The cavernous gloom of the Husk-Frame bay was a familiar comfort to Rhys Marko. He sat within the cockpit of his machine, a hulking silhouette among other dormant mecha, the air thick with the smells of hot metal, ozone, and damp concrete. His world was the green-and-amber glow of the diagnostic screen, a universe of clean data in a city of decay. He initiated the cycle, his fingers moving with practiced economy over the console, beginning the primary sensor suite’s lengthy self-test. The system was his partner, his armor, his extension into a world that was actively trying to fall apart. Keeping it optimal was not just maintenance; it was an act of faith.
Around him, the Sump’s cacophony was a constant, rhythmic pressure: the percussive clang of the auto-presses in the lower levels, the asthmatic hiss of failing hydraulics, the low groan of stressed support beams. It was the sound of entropy, a slow collapse that Rhys and the other Synchronists were fighting to reverse. Here, in the cockpit, surrounded by systems he understood, he could believe it was possible. The diagnostic progress bar crept forward. Ten percent. All nominal.
Then the world flickered.
For three seconds, the main sensor feed, which showed a clear view of the workshop floor, dissolved into a hash of corrupted pixels. The image fractured, the familiar lines of steel catwalks and power conduits shattering into digital noise. Rhys’s hands froze over the console. It was not a power dip; the backup systems would have kicked in seamlessly. This was something else. Something in the data stream itself.
Just as quickly as it had appeared, the noise vanished. The view returned, stable and clear. But it was wrong. Overlaid on the grimy concrete and rusted gantries was a faint, shimmering image. It was a forest of impossible trees, their branches like bone, their forms translucent and wavering with a sickly green light. They were not just on the screen; the Husk-Frame’s sensors were perceiving them as real objects, rendering them with a ghostly opacity of about 15 percent. They swayed in a wind that did not exist in the still, heavy air of the bay.
— Scrap, — Rhys cursed, the word a short, sharp burst of frustration. His training, his logic, screamed sensor degradation. A processor failing, a conduit bleeding static. He reacted with the ingrained pragmatism of a Sump mechanic. He balled his fist and slammed it against the side of the console. The impact rattled the cockpit, a solid, satisfying thud of man against machine.
The spectral trees did not flicker. They did not waver. The physical jolt had no effect on the phantom image. It was as if he had tried to punch a reflection.
A gravelly voice drifted up from the workshop floor below, cutting through the low hum of the Frame’s standby power.
— That won’t help. You’ve got rust-ghosts.
Rhys leaned forward, peering through the forward viewport. Ten meters away, Len, the bay’s senior mechanic, sat on an overturned crate, not even looking up from the mug of steaming black liquid in his grease-stained hands. Len was a fixture, a man who seemed to be made of the same rusted iron and stubborn resilience as the Sump itself.
— It’s a processor decay, Len, — Rhys called down, his voice tight with annoyance. He respected the old man, but his adherence to Sump superstition was a constant source of friction.
— Call it what you want, — Len rasped, taking a slow sip from his mug. The bitter aroma of Chicory-grit, the Sump’s notoriously foul coffee substitute, wafted up. — Saw the same thing on the cargo haulers last cycle. Looked like static-wraiths dancing on the heat exchangers. Can’t fix a ghost with a wrench, kid.
Rhys turned back to his console, dismissing the comment. It was easier to believe in a faulty processor than a haunted machine. The Synchronists fought for a future built on understanding the system, the whole system, both the Grid’s logic and the Echo’s chaos. They were engineers, not mystics. The Unraveling was a problem of physics, not metaphysics. He would find a technical solution.
His fingers flew across the holographic interface, bypassing the corrupted primary feed. He re-routed the entire sensor suite through the secondary processor, a slower, less efficient backup he usually reserved for low-power states. The screen flickered once more, this time a clean, deliberate refresh. The spectral trees vanished. The view of the workshop returned to normal, solid and blessedly mundane.
A small alert icon appeared in the corner of his display. System integrity now read 92 percent. The secondary processor was running hotter than it should, the system compensating for a load it was not designed to carry long-term. He had found a workaround, not a solution. The machine was stable, but the ghost was still in there, dormant.
He pulled out his datapad, the screen’s glow illuminating his focused expression. With a few quick taps, he made a note in his personal maintenance log: Primary sensor processor requires full replacement. Suspected bleed-through from ambient psychic noise. He set the task priority to medium. It was one more component to scavenge, one more patch on a system full of holes.
He leaned back in the pilot’s chair, the worn material groaning in protest. The problem was logged. It was contained. But Len’s words echoed in the quiet of the cockpit. Rust-ghosts. The old mechanic’s superstitions were a symptom of the Sump’s resignation, a passive acceptance of a world they no longer understood. Rhys and the Synchronists were different. They had to be. They believed the system could be understood, that the ghost could be mapped.
The low hum of the secondary processor was a constant reminder of his temporary fix. It was the sound of a system under strain, a quiet admission that the decay was getting worse. The tools of war, the great machines of iron and logic built to defend the Grid, were beginning to see the things that lurked in the cracks of reality.
He ran a hand over his face, the phantom image of the bone-white trees still burned into his mind.
