Signal Loss

Kael shifted slightly, but didn't pull his hand away. Neither did Eira. Their fingers rested together, warm in the low light, a small defiance in the belly of a city built to drain every trace of feeling.

It should've felt safe.

But something had changed.

It started with the hum.

The steady thrum of the chamber—soft, mechanical, constant—had been a strange comfort. Now it buzzed just a little off-pitch. Not wrong, but... tuned differently. Like a wire pulled too tight.

Eira sat up straighter.

"Do you hear that?" she asked.

Kael tilted his head. "What?"

"The relay tone. It's shifted. It's..." She hesitated. "It's not looping. Not exactly."

Kael rose silently, scanning the chamber walls. "Could be a pulse misfire. Wren said the lower circuits were unstable."

"No." Eira was already standing, crossing to the panel where they'd first reset the chamber's filters. "This isn't just a fluctuation. It's... it's synced to our activity."

Kael frowned. "That doesn't make sense."

"Does anything here?"

She ran a hand across the relay node. It was cold. Too cold.

Kael pulled a scanner from his jacket pocket—something cobbled together from Wren's junk tech. He flicked it on.

The screen flickered.

Then blinked out.

Dead.

"Battery?" Eira asked.

Kael shook his head. "Power's fine. But there's interference. Intentional."

The air felt denser now. Not cold exactly—more like pressure. Like the space around them had thickened, slowed.

Kael moved to the entrance, hand near the blade holstered under his coat. Eira didn't need to ask. She moved too—grabbing the pack with the memory shards Wren had smuggled in and pulling it close.

Then, from the far corner of the room, something... twitched.

Just a shadow. A flicker. Gone in an instant.

Kael stepped forward—but the wall was solid. Empty. Nothing there.

Eira's voice dropped to a whisper. "We need to go."

Kael didn't argue.

As he moved to disengage the chamber seal, the outer hallway lights glitched—half a second of flickering static across the corridor.

Then—footsteps.

Not loud.

Not real.

But impressions—like echo-chambers playing back memories of movement.

Eira's breath hitched.

"That's not a patrol."

"No," Kael said quietly, "it's not."

He turned to her. "Get the pack. We leave in thirty seconds."

Eira tightened her grip on the data.

But just before they moved—

the door seal hissed.

Override. External source.

A flicker of red blinked across the lock.

Then another.

Then—just before it could open fully—

Ysel's voice.

Muffled, sharp, panicked. "Open the back wall. NOW!"

Kael didn't wait.

He hit the manual release on the maintenance hatch behind them, and Eira dove through first, clutching the pack to her chest. Kael followed.

The door behind them slammed open.

And the chamber filled with cold, flat light.

The Vigil had arrived.

The door sealed with a mechanical groan, locking them into a chamber not meant for people.

It was small—barely taller than Kael. Pipes crisscrossed the ceiling like veins. The walls were damp with condensation from generations of recycled air. A single emergency panel glowed red in the corner, too dim to reveal anything clearly, but enough to cast Eira's face in a shadow that made her look older. Tired. More real than she'd ever been in Aurelis.

They didn't speak for a long while.

Then Kael whispered, "It followed us."

Not a question.

Ysel finally turned, slow and deliberate. She looked different in the red light. Less sharp, more... unshielded.

Her voice was even. Controlled.

"You've seen drones. You've seen Vigils. You think you understand what the system sends after anomalies."

Kael's jaw tensed. Eira stayed silent.

Ysel continued, "But the Seeker is different. It doesn't monitor. It hunts."

Kael shook his head. "What is it?"

Ysel sat. Her shoulders dropped slightly, and for a moment—just a moment—she looked scared.

"It was made during Project Recall," she said. "A final safeguard. Not a recorder. Not a tracker. A purifier."

Eira's breath caught. "What do you mean?"

Ysel looked at her. Not at her face—at her eyes.

"I mean it finds the people the system can't rewrite. The ones who remember wrong. The ones who glitch out of line and won't go back. Not because they choose to—but because something in them won't let them forget."

Kael stepped forward. "And it—what? Deletes them?"

Ysel's mouth twitched.

