The air in Sector 4 always tasted like rust and cheap ozone.
I squeezed my eyes shut, pressing my back against the cold, vibrating metal of the ventilation shaft. My lungs burned. Every breath felt like inhaling ground glass. Below me, the rhythmic heavy thud of combat boots echoed against the concrete floor.
Black Archive enforcers.
They weren't here for the contraband. They weren't even here for the illegal stims we'd been moving.
They were here for the pulse.
That low, rhythmic hum that had been vibrating in my skull for the last ten minutes. It wasn't a sound. It was a pressure. A physical weight that made my teeth ache and my vision blur into static.
"Search every crate!" a voice barked below. It was cold, clinical. "The resonance signature originated from this loading bay. If the Shard is lost, none of you are leaving this sector alive."
I looked down at the small, obsidian cylinder clutched in my shaking hands.
It was no larger than a vial of medicine.
Inside, something moved. It wasn't liquid, and it wasn't solid. It was a swirl of violet smoke that seemed to defy the dim emergency lighting of the warehouse. It pulsed like a dying heart.
This was a Shard. A piece of the Broken God.
To the Church, it was a holy relic. To the Corporations, it was the ultimate battery. To me?
It was a death sentence.
I shouldn't have taken the job. Ryuji had told me it was simple. A quick "grab and go" from the transport truck. He said the security would be light.
Ryuji was currently a smear of red on the pavement outside.
I felt a drop of sweat slide down my temple. It stung my eye, but I didn't dare move.
The humming in my head grew louder.
*Empty...*
The word didn't come from my ears. It echoed in the marrow of my bones.
*So... very... empty...*
I gasped, nearly dropping the cylinder. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. Was I hallucinating? The stims usually didn't cause auditory delusions this vivid.
"I found him!"
The shout came from directly below the vent.
A flashlight beam cut through the darkness, illuminating the metal grating of my hiding spot.
I didn't think. I scrambled back, my boots scraping against the aluminum.
"Above us! In the vents!"
A burst of gunfire shattered the silence.
Sparks flew as bullets ripped through the thin metal. I felt a sharp, searing heat graze my thigh. I didn't scream. I couldn't afford to.
I kicked the back of the vent, forcing my way into the adjacent cooling chamber. I tumbled out, falling ten feet onto a pile of discarded industrial filters.
The impact knocked the wind out of me.
Everything spun. The violet light in the cylinder seemed to flare, reacting to my adrenaline.
*Feed...*
The voice again. It was deeper now. More insistent.
I scrambled to my feet, limping toward the heavy steel doors at the end of the room. My leg was wet. Warm blood soaked my jeans.
I reached the door and pulled the lever. It didn't budge.
Locked from the outside.
I turned around. Three enforcers were already entering the room. Their faces were obscured by matte-black tactical masks. Their rifles were leveled at my chest.
"Drop the asset, boy," the lead enforcer said. His voice was distorted by his comms. "Carefully. If you damage the containment, the atmospheric pressure will liquefy your internal organs before you can blink."
I backed away until my spine hit the cold steel of the locked door.
"I don't want any trouble," I wheezed. My voice sounded pathetic, even to my own ears. "Take it. Just let me go."
The enforcer stepped forward. The red laser of his sight danced across my forehead.
"You saw the contents. You know the protocols for Sector 4."
He wasn't going to let me go.
In the Black Archive's world, witnesses were just liabilities with heartbeats.
I looked at the cylinder. The violet smoke was thrashing now, slamming against the reinforced glass.
*We can... survive...*
The whisper was a caress. It felt like a cold hand sliding down my spine.
*Open... the gate...*
"No," I whispered.
I knew the stories. I'd seen the "Blessed" in the Sanctified Territories. Men and women with golden eyes who forgot their own names. I'd seen the "War-Vessels" in the city—living weapons that leaked black bile and died screaming when their hearts gave out.
To host a Shard was to invite a parasite into your soul.
"Last warning," the enforcer said. His finger tightened on the trigger.
My mind raced.
If I dropped it, I died.
If I gave it to them, I died.
If I kept it...
I looked at the enforcer's eyes through his visor. There was no mercy there. Just the dull reflection of a man doing his job.
I looked at the Shard.
"Akira, don't be a fool," I muttered to myself.
Then, I did something the Archive's psych-profiles said a person like me—a coward, a survivor—would never do.
I didn't drop the cylinder.
I smashed it against the edge of a metal crate.
The reinforced glass didn't just break; it shattered into fine dust.
Time seemed to slow down.
The violet smoke didn't dissipate into the air. It hung there, suspended, a jagged cloud of impossible geometry.
The enforcers froze. One of them actually took a step back, his rifle trembling.
"You idiot!" the leader screamed. "You've killed us all!"
The smoke surged.
It didn't go for them.
It turned toward me.
I felt a sudden, agonizing cold in my chest. It was as if someone had reached inside my ribcage and replaced my heart with a block of dry ice.
The violet light flooded my vision.
I tried to scream, but the smoke poured into my open mouth. It tasted like copper. It tasted like the stars. It tasted like every regret I had ever suppressed.
*Vessel... acquired...*
Pain.
It wasn't just physical. It was as if my memories were being flayed. I saw my mother's face, then watched it dissolve into a puddle of grey ink. I saw the day I ran away from the Church, the fear of the priests, the hunger of the streets—all of it being chewed and swallowed by something much larger than me.
My bones began to vibrate.
The sound of my own skeleton grinding against itself was the loudest thing I had ever heard.
"Kill him! Kill him now!"
The enforcers opened fire.
I didn't feel the bullets.
I didn't feel the impact.
I felt... nothing.
Literally nothing.
