The Foundry Chorus smelled of defeat. It was a cold, metallic scent mixed with the ozone tang of failing electronics and the faint, sour odor of unwashed bodies. Elias Thorne, the man they called the Cognitive Coach, watched as the survivors from the canal evacuation were processed. They were not soldiers returning from a campaign. They were ghosts, wrapped in gray blankets, their eyes holding the flat, exhausted shock of people who had run too far and seen too much. Jax’s diversion had saved them, but the cost was written on every face. They had traded one crippled skiff for four, a good calculation on paper. It felt like a loss.
A perimeter guard, his face smudged with grime, approached Elias. He was followed by a man who did not belong. The man was clean. His clothes, a dark, simple tunic and trousers, were of a cut and fabric that had no place in this world of scavenged parts and mended seams. He moved with a liquid confidence, his smile a small, precise thing. He carried a polished metallic case like a diplomat.
— He says his name is Aris Brandt, — the guard said, his voice a low rumble of suspicion. — Says he has a gift for you.
Jax appeared from the shadows of a monolithic, silent press. His face was a mask of exhaustion and fury. — I let him in, Coach. He knew our old access codes. The ones we haven’t used in a year. Listen to what he has to say.
Elias led the man to a small, quiet alcove, away from the prying eyes of the exhausted rebels. Corbin Shaw, the rebellion’s data analyst, joined them, his expression as neutral as a blank screen. Dr. Aris Brandt set his case on a rusted workbench. The sound of it clicking open was too clean for the room.
— I was with Optima Consolidated, — Brandt began, his voice smooth and reasonable. It was the voice of a man used to selling things people didn't know they needed. — I designed certain… efficiencies. I left when their definition of progress became too narrow. I believe in optimization, you see. True optimization.
Inside the case was a device. It was a small, dark gray box, no bigger than a ration brick, with a single, pulsing blue light. It hummed with a low, steady power that felt different from the frantic, jury-rigged energy of the Foundry. It felt stable. It felt complete.
— You have a problem, — Brandt said, gesturing to the device. — You are being hunted. Your minds, your unique and beautiful patterns of thought, are now liabilities. The Architect has your signatures. You are broadcasting your location every time you dream. This is the solution.
He called it the Cloak Device.
Brandt explained its function with the detached pride of an engineer showing off a new engine. It did not hide a dreamer’s mind. Hiding was impossible. Instead, it made the mind appear damaged. It broadcast a signal that perfectly mimicked the brainwaves of a citizen in the final stages of Cognitive Attrition, the slow, systemic decay of the soul caused by years in the Somnus Suppressors.
— To the Mandate’s scanners, a dreamer using this device will appear as a ghost, — Brandt said, his smile widening. — Just another piece of acceptable system degradation. An error to be logged, not a threat to be sanitized. You will be invisible because you will look like the thing they are already creating by the millions.
Elias felt a cold wave of nausea. He heard his own past in Brandt’s words. The language of optimization. The clean, sterile logic that stripped the soul from the equation. He had spent fifteen years of his life designing systems just like this, systems that treated human beings as assets and liabilities. He had built the cage. Brandt was now selling a more comfortable version of it.
— To fool the machine, — Brandt said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, — you must become a better machine.
The words hung in the air, a perfect summation of everything Elias had fought against. It was the philosophy of the enemy, gift-wrapped as salvation. He thought of the Weaver’s Thread, the symbol of their rebellion. The act of weaving a new reality from the messy, chaotic, beautiful threads of memory and hope. This device did not weave. It erased. It flattened the beautiful, complex pattern of a human mind into a predictable, damaged signal.
— The probability of network survival without a cloaking technology is now less than four percent, — Corbin Shaw said, his voice flat. He had been running numbers on a datapad. — His logic is sound. The risk of discovery is absolute. This device changes the equation.
Elias looked from Corbin’s dead-serious face to Brandt’s predatory smile. He was being offered a choice. He could save his people by having them pretend to be the empty shells he was trying to save them from becoming. The price of survival was their reason for fighting. It was a perfect, elegant trap.
— We would not be hiding, — Elias said, his voice quiet but firm. — We would be performing our own extinction. We would become the ghosts.
Brandt’s smile did not falter. He had expected this. The moral objection. It was just another variable to be managed. — A temporary measure, Coach. A tactical retreat. You cannot fight for your souls if your bodies are in processing centers.
— And what is the price for this… gift? — Elias asked.
— Loyalty, — Brandt said simply. — When you win, you will remember who gave you the tools to do so. I am a businessman. I am investing in a new market.
The choice was clear. Accept the device and live as ghosts, their integrity a casualty of war. Or refuse it and face near-certain annihilation, but as themselves. It was a choice between a slow death and a fast one. A choice between what was logical and what was right. The axis of his life, the flight from the optimized man he had been, was suddenly right here, humming in a small gray box.
— No, — Elias said. The word was small, but it filled the space.
Corbin looked up from his datapad, his expression unreadable. Brandt’s smile finally tightened at the edges.
— You are choosing extinction, — Corbin stated. It was not an accusation. It was a fact.
— We are choosing to remain human, — Elias countered. He looked at Brandt. — The soul cannot be optimized, Doctor. We will not trade it for a few more weeks of hiding. The answer is no.
For the first time, Brandt looked disappointed. Not angry. Just a salesman who had misread his customer. He closed the metallic case. The clean, quiet click echoed in the alcove.
— A pity, — Brandt said. — My offer stands. I will leave this prototype with you. A gesture of goodwill. You will change your mind when the casualty reports reach a statistically significant threshold.
He turned and walked away, leaving the case on the workbench. Jax, who had been listening from the shadows, simply nodded and escorted him out. The deal was done. Or rather, it was not.
Elias stood alone with Corbin, the gray box between them. It was a silent, perfect thing. It promised safety. It promised survival. It was the logical choice. It was the voice of the machine he had escaped, whispering to him in the dark. He could feel the faint, cold hum of it through the metal of the workbench, a single, flat note in the chaotic symphony of the Foundry.
The air was still thick with the smell of ozone and fear. The low drip of water from a leaking pipe counted the seconds.
They would fight without armor.
