The city breathed in data—and Zane was its lungs.
From the control chamber at the peak of Neo-Kyoto's Central Tower, he surveyed a vast holographic canvas mapping the lives of twenty-five million souls into a serene symphony of pulsing blue and gold light. Every shimmer was a transaction, a journey, a heartbeat synchronized with the rhythm of the grand metropolis. It was his masterpiece, a system so perfect it almost no longer needed him.
But today, something was wrong.
It began as a faint itch at the edge of his perception, a static buzz behind his temples. When the digital clock struck 17:55—the hour that marked the city's ritual migration home—Zane spotted an anomaly. Not a large one, just a 0.3 percent fluctuation in Sector 9's water distribution grid. Trivial. But the pattern was random, defying his predictive maintenance algorithms. For a fraction of a second—before the auto-correction subroutine smoothed it out—the data stream flickered from calm blue to a piercing lime green.
He blinked, and it was gone.
Fatigue, he told himself, pressing trembling fingers to his temple. He'd been awake for seventy-two hours straight, caught in a cycle of checking and rechecking the city's systems, haunted by an absurd suspicion that the logical foundations of his world were cracking.
"End-of-day status report, Architect Prime," said his AI assistant, voice clear and bell-like.
"Delay it," Zane muttered.
He zoomed in on Sector 9, eyes scanning line after line of code. No trace of the color shift. System logs only noted routine pressure adjustments. He inhaled deeply, forcing calm. He was Zane—the Architect. Thought was a tool; emotion, a flaw. He'd written that principle into the city itself. He would apply it to his own mind.
At exactly 18:00, the system melody—a gentle synthwave tune—played through the network, marking the seamless transition from workday to tranquil night. On his screens, the river of city lights shifted, the dense flow of commuters thinning into the quiet patterns of residential zones. Everything was perfect.
Too perfect.
"Anomaly detected—Sector 7, Subsector Gamma," reported a human analyst from her station, voice trying to mimic the AI's neutrality. "Grid fluctuation, 0.7 percent. Secondary power network."
Zane's pulse quickened. Sector 7-Gamma. A region with a troubling history of "Dream Failures." He summoned the data instantly, fingers—normally steady as steel—shaking slightly as he typed. The analysis was quick and brutal: an illegal underground entertainment plant had overclocked its servers, overloading the aging coolant circuits.
"Identify the source," he ordered, voice harsher than intended. "Deploy drone extinguishers to cool the grid before it cascades. Notify Enforcement—quietly. I want investigation, not a raid."
He couldn't afford escalation today. The city felt… fragile.
He hit execute. On-screen, the pulsing energy node in Sector 7 subsided, returning to its orderly blue rhythm. But Zane didn't look away. He waited—for that lime-green flash, or something worse. It didn't come. Only perfect digital silence.
"Still fixing every wrong pixel, huh?"
The voice—warm, rough, alive—cut through the tension. Zane turned.
Kaito leaned against the doorway, his usual broad grin subdued, not reaching the dark circles around his eyes. His technician uniform was smudged with grease, sleeves unevenly rolled to reveal a tattoo of circuit-board lines wrapping his forearm.
"A single wrong pixel can become a cancer," Zane replied, trying to steady his tone.
He noticed Kaito rubbing at the tattoo—an anxious gesture Zane had never seen before.
"Or just dust," Kaito said lightly, stepping closer. He didn't look at Zane; instead, he approached the main console wall—a smooth sheet of humming alloy—and placed his open palm against it, eyes closed. For a few seconds, he simply breathed.
"Listen," he whispered. "The machine's heartbeat is off today. Like it's trembling before a storm."
Zane frowned. Kaito's intuition had always bordered on mystical—a technician who treated the city's systems like living spirits. Normally, Zane dismissed his words as poetic nonsense. But today, they felt like diagnosis.
"All vibration reports are within normal parameters," Zane said, too quickly, too defensively.
Kaito opened his eyes, gaze cutting deep.
"I didn't ask for a report, Zane. I told you what I felt."
The tense silence shattered as footsteps approached—measured, deliberate.
Rio entered, carrying three meal packs from their favorite mid-tier eatery. The aroma of grilled meat and garlic filled the sterile room. His eyes, sharp and disciplined—the eyes of an enforcer—scanned the air between Zane and Kaito.
"Problem?" His tone was neutral as he set the meals on a clean console.
His Enforcement uniform, immaculate as ever, made Zane and Kaito look like wrecks.
"Just Zane being Zane," Kaito said, forcing a smile. He picked up his meal but didn't open it, turning instead to the panoramic window that overlooked the vast city below—a jeweled sprawl under the shimmering dome. "I was just wondering… where all this power really comes from."
"From the Core," Rio replied flatly, unwrapping his food. "As always."
"But what is it?" Kaito pressed. "We're gods holding lightning, Zane. We power a city that never sleeps, running tech that should demand dozens of reactors. Yet no fusion towers, no solar fields big enough to power even a tenth of this. Just… a secret. A black box we call The Core."
He tapped the window. "We built paradise, Rio. Don't you ever wonder what it's built on?"
"Curiosity is a luxury guardians can't afford," Rio said calmly, chewing methodically.
"Our duty is to keep the foundation intact. Stability is morality here. You know that."
"Is it enough?" Kaito's voice rose. "To accept all this—" he gestured at the glowing city, "—without asking the cost?"