A sphere of absolute darkness erupted from my chest. It wasn't smoke, and it wasn't shadow. It was a hole in the world.
The bullets entered the sphere and simply ceased to exist.
The lead enforcer fired his entire magazine. The rounds vanished into the void surrounding me.
I looked down at my hands.
My skin was turning translucent. I could see the veins underneath, but they weren't carrying red blood. They were pulsing with a faint, ghostly violet.
*They are... loud...* the voice said. It was my voice now. But it wasn't.
*Silence them.*
I didn't want to. I truly didn't.
But my hand moved on its own.
I reached out toward the lead enforcer. I didn't touch him. I just closed my fist.
The space around him buckled.
It looked like a piece of paper being crumpled by an invisible hand. His armor snapped. His bones followed. He didn't even have time to scream before he was folded into a wet, crimson ball the size of a grapefruit.
Then, he vanished.
The remaining two enforcers turned and ran. They didn't make it to the door.
I felt a surge of power—a sickening, intoxicating rush that made me feel like I could breathe underwater, like I could walk through walls, like I was finally, for the first time in my life, *complete*.
The void expanded.
The warehouse walls groaned. Steel beams twisted like wet noodles.
And then, just as quickly as it had started, the pressure vanished.
I fell to my knees.
The violet light retracted, sinking deep into my skin.
The silence that followed was deafening. The enforcers were gone. Not dead—just... gone. As if they had never been in the room at all.
I gasped for air, my hands clutching the oily floor.
I felt different.
I looked at my reflection in a puddle of spilled coolant.
My eyes.
They weren't brown anymore.
A thin, jagged line of violet light ran through my left pupil, splitting it like a cracked mirror.
"What... what did you do to me?" I whispered, my voice trembling.
There was no answer. Only a cold, satisfied stillness in the back of my mind.
I tried to stand, but my legs felt like lead.
The price.
The stories always mentioned the price.
I tried to remember my mother's name.
I knew she existed. I remembered her blue dress. I remembered the smell of the jasmine tea she used to make in the mornings before the Church took us.
But her name...
It was gone.
A hole sat where the memory used to be. A clean, surgical extraction.
I leaned against the crate, tears pricking my eyes. I had survived. I was alive.
But I wasn't alone in my head anymore.
A heavy metallic clank sounded from the loading bay entrance.
I froze.
More enforcers?
I tried to summon that darkness again, but nothing happened. My chest just felt hollow. Empty.
The footsteps were different this time. Light. Rhythmic.
A woman stepped into the pool of emergency light.
She wore a long, charcoal-grey coat that swayed around her ankles. Her hair was black, tied back in a severe ponytail. In her hand, she held a serrated blade that seemed to drink the light around it.
She didn't look at the wreckage of the room.
She looked directly at me.
"You broke the containment," she said. Her voice was flat, devoid of emotion. "That was a Grade-S Shard. An 'Insight' class."
I struggled to find my voice. "Who... who are you?"
She walked closer. She didn't seem afraid of the fact that I had just evaporated three armed men.
She stopped five feet away and tilted her head.
"My name is Seo Haneul," she said. She raised her blade, the tip pointing straight at my throat. "And I was sent here to kill whoever stole that Shard."
I tried to back away, but my strength failed me. I slumped against the steel door.
"I didn't steal it!" I yelled. "I was just—"
"It doesn't matter," she interrupted. She leaned in, her eyes narrowing. They were a dull, lifeless grey. "I can see it moving under your skin. It's already started feeding."
She lowered her gaze to my chest.
"Tell me, boy. Can you still feel your heartbeat?"
I blinked.
I put my hand over my chest.
Nothing.
No thud. No rhythm. Just a cold, stagnant silence.
Panic flared in my gut, but it was muted, as if I were watching someone else feel it.
Haneul sighed, a sound of genuine pity.
"That's the first thing it takes. The rhythm of life. Soon, it will be the dreams. Then the memories. By the time I'm done with you, you won't even remember why you wanted to live in the first place."
She stepped forward, the blade humming with a strange, dissonant energy.
"Wait!" I shouted.
She didn't stop.
"I can help you!"
She paused, the blade inches from my collarbone. "Help me? You're a dying vessel, Akira. You're a ticking bomb in a city made of glass."
"I... I heard it," I stammered.
She froze. The dull grey of her eyes seemed to flicker for a fraction of a second.
"What did you say?"
"The Shard," I whispered, my breath hitching. "It spoke. It didn't try to take over. It asked to learn."
Haneul's expression changed. For the first time, the mask of cold indifference cracked. She looked at me not as a target, but as a ghost.
"Shards don't learn," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "They consume."
"This one is different," I insisted, though I had no proof. "Please. If you kill me, you lose whatever it knows."
Haneul stood silent for a long moment. The shadows in the warehouse seemed to stretch toward her, as if drawn by her presence.
Finally, she lowered the blade.
"The Black Archive has already locked down the entire sector," she said, turning her back to me. "In ten minutes, they'll flood this room with neurotoxin to 'sanitize' the loss."
She looked over her shoulder, her gaze icy.
"If you want to live another hour, get up. But know this, Akira Tsukishiro..."
She stepped into the darkness of the hallway.
"If that thing in your chest so much as twitches toward my mind, I won't just kill you. I'll make sure the Church gets what's left of your soul."
I stood up, my legs shaking, the silence in my chest echoing louder than any heartbeat ever could.
I followed her.
I didn't have a choice.
But as we stepped into the rain-slicked streets of the Industrial Zone, a new thought echoed in my mind.
A thought that wasn't mine.
*She has... beautiful memories...* the voice whispered.
*I wonder what they taste like.*