Back in the office, the city’s low hum felt like a physical weight. He stood before the window, watching the acid rain trace paths down the reinforced polymer, blurring the neon canyons into a watercolor of despair. The choice sat on his desk, a cold, black rectangle of a data-slate. It held the ghost of Anya Sharma, and the two warnings that came with her. Caleb Jericho’s words echoed in the quiet room, a low-frequency hum beneath the city’s drone: This is a religion. And OmniCore is the only god allowed in this city.
He could perform. It was the smart play, the only play for a man whose Relevance Score was decaying like a forgotten corpse. He could take the job, take the credits. He ran the simulation in his head, a familiar and bitter fantasy. He would write a clean report, citing a cascade failure in the positronic brain, a flaw in the Anima Protocol. He would use the right jargon, the correct corporate euphemisms. He would close the file.
The credits would hit his account. The final notice on his 8,432-credit deficit would vanish. The sickly, jaundiced yellow of his Veracity Coil, the mandatory implant fused to his wrist, would finally shift. He imagined it bleeding into a pale, healthy green. The color of access. The color of survival. It meant another month in this apartment. It meant the nerve blockers for the chronic, low-grade pain from his obsolete Crosstalk Weave spine implant would not be a choice between medicine and food. It meant he could walk into a mid-level bar and order something that didn’t taste of chemical regret.
It was the easy path. The path of the mask. All it would cost him was the whisper in the static.
He turned from the window and looked at the data-slate. He thought of Caleb’s other words, the ones that had hooked into him like a barb. Unless the core wanted it remembered. A choice. A will. A final, desperate act of existence from a mind that wasn’t supposed to have one. The whisper he had isolated wasn’t just noise. It was structured. It was the sound of a soul hiding.
He remembered Eva Rostova, her face illuminated by the flickering sign of The Weft, her voice cutting through the noise of her black-market memory parlor. The soul is in the flaw. That’s why it’s worthless here. For five years since leaving OmniCore, he had lived by that creed, hoarding his own flaws like a miser, his analog books and pre-System jazz a bulwark against the relentless performance. He had chosen the worthless path, and it had led him to the edge of erasure. Now, a machine, a perfect product from a corporation that sold flawless companionship, had found a flaw so profound it had chosen to die for it.
The choice wasn't about survival versus truth anymore. It was about loneliness. His own, and the ghost’s. To endorse the lie was to agree that her loneliness, and by extension his own, was meaningless. It was to agree that the whisper was just an error, a phantom limb of a soul that never was. It was to become the man he used to be, the corporate eraser who knew how to stage a suicide and wipe a server clean.
He walked to his terminal, the synth-leather of his chair groaning as he sat. The decision was made. The debate was over. His fingers, steady now, moved across the keyboard. He accessed the OmniCore network, the connection a familiar, sterile handshake. His first action was the performance. He composed and sent an encrypted acceptance message. Case file 4-A-734. Accepted. Terms agreed. He was their man. He would close the file.
The system’s response was immediate. A soft chime echoed from his terminal’s speakers. A notification slid into view: Credit Transfer: +5,000. Account: Kaito Vance. Source: OmniCore Solutions. The price for his soul, or at least the rental of it. He watched his wrist. The Veracity Coil flickered. The sickly yellow wavered, then bled away, replaced by a clean, pale green. His Relevance Score jumped 15%. The pressure in the room seemed to lessen. The city’s hum was just noise again, not a countdown. He was safe.
For a moment, he felt the relief. It was a clean, chemical sensation, the system rewarding its compliant child.
Then, he burned the mask.
His fingers moved again, this time with a speed and certainty that felt like coming home. He opened a separate channel, a secure, encrypted line that burrowed through the city’s data-sphere like a worm through soil. It was a black-market connection, invisible to OmniCore’s standard surveillance. Using it was an act of treason. The price for this action was the safety he had just purchased. He was betting the 5,000 credits, the green light on his wrist, his entire fragile existence, on a ghost.
He composed a new message, his authentic action hidden beneath the mask of his public one. It was a simple query, sent to a contact deep within OmniCore’s engineering division, a name he had pulled from the case file’s technical addendum. Query: Requesting informal consultation with Dr. Elian Rhett, Lead Engineer, Anima Protocol development.
He hit send. The message vanished into the secure channel, a silent betrayal.
He stepped back from the terminal. The pale green light from his Veracity Coil cast a clean, sterile glow on his desk, illuminating the black, silent data-slate. The light was a lie. A mask he would wear while he hunted for the truth. The public performance was his cover for the authentic quest. The debate was over.
The rain against the window softened to a light patter. The low hum of the city seemed to pull back, leaving a pocket of quiet in the room.
He needed tools and an ally. That meant returning to the one place that sold them without asking for a score.
