The mag-lock on the hab-unit door engaged with a heavy, satisfying thud. Kaelen leaned his forehead against the cold metal for a moment, the sound echoing the finality he craved. Outside, the corridor’s cacophony of footfalls, distant arguments, and the ever-present hum of the asteroid’s life support faded to a dull murmur. He was inside. He was, for a few precious hours, safe. The security was an illusion, he knew, a thin membrane of steel and code against a universe that wanted him gone, but it was the only one he had.
His hab-unit was a cramped box of rust-streaked composites and exposed conduits, smelling of recycled air and his own low-grade fear. He moved through the dim light, his objective clear. The dampeners he’d bought were a temporary patch, a flimsy bandage on a gaping wound. He needed to know how bad the damage was. He needed to see the flaw in his own head made manifest in numbers and code. He sank onto the worn cushion of his workstation chair and pulled a diagnostic tool from a drawer. It was a simple device, a handheld scanner with a fiber-optic jack, its casing yellowed and grimy.
He reached behind his head, his fingers finding the familiar, ugly lump of the Ghost-Eater Shunt. The crude metal plate, a black market special, was fused to the base of his skull, surrounded by a ring of slick, pale scar tissue. He found the input jack by touch and plugged the fiber-optic cable in. The connection was a faint, cold prickle. On the monitor before him, the diagnostic interface flickered to life, a grid of stark white lines on a black field. He initiated the scan.
Lines of code scrolled past, a waterfall of system checks and integrity queries. Green. Nominal. Stable. Then the red bled in. A single line, then a cluster. A cascade of warnings, seven distinct error codes flashing in angry crimson. The diagnostic tool whined, a low, pained sound. The final report materialized on the screen. System integrity: 34%. Critical. The number hung in the airless room, a verdict. A failing shunt was a beacon.
The screen’s red glare triggered the memory. It came not as a thought, but as a physical sensation, a phantom limb aching where it had been severed. The severance. He was back in the sterile white of a Yama-Mitsui Solutions integration chamber, his body held in a gel-foam cradle. He had been part of the Concordance then, the vast, placid group-mind of the corporation. His thoughts had not been his own; they were a current in a great river, a single voice in a choir. Then the failure, the mission gone wrong, the punishment. The Eraser’s touch had been cold and precise, a surgical strike into his psyche. It was not a clean cut. It was a tearing, a brutal ripping of his consciousness from the whole, leaving ragged, bleeding edges. The silence that followed was the most violent sound he had ever heard.
He shuddered, the hab-unit’s stale air suddenly feeling too thin. He pushed the memory down, burying it under the immediate, pressing need for information. He swiped the diagnostic report away and pulled up the black market news feeds. The interface was a chaotic collage of encrypted text, looping video clips, and scrolling market data. He scanned for keywords. Yama-Mitsui. Auditor. Reintegration. He was hunting for shadows, for any sign that a corporate patrol was sweeping his sector of the Down-Spiral. The feeds showed nothing concrete, only rumors and paranoid chatter, but the frequency was high. The threat was constant.
He leaned back, the worn chair groaning in protest. His life was now governed by a simple, brutal catechism he recited to himself in the dark hours before sleep. Don’t be seen: become a face in the crowd, a ghost in the machine, a name on no list. Don’t make noise, physical or psychic; every transaction was a risk, every conversation a potential trace. The final rule was the core of it, the ultimate goal: don’t exist. To achieve a state of such profound anonymity that the system, in its relentless scanning, would pass over him as empty space. He was trying to become the one thing a system built on data could not comprehend: a zero.
His fingers drifted to the back of his neck, tracing the outline of the Ghost-Eater Shunt. The metal was warm, the implant’s failing systems generating a low, constant heat. It was a physical token of his failure, a brand that marked him as a broken tool. It was the source of his pain, the antenna that picked up the ghost’s agonizing static, and the one piece of himself he could never escape. The shunt was a part of him now, its flawed code woven into his own.
A low growl from his stomach cut through his thoughts. He turned from the monitor and opened the small refrigeration unit built into the wall. The inside was nearly bare. A single, half-squeezed tube of nutrient paste lay on the shelf. He checked the indicator strip. Fifteen percent remaining. Enough for one more cycle. Twenty-four hours, maybe less. The knowledge landed with the weight of a physical blow. He had to go back out. Back into the market, back into the noise, back to the junkers and the traders who might remember his face. His isolation was a fortress, but its walls were built of supplies, and they were about to crumble.
With a sigh that was more exhaustion than relief, he began the final ritual of his day. He powered down the workstation, the monitor fading to black. He killed the main light, plunging the room into a deeper gloom, lit only by the faint, ambient glow of the station filtering through his viewport shutter. He moved through the small space, switching off every non-essential system, silencing every device that drew power, however minimal. He was minimizing his energy signature, pulling his presence inward until it was a tiny, flickering pilot light. He was a ghost in his own home, a man systematically erasing himself, one powered-down system at a time.
The hab-unit fell silent, the only sound the soft hiss of the air recycler. The distant thrum of the asteroid’s rotational drivers was a low, constant vibration he felt in the soles of his feet.
He had a day before hunger forced his hand, but the clock was already ticking.
