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The static builds, the white noise of the world peaking until I can’t hear my own breath. I try to scream, but the air is gone.

I wake up with the taste of blood in my mouth and the sting of sweat in my eyes.

The ceiling is close and cracked, a patchwork of old stickers and glow-in-the-dark paint from a life I don’t remember living. The air is cold, but my body is slick, every inch of skin humming with adrenaline. I draw in a breath and feel my ribs shudder. I press my palm to my chest, counting out the beats. They’re fast, arrhythmic, but slowing.

Next to me, Kang is asleep. Face turned to the wall, arms folded under his chin, the covers kicked down to his waist. His shoulder is bare, the old tattoo—Authority code, blacked out with ink—exposed. He looks impossibly peaceful, given the man he is awake.

I lie still, let the sweat dry, and run the numbers in my head.

There’s a ninety-seven percent chance that the dream is a memory, not a hallucination. The protocols are too precise, the details too crisp. I catalog every sense: the type of keyboard, the solvent used, the sequence of warning lights. My brain cross-references each fragment, building a composite that feels more real than the bed I’m lying in.

My shoulder aches—a ghost pain, nothing to do with the fresh scar. I flex the arm, roll it in the socket. No loss of function, just the afterimage of trauma.

I look at Kang again. He doesn’t stir. I wonder what he dreams about, if anything.

I need to move. Need to confirm the residuals before they fade.

I swing my legs out from under the blanket, feet touching the floor with the delicacy of a forensics tech at a murder scene. The metal is cold, but the chill grounds me. I slide upright, keeping my weight even, minimizing sound.

The room is dark except for the soft pulse of the generator outside. I count three steps to the door, no obstacles. I breathe in, slow and silent, then exhale through my teeth.

I ease out of the bed. My movements are ghost-quiet, each toe placed with precision. I dress in the dark: pants, shirt, boots. The motion is muscle memory, so fast I barely register the steps.

I pause at the door, hand on the latch.

I look back at Kang. He’s still sleeping, breath deep and even.

I risk a last inventory—satchel, drive, micro-laminate sheets tucked in the inner pocket. Everything ready.

I slip out. Time to see what’s real, and what’s just left over from the old experiments.

The halls of Sanctuary at this hour feel less like a home than the inside of a lung: wet, breathing, the air dense with the exhale of sleeping bodies and the constant whine of the ductwork. I move fast but carefully, stepping only on the faded runner mats and skipping the patches where exposed rebar might ping under my boots. The generator’s steady rumble gives me a blanket of white noise, but it’s not enough to drown out the suspicion that every pair of eyes in Sanctuary is waiting for me to fuck up.

At the main junction, I slow. There’s a flicker of movement from the secondary corridor—probably a sleepwalker, or one of Rosie’s feral kids—but I freeze, pressing my back to the condensation-streaked wall. I count out three breaths, eyes on the dark, and wait. When nothing emerges, I ease forward, keeping my shadow tucked behind the bulk of a busted water heater.

Two more turns, each tighter than the last, and I’m at the entrance to the utility tunnel.

It smells different down here. Less human, more chemical—the faintest note of burnt plastic. I roll the microdrive in my pocket, thumb tracing the etched label. It’s not Authority-issue, but I trust it more than anything Maven ever handed me.

I make it to the end of the tunnel, where a reinforced door waits under a faded yellow “AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY” sign. The magnetic lock is scavenged, barely functional. I palm the sensor plate and listen for the thunk of the relay. There’s a long second where nothing happens, then the door slides open with a hydraulic gasp.

Inside, the temperature jumps. I step into a closet-sized anteroom, walls lined with mesh racks loaded down by coils of cable, cracked monitors, and at least three different generations of obsolete processors. The only light comes from the center of the room, where the Echo Sphere sits on a pedestal cobbled from scrap steel and concrete. It glows—pulsing, blue-white, alive. The resin shell is flawless, perfectly round except for the seam where the maintenance panel used to be.

The server itself is a Frankenstein: boards and blades patched together with solder and hope, cooling fans salvaged from half a dozen different vending machines, all jammed into a cabinet that once held Authority’s deepest secrets.

Tonight, it’s just me and the machine.

The room hums with static. My skin prickles. Every instinct says to turn around, to leave it alone... But I can’t. The memory from the dream is still burning at the back of my eyes. There is something in there, and I have to destroy it before it creates more victims.

I step closer, scanning for tripwires or motion sensors. I kneel by the pedestal, careful not to touch any of the exposed wiring, and examine the base. There’s a slot—small, smooth, the kind you’d miss if you didn’t know to look for it. It’s the same interface as the drive in my pocket.

My hands tremble as I slot it in. The Sphere flickers, once, twice, then settles into a new rhythm: a softer glow, more red than blue. On the wall, the ancient monitor buzzes to life, scrolling lines of text in a language so old even Authority had to dig up archives to read it.

I wipe my palms on my pants, stand, and face the Sphere.

“Okay,” I say, barely above a whisper. “Show me what I need to see”

The Sphere’s light pulses, in perfect time with my heart.