"No. That would be simple. The Seeker doesn't erase you."

Her voice lowered.

"It rewrites you."

The word dropped like weight. Heavy. Dreadful.

Ysel went on, softer now. "It scans memories. Breaks them. Feeds you the system's version. Piece by piece. You start forgetting why you're hiding. Who you are. Who you love. It's not just surveillance. It's possession."

Eira's knees went weak. She lowered herself to the floor, arms wrapped around the data pack like a lifeline.

"But it has limits," Ysel added. "The Seeker has to see you. Be near. It doesn't operate at distance—it's too corrupted. Too complex."

Kael looked to her. "Corrupted?"

Ysel nodded once. "They fed it too many memories. Gave it too many pieces of people it shouldn't have. It started breaking. It doesn't just follow orders now. It... chooses."

"Chooses what?" Eira asked.

Ysel finally met her eyes again.

"Who to become."

Silence.

Kael stared at the floor. "So how do we stop it?"

"You don't," Ysel said flatly. "You run. You scatter. You confuse it. You stay human. That's the only edge we have."

Eira shivered.

A distant hum echoed through the pipes.

It didn't sound mechanical.

It sounded like a voice.

Faint.

Rhythmic.

Like a child humming a lullaby.

Eira's blood went cold. Her hand tightened around Kael's.

She remembered that melody.

From when she was five.

From her mother.

Before the system took her name.

But her mother hadn't sung it since.

Because her mother didn't remember she ever had.

The humming stopped.

Not like it faded away—like it realized they were listening.

The silence that followed was worse.

Kael hadn't let go of Eira's hand. Not because he meant to hold on, but because letting go felt like acknowledging just how fast the air had gone thin in the room.

Eira sat cross-legged on the cold floor, her fingers twitching where they gripped the edge of the data pack. Her breath trembled in her chest, shallow and uneven, and she didn't bother hiding it anymore.

It didn't feel brave. Just real.

"That sound," she whispered finally, "it was from when I was five."

Kael turned his head toward her, slow and quiet.

"I used to hum it while I played with pattern blocks," she went on, her voice almost too soft to hear. "And then one day, my mother stopped knowing what it was. She heard it and said it was irrelevant noise. That I should be silent."

Ysel didn't speak. She stood, back against the far wall, arms crossed tight—like she was holding herself together one limb at a time.

"I didn't know anyone remembered," Eira murmured.

"I didn't," Kael said. "But hearing you say that? It's like I almost can."

"That's what it does," Ysel said quietly. "It doesn't steal all at once. It frays."

Eira looked up at her. "So what happens to someone who breaks that way?"

Ysel finally turned. Her expression was unreadable—but her eyes weren't.

"They forget that they were ever broken."

No one spoke for a while.

The system above them hummed faintly, like the city was dreaming.

Kael exhaled and leaned back against the wall, head tilted toward the ceiling. "How many people are left like us?"

Ysel didn't answer immediately.

Then: "More than you'd think. Fewer than we need."

Eira studied her. "You've seen it happen. To someone you care about."

The line around Ysel's mouth didn't move, but her eyes darkened.

"Yes."

Eira watched her carefully. "And you're afraid it'll happen to us."

"No." Ysel looked at her flatly. "I know it will."

Kael sat forward. "Then why are we here? If it's hopeless—why tell us? Why drag us through broken corridors and memory shadows?"

Ysel's reply was soft, but sharp. "Because hopeless doesn't mean meaningless."

That landed.

Kael lowered his gaze. Eira stared at the floor between them, the data pack resting in her lap like an unspoken promise.

"If we keep running," she said, "what's left of us when it's over?"

Ysel crouched beside her—not close, but enough to feel the shift.

"Whatever we choose to keep."

The silence lingered again, heavy but full.

Then Kael reached over and unwrapped the fabric shielding the data pack.

"I want to know what they kept from us," he said. "Before the Seeker finds it first."

Eira swallowed and nodded.

Not with fear.

With decision.

Ysel, for the first time in hours, let the corner of her mouth lift.

Not a smile.

Something heavier.

A kind of mourning.

They weren't ready for what they were about to see.

But the truth didn't wait.

Not anymore.