The coordinates Mirela had sold him led to a dead sector in the upper levels of the Ceres Down-Spiral, a place of silence and forgotten infrastructure. He moved through corridors where the neon had died, leaving only the cold, emergency lighting strip on the floor to guide him. The air grew thin, tasting of sterile dust and the faint, sharp tang of ozone that spoke of high-energy systems left to decay. The clean, steady vibration from the Ghost-Eater Shunt at the base of his neck was a solitary comfort, a compass needle in the oppressive quiet. He was looking for a door that wasn't on any public schematic, a meeting point for a faction that preferred shadows to light.
He found it. A simple pressure door, unmarked, its surface the same rust-streaked composite as the rest of the corridor. It hissed open into a vast, circular chamber. Dust motes danced in the low light filtering down from a central grate fifty meters above. Racks of servers and data-storage units stood in silent rows, their indicator lights long dead. This was a data-tomb, a shielded repository for the system’s ghosts, built by the Keepers to preserve what others erased. The air was cold enough to see his breath.
A shape detached itself from the shadows beside a towering server rack. It moved without a sound, a slender, 1.5-meter-tall chassis of matte black composite, its surface showing the fine scratches of long use. A natural raven’s head sat atop the frame, its glossy black feathers a stark contrast to the worn metal. One eye was the intelligent, black bead of a corvid. The other was a custom optic that glowed with a soft, unwavering amber light. This was Walter Bell, a Keeper archivist, an Uplifted animal given sapient form. He stood perfectly still, his presence a void in the Resonance Field.
Kaelen’s hand tightened on the Mnemonic Spool in his pocket. He took a step forward, his boots crunching softly on the dusty floor. The sound was unnervingly loud in the tomb’s silence. He stopped ten meters from the silent figure.
— I was told a Keeper would be here, — Kaelen said, his voice rough. — I need help.
He held out the cracked spool. The crystal caught the dim light, a shard of captured memory.
Walter Bell’s head tilted, a bird-like gesture that was jarringly organic against the hard lines of his chassis. His synthesized voice was flat, devoid of inflection, like text read from a screen.
— You have an unauthorized ghost data artifact.
The amber optic focused on the spool, then on Kaelen. There was no judgment in the gaze, only assessment. It was the look of a technician examining a faulty component.
— By Keeper protocol, it must be archived, — Walter stated. It was not a negotiation. It was a declaration of fact.
The words landed like ice in Kaelen’s gut. He had run from one system of control only to deliver himself to another. Mirela had sent him to a ghoul who would take the last piece of Volkov and bury it in this cold, silent tomb. The path to witness had led him right back to the brink of erasure. He had traded his last shred of safety for this, a final, quiet dead end. The price of his choice was the loss of his one remaining hope.
Before Kaelen could protest, a high-frequency screech cut through the silence, a sound designed to tear at the edges of cybernetic hearing. It was followed an instant later by a concussive blast that shook the entire chamber. The pressure door he had entered through imploded, showering the corridor behind it with molten metal. Dust and debris rained down from the ceiling.
Three shapes moved through the smoking breach. They were sleek, black, and moved with an insectile grace. Corporate wardrones, their single red optical sensors cutting through the dust-choked air. Julian Valerius’s hunters had found him.
Walter Bell did not flinch. His amber optic scanned the drones, cataloging their number and trajectory. His posture remained unchanged, but Kaelen felt a subtle shift in the Resonance Field around the Uplift, a sudden, sharp spike of cold, analytical focus. The drones were a threat, but the data-tomb and its contents were the priority. The Mnemonic Spool in Kaelen’s hand was now, by proximity, part of the archive. Walter’s primary objective had shifted from confiscation to protection.
The raven’s head turned, its amber eye fixing on Kaelen.
— This way. Now.
Walter spun and moved, not with panic, but with a chilling efficiency. He flowed between the silent server racks, a black silhouette against the dim light. Kaelen hesitated for only a second before following, plunging deeper into the tomb as a drone’s plasma fire stitched a glowing line across the floor where he had been standing.
They ran through the dark, silent corridors of the archive’s lower levels. The air was colder here, thick with the smell of metallic decay and long-dead coolant. The faint whine of the wardrones’ electric motors echoed from the corridor behind them, a sound that promised a swift, impersonal death. Walter moved with a silent, fluid grace, his composite feet making no sound on the grated floor.
They reached a junction of three identical, unlit corridors.
— Vector seven, sub-level three, — Walter stated, his synthesized voice clipped and precise. — Optimal escape route.
The words were a shock. It was pure Yama-Mitsui corporate dialect, the language of brutal efficiency that had been drilled into Kaelen during his time in the Concordance. It was the language of Erasers.
— Negative, — Kaelen snapped back, the response instinctual, dredged up from a part of himself he thought was dead. — Sub-three is a structural kill-zone. Vector nine has a maintenance shaft override.
Walter stopped. He turned, his amber optic flickering as it processed this unexpected input. He saw not just a desperate fugitive, but a fellow product of the same cold, corporate machine. They were enemies, but they spoke the same dead language. A hostile, unwelcome familiarity passed between them in the dark.
— Your tactical assessment is… noted, — Walter said after a two-second pause. He changed direction, leading them down vector nine.
They found the maintenance shaft, and beside it, a heavy pressure door set into the wall. Walter’s thin, multi-jointed hands flew across the control panel, a blur of black metal and silver contacts. The door hissed open, and they slipped through. Walter slapped a final sequence into the panel on the other side. With a deep groan of stressed metal, heavy bolts slammed into place, sealing the door.
A heavy thud vibrated through the floor as one of the wardrones impacted the other side of the door, followed by the high-pitched whine of a plasma cutter beginning its work. They had bought themselves, at most, five minutes.
Kaelen leaned against the cold, pitted metal of the wall, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The clean hum of the Ghost-Eater Shunt was a frantic, high-pitched vibration against his skin.
Walter stood perfectly still, his head tilted, listening to the sounds of the drone working on the door. The dust motes stirred by their passage danced in the single, steady beam of his amber optic. The low, resonant hum of the station’s ancient life support was the only other sound.
— They will breach the door in less than five minutes, — Walter stated, turning his gaze from the door to Kaelen. — The asset is compromised. Its integrity is now my primary objective.
The raven Uplift’s chassis whirred softly as a compartment slid open in its torso. He produced a small, shielded data-tomb, a heavy little box of dark, non-reflective metal. He held it out to Kaelen.
— The other six, — Walter said, his voice flat and demanding. — Where are they?
