static washed over her mind.
Not random noise. A signal.
She focused, filtered the chaos. Her pulse quickened.
"Trace Point: 31.12.89-South. Expiring soon."
Encrypted. Brief. But left like a breadcrumb.
Coordinates?
She disconnected quickly, faking a sync error to mask her pause.
That night, in the seclusion of her apartment, Lyra reconstructed the coordinates using a topographic overlay hidden inside the recycling control feed. It took hours, but she located it: an old, sealed tunnel under the South Transit Hub, deep beneath the city.
Expiring soon.
The message wasn't meant to wait.
She sat still for almost an hour, her mind battling itself. If she stayed, nothing would change. If she went, she risked everything.
But hadn't something already begun to break the moment she saw that face? Hadn't the system already failed in the smallest of ways?
She dressed in her uniform, disabled the location tag on her collar ID, and left.
The Transit Hub was vast and ancient—predating the Oracle's direct control. Though most access tunnels were collapsed or sealed, freight sectors were less regulated.
She used a maintenance badge she'd quietly duplicated weeks ago. Her palms were slick with sweat as the elevator descended below the active zones.
Level -4.
Concrete. Steel. Rust. A place where the clean symmetry of Oracle design hadn't reached. The lights were flickering. Water dripped in rhythmic intervals. For the first time in years, Lyra breathed air that wasn't filtered.
The tunnel was narrow, lined with old transit cables and forgotten signage. She followed the markings etched in a barely visible sequence: triangles with a slash through the center.
A voice echoed.
Faint. Male.
Her heart seized.
She stepped slowly, hand brushing the wall, until she saw a silhouette kneeling beside a rusted panel. The figure turned.
It was him.
Not a memory. Not a glitch.
He looked older than the face she had glimpsed in the stream—worn, eyes sharp, hair tousled. Alive.
"You came," he said quietly.
She opened her mouth, but no sound emerged. Her thoughts were thunder.
He stood, stepping toward her without haste.
"I'm Cael."
She knew that already. But hearing it—from him—grounded it in reality.
"You're not the only one waking up," he added. "But we don't have much time."
He handed her something: a slim, matte-black device shaped like a shard. It pulsed faintly in her palm.
"What is it?" she whispered.
"A key."
He gestured toward the far end of the tunnel, where a circular door waited, ancient and sealed.
"We need to remember what they made us forget."
Then, from above, a mechanical whine cut through the quiet—a scanning drone descending.
Cael's expression hardened.
"No more time."
He grabbed her hand, and they ran.