The tram groaned with each gust of wind, a long, hollow sound that blended with the crackle of half-dead neon outside. Lucien had barely moved since the system's last message faded. His hands still trembled, knuckles white around the cracked phone. Every beat of his heart felt too loud, like it was echoing through metal.
He could still taste iron in his mouth. Not blood—data. That was the strangest part. The aftertaste of the link had a texture, a static sharpness that coated his tongue and refused to fade.
The system was quiet now. No holographic light, no instructions, just the faint heartbeat pulse on the screen. He wanted to throw the thing away, let it clatter into the dark and be someone else. But he couldn't. It was more than a device now—it was a mirror, and it knew too much.
A low hiss drew his attention. The tram door had shifted, dislodged by the wind. Beyond it, the street flickered in the pale wash of broken billboards. The hunters were gone, but the memory of their voices lingered in the static around him. Lifestyle-Prime variant.
They hadn't been scavengers. They were part of something larger, something organized enough to know his system by name.
Lucien forced himself to stand. His knees ached; his vision swam. The system had warned him about neural strain, and he could feel the truth of it now—his body felt half-borrowed. Every movement carried a whisper of delay, like he was walking a half-second behind himself.
He stepped out into the street. The night air bit at his skin, sharp with rust and smoke. Far above, the Upper District's towers shimmered faintly through the fog, a sky of unreachable light. The sight used to make him angry. Tonight it only made him curious.
If he'd really seen that lab, if the silver-eyed man was real, then those towers might hold more than wealth. They might hold answers.
Something fluttered by his feet. A scrap of paper—real paper, not digital print. He bent to pick it up, fingers brushing grime. It was a flyer, half-burned, advertising "Community Optimization – Core Division Recruitment." In small letters at the bottom: Volunteers required for lifestyle calibration.
He folded it and tucked it into his pocket. A coincidence, maybe. Or the world aligning itself to a new pattern he couldn't yet read.
A siren wailed somewhere to the west. Lucien turned instinctively into a side alley. The air there was thicker, tinged with the smell of fried circuitry. Old screens hung on the walls, flickering with ghost images—adverts long since overwritten by decay. For a moment one of them flashed bright, showing his own reflection staring back. Then it blinked out.
He stopped beneath a staircase to catch his breath. The ground here was slick with oil and rain. Drips echoed down the metal rails. The city's hum never truly stopped; it just changed key.
Something moved above him—a soft shuffle of boots on metal. Lucien's hand went to the length of pipe he carried.
"Easy," a voice said. "I'm not one of them."
A figure crouched on the landing. A girl—maybe nineteen, maybe older, thin but sharp-eyed, her hair cut close to the skull except for a single long braid. She wore a patchwork jacket that hummed faintly with power lines stitched into it.
"How long were you watching?" Lucien asked.
"Long enough to see you take out two Hunters with your bare hands," she said. "People like that don't last in the District unless something else is helping them."
Lucien didn't answer. The girl smiled, faint but knowing.
"Name's Rhea," she said. "And before you ask—yeah, I've got one too."
She lifted her wrist. Embedded just beneath the skin was a faint blue circle. A system mark.
Lucien's pulse jumped. "You're a user."
"Was," she corrected. "Mine burned out a year ago. I survived the wipe, barely." She dropped from the stairs and landed lightly in front of him. "You're new. The glow in your eyes gives it away."
He frowned. "Glow?"
She nodded. "When the system's fresh, it leaves residue. Like light under your skin." Her expression shifted, wary. "Yours is different though. Older. Deeper."
Lucien looked away, uneasy. The system had warned him about visibility before—digital signatures, trace data. Maybe that's how the hunters found him.
Rhea studied him for a moment longer, then said quietly, "You should hide it. They'll track that pulse in a day."
"Who's 'they'?"
"The Collectors," she said. "Corporate retrieval units. They round up failed or corrupted users. If they called your model Prime Variant, you're worth dissecting."
Lucien's stomach tightened. "You seem to know a lot."
"I had to," Rhea replied. "The system doesn't tell you what it costs until you've already paid."
For a heartbeat, neither of them spoke. Wind hissed through the alley. The lights overhead buzzed and went out, plunging them into darkness.
Lucien felt the system stir inside his mind—a faint warning hum. Rhea reacted first, pressing her hand to the wall. Small sparks jumped from her fingertips; hidden circuits lit up in pale blue lines.
"Power drain," she whispered. "They're scanning."
The word sent a shiver through him. He could feel it too now—a subtle vibration, a low tone beneath hearing, like the city itself was breathing differently.
Rhea grabbed his arm. "Move."
They slipped through a side door into the shell of an old shop. Dust layered every surface; mannequins stood like ghosts in the gloom. Rhea led him through a narrow corridor to a stairwell that spiraled downward. The air grew colder with each step.
When they reached the basement, she stopped and pulled a rusted grate aside. Behind it was a tunnel, low and wet.
"Old transport lines," she said. "The scans don't reach this deep."
Lucien ducked inside. The darkness closed around them, broken only by the dim light of Rhea's jacket wires. The tunnel stretched ahead like a throat.
"You said your system burned out," he said quietly. "How?"
She hesitated. "Overuse. Curiosity. Doesn't matter. What matters is—whatever's in you isn't supposed to exist."
Lucien felt the weight of the phone in his pocket. "Then what am I supposed to do with it?"
Rhea gave a dry laugh. "Survive long enough to decide."
They walked in silence for a while. The tunnel curved sharply, ending in a small chamber filled with old terminals and scavenged generators. A makeshift shelter. Rhea lit a lantern and motioned for him to sit.
The air smelled of ozone and metal. Lucien's exhaustion settled in all at once, dragging at his limbs. Rhea tossed him a canteen. "Water. Don't ask where it came from."
He drank anyway. The coolness steadied him.
Rhea sat opposite him, watching. "The Prime Variant isn't just stronger," she said finally. "It's adaptive. Self-correcting. The Core created it to merge human intuition with system logic. They ran tests years ago. All failed."
Lucien's throat went dry. "Failed how?"
"They lost themselves. The system rewrote their memories until they weren't human anymore." She leaned forward. "If you saw something—visions, voices—you're already halfway there."
He looked down at the phone. Its screen pulsed once, as if acknowledging her words.
"I saw a lab," he said softly. "A man with silver eyes. He called me Subject L."
Rhea's expression changed. "Then you're not a random case. You're a leftover."
Lucien frowned. "A what?"
"An original host," she said. "A prototype they thought was erased."
The room seemed to shrink around him. His pulse thundered in his ears.
"If that's true," he said, "then why am I here?"
Rhea met his gaze. "Maybe because something in that system wants to finish what it started."
For a long time, neither spoke. The hum of the old generators filled the space, steady and low.
Lucien felt the system stir again, a whisper brushing the edge of his mind. He couldn't make out the words this time—only a feeling. Recognition.
He stood slowly, staring into the darkness of the tunnel beyond the chamber.
"Then I need to find out what it remembers," he said.
Rhea sighed. "And if it remembers too much?"
Lucien looked at her, eyes calm, voice low. "Then I'll remind it who I am first."
The lantern flickered, throwing their shadows long against the wall. Outside, somewhere above the layers of earth and iron, the city kept breathing, unaware that one of its ghosts had just decided to stop running.