Eira Quinn stared at the empty chair across from her.
It had been empty for three years.
She sat in the dim glow of her apartment, a half-empty bottle of whiskey on the table, a cigarette burning between her fingers. The smoke curled upward, disappearing into the shadows above.
Her brother's face stared back at her from the photo pinned to the wall. Smiling. Young. Alive.
Kade Quinn. Missing. Case #47819. Status: Unresolved.
She took a drag. Exhaled slowly.
The city outside her window hummed with chaos. Emergency vehicles screaming past. News drones circling like vultures. Everyone was talking about the disappearances. Hundreds gone in a single night. No trace. No explanation.
But Eira wasn't surprised.
She'd been waiting for something like this.
Her terminal beeped. A message from her supervisor at the Aetherion Cybercrime Division.
"Quinn. Get to HQ. Now."
She crushed the cigarette into the ashtray. Downed the rest of her drink. Grabbed her jacket and badge.
Before she left, she glanced at the photo one more time.
"I'm close, Kade," she whispered. "I know I am."
The door slid shut behind her.
Aetherion Cybercrime Division was a fortress of steel and glass buried in the heart of the city. Eira flashed her badge at the scanner and walked through the security checkpoint. Her boots echoed against the polished floors.
Agents rushed past her. Screens flashed red alerts. The whole building felt like it was holding its breath.
She took the elevator to the twelfth floor. Stepped into the briefing room.
Commander Voss stood at the head of the table. Tall. Gray-haired. Cold eyes that had seen too much.
"Quinn," he said without looking at her. "You're late."
"Traffic was hell," she said flatly.
He didn't smile. He never did.
"Sit."
She did.
The room went dark. A holographic display flickered to life above the table. Images of the missing people rotated slowly. Faces. Names. Locations.
"Last night at 3:15 a.m., six hundred and forty-three individuals across Aetherion received a signal through their neural implants," Voss said. "Within minutes, they vanished. No forced entry. No struggle. No bodies."
Eira's eyes narrowed. "Their implants still active?"
"Yes. Transmitting. But the people are gone."
"So someone pulled them into the Matrix."
Voss shook his head. "That's the problem. They're not in the Matrix. We've scanned every sector. Every simulation. Nothing. It's like they were erased."
Eira leaned forward. "What about the signal? Where did it come from?"
Voss hesitated. Just for a second. But she caught it.
"We don't know."
"Bullshit."
His jaw tightened. "Watch your mouth, Quinn."
"You're lying," she said evenly. "You know something."
The room went silent.
Voss stared at her. Then sighed.
"The signal originated from Subsector 7."
Eira's blood went cold.
"The Dead Zone," she said quietly.
"Yes."
She sat back. Her mind racing.
Subsector 7 was where her brother had been working before he disappeared. A classified AI project buried beneath the city. No one talked about it. No one was allowed to.
She'd tried for three years to get clearance. To dig into what Kade had been doing down there.
Every request was denied.
"Why are you telling me this?" she asked.
Voss pulled up another image. A man. Dark hair. Sharp features. Cold eyes.
"Because we think someone accessed the old servers," he said. "Someone with high-level clearance. Someone who knows how to move through the system without being seen."
Eira studied the face.
"Who is he?"
"Lucian Vale. Former cybernetic engineer for Aetherion. Went dark five years ago. Now he's a ghost. No records. No trail. But we picked up his signature last night. He was tracing the signal."
"So he's connected."
"Or he's hunting it. Same as us."
Eira's eyes stayed on the screen. Something about the man's face unsettled her. Not because he looked dangerous.
Because he looked empty.
"You want me to find him," she said.
"I want you to bring him in. Alive. He's the only lead we have."
She nodded. Stood.
"Quinn."
She stopped at the door.
"Be careful," Voss said. "Vale isn't like other hackers. He doesn't break the rules. He rewrites them."
She didn't answer. Just walked out.
Eira spent the next four hours combing through Vale's digital footprint.
It was almost nonexistent.
No social profiles. No bank accounts. No communication logs. The man had scrubbed himself from the grid.
But everyone left traces. You just had to know where to look.
She pulled up black market forums. Underground hacker networks. Places where people like Vale traded secrets and sold access.
And there it was.
A username. TheCipher.
No posts. No activity. But the account had been accessed twelve hours ago.
She traced the login. It bounced through seventeen proxies before landing on a physical location.
An apartment building in the Lower Reaches. Zone 9.
Eira grabbed her coat.
The Lower Reaches smelled like piss and rust.
Eira kept one hand near her sidearm as she walked through the narrow streets. Neon signs flickered above her. Voices shouted in a dozen languages. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed.
She found the building. Climbed the stairs to the twentieth floor. Stopped outside apartment 2047.
The door was cracked open.
She drew her weapon. Pushed it open slowly.
"Aetherion Cybercrime Division," she called out. "I'm coming in."
No answer.
She stepped inside.
The place was a mess. Screens everywhere. Wires tangled across the floor. The air was thick with smoke.
And in the center of the room, someone had smashed a mirror.
Glass covered the floor like snow.
Eira moved carefully. Checked the rooms. Empty.
She holstered her weapon and walked back to the main space. Her eyes scanned the screens. Most were dark. But one was still running.
A trace log.
She leaned closer.
The coordinates led to Subsector 7.
Her breath caught.
"He's going there," she whispered.
A voice came from behind her.
"You're in my chair."
Eira spun. Her hand flew to her gun.
Lucian Vale stood in the doorway. Calm. Still. His eyes locked on hers.
He didn't look surprised.
"You're a cop," he said flatly.
"Investigator," she corrected. "And you're coming with me."
He tilted his head slightly. "Why would I do that?"
"Because six hundred people are missing. And you were digging into the same signal that took them."
"So were you."
She blinked. "What?"
He stepped into the room. Slow. Measured.
"You think I don't know who you are, Eira Quinn?" he said. "Your brother worked on Project Lazarus. Subsector 7. He disappeared three years ago. You've been trying to find him ever since."
Her grip tightened on her weapon. "How do you know that?"
"Because I worked on it too."
The words hit her like a punch.
"You—" She stopped. Stared at him. "You knew Kade?"
Lucian didn't answer. He walked past her. Sat down at his desk. Pulled up a new screen.
"Your brother wasn't the first to disappear," he said quietly. "He was the thirty-seventh."
Eira's chest tightened. "What the hell is Project Lazarus?"
Lucian's fingers moved across the keys. A file appeared.
CLASSIFIED. LEVEL 10 CLEARANCE REQUIRED.
He bypassed it in three seconds.
The file opened.
Eira's blood turned to ice.
Images. Schematics. Test subjects.
And at the center of it all, a single phrase.
"THE MATRIX IS NOT A SIMULATION. IT IS A PRISON."
She looked at Lucian. "What does that mean?"
He turned to face her. His expression unreadable.
"It means your brother didn't disappear," he said. "He woke up."
Silence.
Eira's voice came out barely above a whisper.
"Where is he?"
Lucian stood. Grabbed a black jacket from the back of his chair.
"If you want answers," he said, "you'll have to come with me."
"Where?"
He looked at her. Cold. Certain.
"Subsector 7."
Some doors should never be opened.
But once you hear the knocking, you can't unhear it.