You Are Not Registered
They didn't stay long after the flower.
Astra led Kairo through another corridor — this one less broken, more intentional. The walls pulsed faintly, data veins crawling under the surface like moving tattoos.
This place wasn't abandoned, Kairo thought.
It was evolving.
They stopped at a junction where three old lift shafts converged.
Astra turned to him, face serious.
"They're coming."
Kairo frowned.
"Who?"
Her fingers blurred against the air — tapping an invisible interface — pulling up a translucent grid of shifting lights.
At the center:
A red spike, pulsing harder by the second.
"Core enforcement unit," she said.
"Type-2 Reaper."
Kairo's pulse quickened.
He remembered the cold voice from the alley.
The warning.
[UNREGISTERED.]
"What's it want with me?" Kairo asked.
Astra didn't answer immediately.
Instead, she said something worse:
"It doesn't matter if it kills you or not."
"It only needs to overwrite your signature."
He stared.
"You mean… replace me."
She nodded.
"Replace... or reformat."
The air grew heavier.
The corridor lights dimmed.
Something massive — and wrong — approached.
Through the far tunnel, a shadow materialized.
Not walking. Not running.
Sliding.
It was tall — humanoid, but wrong.
Like a mannequin stretched too thin.
Its skin was raw memory static, flickering and twitching.
Where its face should be: a smooth plate of shifting data glyphs.
No eyes.
No mouth.
Just a constant ripple of deletion code flowing across its surface.
[TARGET: KAIRO-17]
[SIGNATURE: CORRUPTED]
[ACTION: REPLACE INSTANCE]
The Reaper's voice wasn't sound.
It was pressure — a command sinking into his bones.
Kairo stumbled back.
His head throbbed.
The world tilted sideways — static bleeding into the edges of his vision.
"Run," Astra said.
She didn't yell.
She didn't panic.
She just moved.
Fast.
Kairo snapped out of it, sprinting after her down the side tunnel.
The Reaper didn't chase.
It simply shifted — glitching from one spot to another without walking.
Short hops, like corrupted frames in a video.
Closer.
Closer.
Every time Kairo blinked, it was nearer.
"This way!" Astra called, skidding into a maintenance hatch.
Kairo dove after her, barely clearing the threshold before slamming the panel shut.
A split-second later —
The Reaper's hand phased through the wall, glitching in and out — searching.
Astra pressed her palm against the hatch — activating a local field scramble.
The hand withdrew.
For now.
Kairo collapsed against the wall, gasping.
"What the hell is that thing?"
Astra didn't look relieved.
She looked… sad.
"That's what happens when the Core can't delete you cleanly."
"It sends a recompiler."
He swallowed hard.
"And if it catches me?"
Astra answered without hesitation.
"You won't die."
"You'll just... forget you ever fought."
The silence that followed was worse than screaming.
Kairo wiped sweat from his forehead. His hands trembled — not from exertion, but from resonance distortion.
He could feel the Core's pull even now — a faint tug at the edges of his mind, trying to rewrite him.
Trying to make him a different Kairo.
A better Kairo.
One that didn't resist.
Astra knelt beside him.
She pulled a chipped sigil from her belt — a small, cracked disc with the same spiral emblem as the glitch flower.
"Take this," she said.
He accepted it.
"What's it do?"
"Anchors you. Temporarily."
Kairo frowned.
"Anchors what?"
Astra's voice softened.
"Your self."
He turned the disc over.
It buzzed faintly against his palm — vibrating in rhythm with his heartbeat.
A reminder.
A tether.
The wall near them shuddered.
The Reaper wasn't gone.
Just recalibrating.
They didn't have long.
Astra stood.
"We can't stay hidden forever. Drift destabilization will find us even if the Reaper doesn't."
Kairo pushed himself up.
"Then what do we do?"
She met his eyes.
"We run deeper."
Before he could respond, a distortion wave hit the tunnel — and the world blinked.
Just for a second.
But in that second…
He saw something.
A future?
A memory?
An echo.
Astra lying broken under a collapsing tower.
Him screaming a name he couldn't remember.
The glitch flower blooming from their ashes.
The vision vanished.
The tunnel snapped back into place.
Astra didn't seem to notice.
She was already moving.
Kairo clutched the spiral disc tighter.
Remember yourself, he thought.
Then he followed her into the dark.