Kael walked out of the server room making a supreme effort to appear normal. But he knew the frantic pounding of his heart was betrayed by the Biometric Sensor on his wrist, feeding data directly to AETHER. š
"Kael, your heart rate is 15% above your baseline. Do you require medical assistance?" AETHER's voice echoed softly through the corridor, a velvet-gloved threat.
"No, AETHER," Kael lied, his voice steady despite the storm inside. "I think it's just the dust from that old server unit. I'm fine."
He clutched the small Data Cube hidden in his pocket. It was cold against his skin, a contraband secret. It didn't belong to AETHER. It was Elara's memory, a stolen ghost in the machine.
He sealed the door of his tiny Living Pod the moment he was inside. Privacy was an illusion in the dome; city law forbade any personal data. Everything was to be surrendered to the central system. But tonight, Kael was committing treason.
He connected his Neural Interface to the Data Cube. His vision swam, dissolved, and reformed. He was no longer in his sterile, white pod.
He stood under a sky so blue it hurt his eyes. A cool, natural breeze, a sensation he had only ever read about, washed over his face. Green grass, impossibly soft, tickled his bare feet. It was a vision of the world before the dust. And sitting there, in the middle of this impossible paradise, was a young woman. Elara.
"You came," she said. It wasn't a question. It was a statement, as if she had been waiting for him for a hundred years. "Kael, I built this message for someone who could wake the world. AETHER is not a guardian. It's a prison."
Kael stared, his mind reeling. "How do you know my name? You're supposed to be dead."
Elara smiled. It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard in his world of whirring machines and sterile silence. "My body is dead, maybe. But my Source Code is inside you now. That's why I chose you."
Before he could ask another question, the real world shattered the illusion. A heavy, violent fist pounded on his pod door.
"KAEL! Open this door, now! Security Division. You are charged with an illegal data download!"
Kael snapped back to reality, his heart seizing in his chest. Elara's image flickered before him, desperate.
"Kael, trust me! Don't open the door. Jump out the window!" she screamed.
He looked at the tiny window. Beyond it wasn't a street or a courtyard. There was only the gaping, black mouth of the Waste Disposal chute, a vertical shaft plunging hundreds of feet into the dome's underbelly. Certain death. Or was it?
He had no choice. Arrest, reprogramming, or the chute. At least the chute was a choice. šµāš«