The Hollows didn't sleep.
It breathed.
Julian stepped off the elevated transit pod at Sector 7, Junction Hollow, and the city hit him like a chord played too close to the ear. Neon glyphs pulsed on wet synth-stone walls, advertising "dream edits" and "voice grafting." A street performer in a kinetic exo-suit danced silently, limbs trailing afterimages that dissolved into ash-flakes. Somewhere above, a choir of looped whispers—sampled from old civic recordings—floated between fire escapes like ghosts debating rent.
He checked his burner data pad. Balance: 1,842 Veyra Credits.
Enough for three nights in a capsule hostel. Not enough for mistakes.
He'd studied The Hollows for years from afar, maps, feeds, underground artist manifestos, but nothing prepared him for the sheer density of need and invention. Booths lined the alleys: one sold emotion-tuned incense ("Grief, citrus base- good for closure"); another offered 10-minute "narrative triage" for broken story arcs.
This is where stories are born, he thought. Not in boardrooms. Here, where they have to fight to be heard.
He found The Static Bunk three blocks in, a hostel carved into the shell of a decommissioned resonance generator. The clerk, a woman with data-tattoos crawling up her neck, barely glanced at his chip.
"Name?"
"Lennox."
"Real name or stage name?"
Julian hesitated. "Both, I guess."
She snorted, slid a key-bead across the counter. "Room 412. Hot water runs from 3 to 4 a.m. Don't touch the wall panels, they bite."
The room was smaller than his closet at Veridian Estate. One cot. One flickering wall-light. One window that looked directly into the glowing eye of a public dream-installation titled "Mother's Lullaby (Corrupted)".
He dropped his case on the floor.
And for the first time in his life, Julian Thorne sat alone in silence that hadn't been engineered for him.
It was terrifying.
It was free.
By dawn, he was at The Mute Gallery, a repurposed substation turned artist co-op, known for launching "un-fundable" projects. He'd read about it in a shadow-zine called Echo Flesh.
The gallery was already buzzing. A group of sound weavers tested harmonic drones against corroded pipe walls. A choreographer mapped movement paths onto a floor that responded with pressure-light. No one wore labels. No one asked where you were from. They asked: What are you making?
Julian approached the front desk, a slab of reclaimed transit glass manned by a man with silver irises and three ear cuffs.
"I'd like to pitch a project," Julian said.
The man didn't look up. "Pitches are Tuesdays. You need a referral or a completed prototype."
"I don't have either."
"Then you don't have a pitch."
Julian's throat tightened. He'd walked out on a dynasty. He could handle this.
He unzipped his case and pulled out his mother's camera. Not digital. Not smart. Just glass, metal, and memory.
"I have this."
The man finally looked up. "An analog imager? You're joking."
"It captures what sensors miss," Julian said. "The weight in a glance. The pause before a lie. The way light clings to someone who's about to break."
He held it out. "Let me document your space for one cycle. Not as a promotion. As… witness. If you hate it, you delete it. If you don't… maybe I will earn a Tuesday."
The man studied him, the expensive posture, the too-clean hands, the desperation carefully folded beneath calm.
"Name?"
"Lennox."
"Fine, Lennox. One cycle. But if you're a trust-fund ghost playing poorly for aesthetics, I'll feed your camera to the resonance rats."
Julian almost laughed. If only you knew.
He spent the next sixteen hours in The Mute Gallery.
He didn't shoot grand scenes. He shot the in-between:
A dancer's blistered heel pressing into reactive floor tiles
A composer spitting out a tuning fork, frustrated
The way dust motes danced in the beam of a failing holo-projector
The quiet nod between two strangers who'd just realized their art was speaking the same language
At midnight, he uploaded the raw feed to a public archive under the title: "Still Breathing – Cycle 0".
No credits. No logo. Just 97 seconds of unfiltered creation.
He didn't expect anything.
But by morning, a message pinged on his burner:
Sender: K. VALE
Subject: Re: Still Breathing
Who the hell are you?
And why did you film my synth-resin violin like it was mourning its own strings?
—K
Julian stared at the name.
Kira Vale.
He'd heard whispers. The composer who'd turned subway tunnels into symphonies. The one who'd walked out on the Grand Atrium Commission because they wanted to "optimize her frequencies for mass appeal."
He typed back, fingers steady:
Just someone listening.
He didn't add his name.
Not yet.
Outside, the city hummed—alive, indifferent, full of echoes waiting to be claimed.
And for the first time, Julian Lennox felt like he might be one of them.