The rain never fell clean in the lower districts.
It slid instead—thick, oily drops streaking down broken concrete, gathering in gutters that glowed faintly green under malfunctioning streetlamps. Elyon pulled his coat tighter, not to keep warm—warmth was a luxury he'd forgotten how to want—but to keep the smell out. Rust, rot, burnt plastic. The city exhaled decay with every breath.
He counted his steps.
One. Two. Three.
If he lost count, he lost focus. If he lost focus, he died.
The alley narrowed ahead, walls leaning inward like they wanted to crush him. He'd taken this path a hundred times, memorized every crack, every loose brick. Tonight, though, something felt… misaligned. The echo of his boots came back half a beat late. The shadows stretched wrong, bending toward him as if curious.
Elyon swallowed.
You're tired, he told himself. That's all.
Hunger gnawed at his gut, sharp enough to feel like a blade twisting inside. Three days since his last real meal—if you could call nutrient sludge "real." The recycler station near Block Nine had shut down after a gang skirmish, and the black-market vendors were charging blood prices for scraps.
Still, he walked.
Survival didn't care about excuses.
His fingers brushed the inside of his pocket, checking—again—for the coin.
It was there.
Cold. Heavy. Wrong.
He didn't know why he carried it. He didn't remember where he'd gotten it. Only that the night he'd tried to throw it away, it had been back in his pocket by morning, edges digging into his thigh like a reminder.
The coin wasn't old in the way relics were old. Its surface was smooth, unmarred by time, yet fractured down the center by a jagged line that never quite stayed still. Sometimes the crack looked shallow. Sometimes impossibly deep, as if it split more than metal.
Elyon hated it.
He also couldn't let it go.
A shout echoed from the far end of the alley.
Elyon froze.
Boots. More than one set. Heavy. Purposeful.
Enforcers? No—their steps were too sloppy. Gangers, then. Or worse, scavvers desperate enough to kill for a coat.
He turned slowly, eyes scanning for exits. The fire ladder halfway down the wall was rusted through. The sewer grate at his feet was welded shut. Forward meant open street—light, witnesses. Back meant shadows.
He chose back.
The choice tasted like iron.
He broke into a run.
Rain splashed up his legs as he sprinted, lungs burning. A bottle shattered near his head, glass slicing his cheek. Warm blood mixed with rain, and for a moment the world tilted, colors smearing together like wet paint.
"Get him!" someone yelled.
Elyon vaulted over a collapsed barrier, boots skidding on slick stone. His mind raced—not with plans, but with memories he didn't want. The last time he'd run like this. The last time he'd been caught.
Pain bloomed across his ribs as something struck him from behind. He hit the ground hard, breath exploding from his chest. The coin slipped from his pocket, skittering across the concrete, spinning wildly before coming to rest near a flickering light.
The crack in it pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
Elyon reached for it instinctively—and froze.
The air felt heavier.
Not thicker. Heavier. As if gravity had leaned closer, curious about him too.
A boot pressed into his back, grinding him down. "Should've stayed where you were," a voice sneered. Young. Nervous. Dangerous.
Elyon's fingers twitched inches from the coin.
Don't, he told himself.
Every bad thing in his life had started with a choice made in desperation.
The boot lifted.
He grabbed the coin.
The world lurched.
For half a heartbeat, everything went silent. Rain hung in the air, droplets suspended like shards of glass. The alley stretched, folding inward, walls rippling as if made of water. Elyon's vision tunneled, filled with faint, flickering symbols he didn't understand—lines and fragments sliding past his thoughts, too fast to read.
A sound whispered inside his skull.
Not a voice. A signal.
—ARK-01—
Pain detonated behind his eyes.
Elyon screamed as time snapped back into place.
The rain fell.
The boot came down.
And then the man flying backward hit the wall with a crack loud enough to turn heads.
Elyon lay gasping, heart hammering, staring at his own hands. They trembled violently, veins lit faintly beneath his skin like dying embers. The coin was gone.
The others stared at him now—three of them—faces pale, eyes wide.
"What did you do?" one whispered.
Elyon didn't answer. He couldn't. His ears rang, filled with distant static, and beneath it, something else—an awareness he'd never had before. He could feel the space around him, the weight of objects, the fragile balance holding everything together.
It felt wrong.
Terrifying.
And powerful.
The nearest ganger lunged.
Elyon flinched—and the man tripped, slamming face-first into the ground as if shoved by invisible hands. Concrete cracked beneath him.
The others backed away.
"This isn't normal," one said, voice shaking. "This isn't—"
Elyon staggered to his feet, blood dripping from his chin. "I don't know what this is," he said hoarsely. "But if you don't leave—"
They ran.
He stood alone in the alley, rain soaking him through, the echo of that signal still humming in his bones.
—ARK-01 STANDBY—
The words weren't spoken. They pressed themselves into his awareness, leaving behind a residue of meaning without explanation. Elyon clutched his head, teeth clenched.
"No," he whispered. "No, no, no."
This was how it started. This was how people disappeared—how rumors were born. Abnormals. Cursed ones. Experiments gone wrong.
He'd seen what the city did to people like that.
Elyon forced himself to move.
He didn't go home. Home was a single room with a lock that barely worked and neighbors who noticed too much. Instead, he ducked into an abandoned transit tunnel, breath echoing in the dark.
Only when he was certain he was alone did he collapse against the wall.
His hands still glowed faintly.
The glow faded slowly, reluctantly, like a dying heartbeat.
Elyon laughed then—short, cracked, almost hysterical. "Of course," he muttered. "Of course this happens to me."
He pressed his palms into his eyes, trying to push the images away. The suspended rain. The warped alley. The feeling of something vast brushing against his existence and then withdrawing.
He hadn't gained anything.
He'd crossed a line.
Minutes passed. Or hours. Time felt unreliable now, stretching and snapping without warning.
When he finally stood, the tunnel felt different. Not brighter—just… clearer. He noticed details he never would have before: hairline fractures in the walls, the uneven pull of gravity near bent metal, the subtle hum beneath everything, like the city itself was whispering secrets.
That whisper grew louder as he stepped back into the streets.
Screens flickered overhead, broadcasting news feeds no one trusted. A headline scrolled past, distorted for a split second before correcting itself:
LOCAL DISTURBANCE — CAUSE UNKNOWN
Elyon's chest tightened.
He kept his head down and walked.
Every step felt like it mattered more than it should.
At the edge of the district, a checkpoint loomed—temporary barriers, drones hovering lazily above. Elyon slowed, heart pounding. He could still feel something coiled inside him, dormant but alert, like a muscle he didn't know how to relax.
A drone turned, sensors sweeping.
For one terrible moment, he felt seen.
—ANOMALY PROBABILITY: RISING—
The whisper returned, sharper this time.
"Stop," Elyon breathed. "Just stop."
The drone drifted past.
He exhaled shakily and slipped into the crowd beyond the checkpoint, vanishing into a sea of bodies all struggling to survive their own quiet catastrophes.
But the city felt thinner now.
As if the veil between what was real and what was possible had torn just enough to let something watch him back.
Elyon didn't know it yet, but the coin had never been the anomaly.
He was.
And somewhere, deep beneath layers of forgotten systems and broken protocols, ARK-01 shifted out of true dormancy for the first time in centuries.
—CHOICE REGISTERED—
The echo followed him into the dark.