The hatch let out a long, metallic groan as it sealed behind me.
Four layers of reinforced steel. One access port. No network feed. Nothing smart. Just dead cables and air that smelled like rusted data.
The lab was buried three levels beneath a Helix blacksite I helped decommission five years ago. Back then, it had been a front for a biotech firm doing unauthorized synthetic cognition trials. Helix moved in quietly, stripped the equipment, and buried the place under a false name and three floors of concrete.
But I remembered.
It wasn't much. Just fragments. Floorplans. An old clearance code burned into the back of my mind. Enough to get me inside. Enough to buy a few hours of silence.
I scanned the interior with a handheld bio-sweep. Nothing alive. No power signatures. Just layered dust and the distant creak of an old world forgetting itself.
Good.
I didn't need ghosts. I had enough of those already.
The central console still hummed faintly when I booted it with a direct line to my slate. The OS was decades old, analog shell, offline by default, no sync ports. A miracle in this age of surveillance. I ran a cold start, bypassing the retinal security, and loaded my own diagnostic matrix into the core.
The goal was simple: cut the thread.
I couldn't risk another bleed. Not out there. Not while the signal was still flaring. I needed to isolate the resonance layer in my implant, filter out the anomalies, and firewall the emotional feedback. Everything else could wait.
The first sweep came back stable. No infections. No external hooks. No inbound pings.
But the moment I tried to engage the firewall, the system stalled.
The console's screen flickered once. Then twice.
And then it spoke.
> PROXY GHOST RECOGNIZED.
I froze.
Two signals appeared on the feed.
[SIGNAL A] — Codename: AARON
[SIGNAL B] — Codename: Lyra
My lungs locked. That name again. Not a hallucination. Not a dream.
A system marker.
The chip wasn't malfunctioning. It wasn't infected. It was responding. Recognizing. Pairing.
The resonance wasn't accidental. It was part of the design.
Two chips. Two hosts.
I wasn't just carrying a fragment. I was half of a whole.
I ran a secondary probe into the chip's architecture — bypassing Helix parameters and military overlays. Deep under the surface code, a data structure began to take shape.
Organic. Modular. Beautiful in its complexity.
Neuroid.
Not myth. Not theory. A living system designed to link minds, share memory, pass emotion. And maybe… more.
I backed away from the console, heart pounding in my throat. My hands were shaking.
A new prompt blinked into view.
A voice file. Corrupted. Partial. But intact enough to play.
I hesitated.
Then hit execute.
The speakers crackled. Static. Then a voice. Female. Calm. Not synthetic.
> "If you're hearing this… it means they found you first."
I couldn't place it. Not exactly. But something in me flinched.
The voice wasn't from a file.
It was from a memory.
Mine. Or… someone else's.
The chip vibrated beneath my skin. Not pain. Not pressure. Just readiness. Like something waking up.
Another pulse hit.
No warning.
My eyes rolled back…
And I saw through someone else.
A woman. Mid-thirties. Dark hair. White coat. She was typing something rapidly into a lab console surrounded by blue glass. The air felt sterile. Cold.
She paused. Looked up. Not at me. At someone else. Just out of frame. Her pulse quickened. She masked it well, but I could feel it.
Fear.
Not of being caught.
Of being discovered.
Her name formed in my chest before my mind could shape it.
Lyra.
She didn't know I was watching. She didn't even know I existed.
And yet her pulse matched mine.
The bleed broke. My vision snapped back. I was on the floor, chest heaving, every nerve in my body lit like wire.
The link wasn't just stronger. It was stabilizing.
And she had no idea.
I rose to my feet, shaky, dragging in air. The console dimmed. The data vanished. Not deleted. Just hidden. Waiting.
I whispered the name aloud.
"Lyra…"
It didn't echo. It didn't fade.
The lab lights flickered once.
And in the dark corner of the room, something moved.
I wasn't alone.