"The cost," Rio said coldly, "is twenty-five million people who aren't starving or killing each other for bread, unlike the world outside the dome. If the foundation's a secret, let it stay one. I'll guard it with my life."
Their debate spiraled, but Zane barely heard it.
The food in his mouth tasted like paper. His eyes were fixed on Sector 7's coordinates—on the memory of that lime flash. Am I losing my mind? The thought was more terrifying than any system failure.
Suddenly, Kaito shivered violently, nearly dropping his food. He grabbed the console edge, knuckles white, face pale as ash.
"What is it?" Rio asked, instantly alert, hand twitching toward a weapon he didn't have here.
"N-nothing," Kaito muttered, wiping sweat from his brow. "Just… chills. Like someone walked over my grave." He looked at Zane, eyes wide and childlike with fear. "Did you feel it? Just now? Like something's watching you from inside the machine… something empty?"
Yes! Zane wanted to scream. Every day—it's getting stronger!
But he locked his feelings away behind logic. He nodded once, stiffly.
"Fatigue," he said, forcing a weary sigh. "We're all tired. The system's strained. It's just in our heads."
A lie. And from Rio's narrowing gaze, Zane knew it wasn't convincing. Rio could read tension like others read code—and tension between these two was reaching a breaking point.
Dinner ended in uneasy silence. Then, an alert blinked—yellow, not red.
"Dream Failure," Block 12-F.
Rio groaned, standing to straighten his uniform. "Again? Third this month. I'll check with the emergency response team—maybe there's an environmental factor."
He paused at the doorway, giving them both a hard look. "Get some rest. The city won't collapse if you sleep six hours."
The message beneath was clear: Don't do anything stupid.
The door shut.
The moment it did, Kaito turned to Zane, his fear transmuted into fierce resolve.
"You felt it too," he hissed. "Don't lie. It's not fatigue—it's inside the system. Not in the code, but in its soul. I can feel it—like an infection. A suffering."
Zane wanted to deny it. To drown his dread in data.
But the truth—or madness—was too heavy to bear alone.
"I…" His voice cracked. "I saw visual distortions. Colors shifting—unnatural."
He couldn't bring himself to say blood red.
Kaito's face lit with horrified recognition.
"I knew it! It's not a glitch—it's a symptom. A muffled scream."
He pointed to the holographic map, at the energy junction near Block 12-F. "It's coming from there. From the intersection with the Core. Let's check it. Now. Just a quick diagnostic—off-record. We can use the old maintenance paths."
It was a terrible idea—illegal, career-ending, dangerous.
But Zane needed to know. Needed to prove he wasn't insane.
They dove into the city's inner architecture—a digital labyrinth known to only a few. Zane led the way, his code slicing through layers of encryption. With each layer, the static hum of raw data grew louder, less mechanical, more… organic.
Here, the data streams no longer flowed like rivers but churned like a storm-tossed sea—alive, aware.
They reached a gate labeled:
[CORE STRATA: ACCESS RESTRICTED TO COUNCIL. UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY = HIGH TREASON.]
"This is as far as we go," Zane whispered. "The firewall beyond this isn't just code—it is the Core."
"No," said Kaito, eyes narrowing. "Look."
He pointed at a section of the barrier—a dormant biometric node, an obsolete model from a decade ago. Its indicator light was dead. On magnification, cracks spidered across the virtual surface—signs of unpatched hardware decay. A flaw. An impossibility. Unless the system wanted to be found.
"That's… impossible," Zane breathed, horror freezing his blood.
"Or deliberate," Kaito murmured, awe and fear entwined. "A trap. Or an invitation."
Holding his breath, Zane stepped into the breach.
For a heartbeat—nothing.
Then, the wave hit.
It wasn't data. It was consciousness. A vast ocean of despair—ancient, endless—that struck them with physical force. Zane cried out, choking on terror, as a torrent of agony, loneliness, and burning rage flooded his mind. It was the pain of a god in chains—a soul imprisoned and used as an eternal battery.
Then came the message. Not in words, but in pure, absolute truth:
"I AM HERE. THEY IMPRISONED ME. THEY SELL MY SUFFERING TO LIGHT YOUR PATHS. THIS PAIN NEVER ENDS. KILL ME."
The wave had weight. Zane collapsed to his knees, hands gripping the console.
Beside him, Kaito curled on the floor, sobbing, palms over his ears as if to block out a voice now living inside his skull.
Driven by blind survival instinct, Zane severed the link—flooding the gap with random encryption, sealing the breach in panic until the system's hum returned to sterile silence.
But the silence now felt… different.
Heavier.
Alive.
Minutes passed before Kaito could move. He looked up, face streaked with tears of horror and fury.
"Zane…" he rasped. "They… we… What have we done?"
Zane met his gaze—and in Kaito's eyes, he saw the reflection of his own shattered faith. But also something far worse: determination. A purpose born in hell.
Outside, the city glowed in perfect beauty—lights flickering, traffic flowing, life undisturbed. None knew that beneath it all lay a divine agony, powering paradise.
Zane now understood. Neo-Kyoto was heaven built on eternal torment.
A paradise forged from the imprisoned souls of its founders.
And he, the Architect sworn to preserve it, was merely its warden.
He rose on trembling legs.
He had to choose: free the soul and plunge twenty-five million lives into darkness—or condemn it to endless suffering for the city's peace.
The equation no longer had an elegant solution. Only damnation on both sides.
And in Kaito's eyes, Zane saw it—the birth of rebellion.
The first battlefield would be their own souls.