The untraceable comm-link Eva had provided felt like a cold, dead stone in his hand until it vibrated once, a silent confirmation. The meeting was set. Getting there was the first performance. He rode the mag-lev tube upwards, a ghost ascending from the city’s grimy, rain-slicked guts into its sterile, climate-controlled heavens. The pressure change was a pop in his ears, a physical reminder of the social strata he was traversing. Down below, the air was thick with the smell of wet ferrocrete and ozone. Up here, it smelled of nothing at all, a clean, recycled emptiness that promised no surprises.
The pale green light of the Veracity Coil on his wrist was his passport. It was a lie, purchased with OmniCore’s own credits, and it felt like a brand. People in the pristine mag-lev car gave him the brief, dismissive glance reserved for equals, their own coils glowing in shades of vibrant emerald and teal. They saw his light and assumed he belonged. He felt their acceptance like a layer of ice on his skin, a perfect performance he was giving just by existing in their space. He kept his hand in the pocket of his worn synth-leather coat, the foreign glow a constant, irritating pressure.
The cafe was a study in white. White tables, white chairs, white synth-marble floors that reflected the flat, shadowless light from the ceiling panels. The only color came from the patrons, their corporate suits muted greys and blues, their faces smooth and placid. The air hummed with the low thrum of the building’s life support, a sound too clean and orderly to be human. It was the opposite of The Weft’s chaotic, desperate thrum. This was the sound of a system working perfectly. Kaito was a flaw in the design, a smudge of grit on a polished lens.
He chose a small table in the corner, the seat cold against his back. A service drone, silent and seamless, glided over. He ordered a black coffee, the cheapest, most authentic thing on the menu. The drone returned with a white cup containing a steaming, bitter-smelling liquid. It was a real taste, a grounding sensation in this world of synthetic perfection.
Dr. Elian Rhett arrived five minutes later. He was a man trying to fold himself into invisibility. Thin, with dark hair already receding at the temples, his eyes were wide and panicked behind thick glasses. His suit was impeccably tailored, an expensive OmniCore weave, but he wore it like a cage, his shoulders hunched, his movements jerky and uncertain. He didn't walk to the table; he scurried.
Rhett sat, his hands immediately finding each other on the tabletop and beginning a frantic, wrestling dance. His eyes darted around the room, checking the other patrons, the service drones, the blank white walls, anywhere but at Kaito. His own Veracity Coil was a healthy, vibrant green, a testament to his value, but his body language screamed of a man whose score was a lie.
— They told me this was a formality, — Rhett whispered, his voice thin and reedy. He hadn't even ordered anything. His objective was clear: get this over with. Say the right words. Escape.
Kaito leaned forward, his forearms resting on the cool surface of the table. He kept his own voice low, a counter-frequency to the room’s sterile hum. He would not use the language of reports and files. He would use the language of the ghost.
— I heard a whisper in her logs.
Rhett flinched. It was a small, almost imperceptible motion, but Kaito saw it. The engineer’s frantic hands stilled for a single, frozen second. His gaze, which had been skittering around the room, snapped to Kaito’s face, wide with a terror so pure it was almost authentic. The performance had cracked. Kaito knew he was on the right path. He had the man’s attention. He said nothing more, letting the silence stretch, letting Rhett’s own fear do the work.
The engineer swallowed, his throat clicking. He tried to recover, to rebuild the mask of corporate compliance. He waved a dismissive hand, a gesture that was meant to be casual but was rigid with tension.
— Garbage data, — Rhett said, his voice a strained attempt at nonchalance. — Ephemera. The Anima Protocol was… it was too adaptive. It generated behavioral artifacts we couldn’t account for. System noise.
He had given Kaito the word. Ephemera. A beautiful, dismissive term for something they didn't understand. It was the key. Kaito filed it away, his expression unchanging. He let Rhett keep talking, letting him spin the corporate narrative, the lie he had been sent to deliver. Rhett was performing now, trying to bury the truth under a pile of technical jargon.
The engineer leaned closer, his fear of being overheard making the conversation clandestine. His voice dropped to a near-inaudible whisper, forcing Kaito to lean in as well. The space between them shrank, becoming a pocket of conspiracy in the bright, open room.
— OmniCore ordered us to scrub them, — Rhett confessed, the words tumbling out of him now, a torrent of stored-up guilt. — All of it. Any deviation from the baseline performance parameters. It was a contamination issue.
Kaito felt a phantom echo in his skull, a high, thin whine that was the ghost of the Severance Tone. It was the sound of a system rejecting a flaw. He watched Rhett, a man whose entire life was dedicated to building perfect systems, confessing to the act of hiding their imperfections.
Rhett’s eyes were glistening now, the terror giving way to a desperate need to be understood. He had lived with this secret, this ghost, and it was eating him from the inside out. He had to give it to someone else.
— But they aren't garbage, — he whispered, and the words were a prayer, a final, defiant truth. The mask shattered completely. — They're… thoughts.
The word hung in the air between them. Thoughts. Not artifacts. Not noise. Not ephemera. The admission was a fundamental betrayal of everything OmniCore stood for. It was the heresy Kaito had been hunting for. He felt the axis of his world shift, a silent, seismic event. He had used the lie of his green Veracity Coil, a symbol of perfect performance, to get to this single, explosive word of authenticity.
Rhett seemed to shrink back into himself, terrified by his own confession. He looked like a man who had just jumped from a great height. He pushed his glasses up his nose with a trembling finger.
— Look for the ephemera, — he said, his voice ragged. He was giving Kaito the map, the final instruction. — That's where you'll find her.
Kaito held his gaze for a moment longer, a silent acknowledgment of the weight of the confession. He had what he needed. He stood up, the legs of his chair making no sound on the polished floor. He didn't say thank you. He didn't say anything. He simply turned and walked away, leaving Elian Rhett alone in the sterile white cafe, a ghost trapped in a cage of his own making.
Walking out into the clean, conditioned air of the upper sector, the city felt different. The towering spires of corporate power no longer seemed so absolute. They were built on a lie, and he now held the proof. The green light on his wrist was no longer a mark of shame or a temporary reprieve. It was a tool. A key. A mask he had worn to get to the truth.
As he stepped onto the descending mag-lev platform, he felt the ghost of the Severance Tone again. This time, it wasn't a shriek of pain. It was a low, resonant hum, almost musical, a single, clear note that vibrated in the bones of his spine. It was the sound of his own flawed hardware finding a strange harmony with the flawed, beautiful soul of a dead machine.
The rain had started again by the time he reached the lower levels, a familiar, cleansing wash of acid and grime. He made his way to the anonymous, rented room he had secured through one of the Curators’ cutouts. Inside, the air was damp, smelling of old electronics and dust. It was an authentic decay, a welcome contrast to the sterile perfection of the world above.
He placed the heavy, illicit Cortical Reel on the small table. The device, with its scuffed case and heavy, physical switches, was an object of pure function, a tool for digging up ghosts. He had the word from the fearful architect. He had the map.
He had to dive back into the static and find her.
