The rain hadn't stopped all night. It painted the rooftops in streaks of mercury and wrapped the lower sectors of Fallen in a sleepless haze. Luka reached his flat just before dawn — one of those narrow, rust-stained capsules stacked above the transit rails — and locked the door behind him twice.
The hum of the module hadn't faded.He placed it on the table, where light from the window trembled over its silver shell. It pulsed faintly, once every few seconds, like a heartbeat testing its rhythm.
He leaned against the counter, drenched, exhausted, but awake in every nerve.It wasn't guilt that kept him standing. It was curiosity.Bright Lab had built something that shouldn't exist — or shouldn't be hidden.
He wiped his hands on his jacket, pulled the stolen folder from beneath his shirt, and spread the pages across the table. Some were damaged by moisture, the ink smeared like bruises, but the diagrams were still there — vascular blueprints, resonance mapping, and handwritten annotations that spoke in riddles.
"Stabilization achieved at 12% — host compatible only through direct tuning.""Artificial resonance matrix unstable without organic feedback.""Do not expose to non-Resonant subjects — risk of sympathetic echo."
Luka read until his vision blurred.Half the terms were beyond his training, but the pattern was clear: they had solved artificial resonance. They had made hearts that could pretend to be divine.
He remembered the faces of supervisors who'd told him he "lacked the profile."The quiet way they'd said it, as if reading a sentence from a script written by gods above them.Maybe the gods bled circuitry too.
He rummaged through his drawers for tools — pliers, microtorch, and a worn-out interface pad he'd built years ago. The screen flickered to life with an old logo: AetherScan v2.3 — unauthorized firmware.
"Let's see what you're hiding," he murmured.
The module resisted at first, like it recognized the intrusion. Data hissed in corrupted lines, encrypted, looping back into itself. But then — a flicker. The pad's signal sync'd briefly, and an interface opened:
ACCESS RESTRICTED. IDENTIFY RESONANT SIGNATURE.
Luka snorted. "Yeah, sure. Because I have one of those."He bridged two nodes manually, rerouting the scan through the analog port. Sparks whispered.Then — to his surprise — the module answered.
A faint light seeped through the grooves, expanding in rhythmic waves that matched his pulse.For a moment, it almost heard him.Then it shut down, lights dimming back to silence.
He sat back, pulse racing. "That shouldn't have happened…"
The folder's side note echoed in his mind: "Sympathetic echo."Had he somehow triggered it by proximity? Was it reading his own heartbeat?
He leaned closer, studying the shell. Inside, something like fluid shimmered in geometric veins.An imitation of life, built on stolen logic.If this thing could respond to him — even by accident — then maybe it could be tuned.
He stayed up through the morning.By sunrise, his apartment looked like an autopsy lab — wires snaking across the floor, tools stacked over old plates, and his fingers trembling from caffeine and adrenaline. He didn't care. For the first time, he felt something close to belief.
When he finally stepped out onto the balcony, the city was awake again — glowing, deaf, perfect. He stared down at the crowds moving like circuitry beneath him. Somewhere among those people were the ones who owned everything: Bright, the Resonants, the buyers of power disguised as purity.
"They think only the chosen can shape Aetherion," he whispered, the wind swallowing his voice."But they forgot who builds their machines."
He turned back toward the table. The module pulsed once — faint, deliberate — like it agreed.