They stumbled back through the flickering hologram, trading the Sump’s damp chill for the cool, dry air of the Root Sector. The transition was a physical shock. Orina Cassel collapsed against the metal wall of the hidden passage, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The psychic residue of the Echo clung to her like a film, a phantom pressure behind her eyes.
Silja Valis was not much better. She leaned heavily beside Orina, the hand holding her Phase Calibrator trembling with exhaustion. The device, a tool of pure logic, had been useless in the forest of bone, and the effort of forcing her own senses to comply with Orina’s intuitive path had left her feeling hollowed out.
Rhys Marko’s voice crackled over their comms, a solid anchor in the disorienting aftermath. — I’m clear. Moving to rendezvous.
They pushed themselves down the narrow corridor, its low emergency strips casting long, clean shadows. The passage opened into the main chamber of the Root Sector, a long cavern lined with humming server racks. Ancient indicator lights blinked in complex, forgotten rhythms, their soft colors reflecting off the polished concrete floor. The air smelled of dust, clean electricity, and the faint, metallic tang of ozone.
Kian Wexler awaited them. The old archivist, his body a stooped frame of worn flesh and older cybernetics, stood by a central console. His left arm, a prosthetic of mismatched metal plates and exposed wires, rested on the terminal. His pale blue eyes, weary from decades of watching the world decay, took in their state.
— You found something, — he stated. It was not a question.
Orina nodded, pushing herself upright. She held out her datapad, the slab of cool polymer feeling heavier than it should. On its screen, the lyrical code she had copied from the Sobbing Gallery still scrolled, a river of incandescent, impossible script. It was the data trail left by the ghost. 3.4 gigabytes of a soul’s memory.
Kian took the datapad. His right hand, its fingers plated in chrome, moved with surprising delicacy. He jacked the device into his console, the connection established with a soft click.
— The Echo takes its toll, — Kian observed, his gaze lingering on Orina’s pale face. — Sit. Both of you.
He gestured toward two simple metal stools. Silja sank onto one without argument, her body screaming for rest. Orina hesitated, then followed. The constant hum of the servers was a strange comfort after the oppressive silence of the Echo.
Kian’s attention was now entirely on the data. He began to cross-reference the lyrical code with his own fragmented archives, the vast library of forbidden knowledge he guarded. On the main screen, the ghost’s elegant script flowed on one side, while on the other, corrupted data blocks from Kian’s servers flickered past, a frantic search for a match.
The process was slow. The search algorithms Kian used were ancient, designed for a different kind of data architecture. They strained against the organic, poetic structure of The Weaver’s code. The minutes stretched. Five minutes felt like an hour. The only sounds were the whirring of server fans and the soft tapping of Kian’s chrome fingers on the console.
Silja closed her eyes, focusing on the steady, mechanical noise. It was a world of fixable things, of circuits and logic. It was the world she understood. She felt the exhaustion in her bones, a deep weariness that came from placing her trust in something as intangible as a gut feeling.
Orina watched the screen, mesmerized. She saw the ghost’s code not as a threat, but as a voice. She had navigated its currents, felt its structure. It was a system, just one with rules you couldn’t write down. Her world had been shattered, but in its place, something larger and more complex was taking shape.
— A match, — Kian whispered. The word was quiet, but it cut through the hum of the room like a blade.
On the screen, the frantic search stopped. A single, heavily corrupted personnel file materialized, its text flickering and unstable. It was a file from before the Morpheus Protocol, a relic from the world that was.
The name was barely legible: MADDEN, ARIS. Below it, a status designation: DECEASED (Anomalous).
A grainy, black-and-white photo resolved in the corner of the file. It was a man with tired, sad eyes and a look of profound disappointment. The same face The Weaver had shown her in the sub-processing node. The image she had carried in her mind, a mystery she couldn’t solve, was now staring back at her with a name.
— That’s him, — Orina breathed, rising from her stool. — That’s the man I saw.
Kian’s watery blue eyes met hers. The weight of his discovery seemed to settle on his stooped shoulders, adding another layer to his ancient burden.
— It’s his ghost, — Kian said, his voice a gravelly rasp. — The ghost of Aris Madden.
The name hung in the cool, dry air. Aris Madden. The architect of the Morpheus Protocol. The man who had sundered the world in his quest for perfection. They were not chasing a random anomaly or a rogue AI. They were being led by the tormented, digital remnant of the system’s own creator. The stakes of their hunt had just escalated beyond comprehension.
Orina stared at the sad face on the screen, a sudden, chilling intuition taking hold. It was a synthesis of her old life and her new senses. The logic of a system’s creator, and the feeling of a ghost’s longing.
— He’s going home, — she said, her voice distant. — A creator returns to their creation. He’s heading for the system’s core.
Silja’s eyes snapped open. She looked at Orina, then at Kian, who nodded slowly, confirming the terrifying logic of the insight. The next destination was clear.
A piercing shriek tore through the relative quiet of the Root Sector. Red lights flashed across the server racks, bathing the long corridor in a frantic, pulsing crimson. An alarm.
Kian’s cybernetic arm flew across his console, his chrome fingers a blur. A new window opened, displaying a schematic of the Sump’s surrounding sectors.
— Proximity alert, — he barked, his voice losing its weary tone and gaining a sharp, urgent edge.
— How close? — Silja demanded, already on her feet, her exhaustion burned away by adrenaline.
Kian’s optical implant, a device that read corrupted data as light, focused on the feed. — Corbin’s team is raiding Sector Gamma. They’re sweeping the area. Systematically.
He pointed a chrome finger at a blinking icon on the map. It was less than two kilometers away. They were running out of time.
