The city never slept, but it pulsed—soft and steady—like a heart tethered to machines. From her 61st-floor apartment, Aeris Calderon watched neon trains snake through the dusk fog, their lights reflected in the obsidian glass of her window. The Nexus Grid hummed in her mind, faint but familiar—a background thread like a second heartbeat.
Her neural deck blinked green on the desk behind her. A routine memory scan for a corporate client. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Until the static started.
A flicker.
A sound, like breath caught in a throat.
Then her world stuttered.
Aeris jerked upright. Her implant—a Class-8 interface—never glitched. She reached up instinctively, fingertips brushing the warm node behind her left ear.
"Deck, pause scan," she commanded.
Nothing.
The air turned colder.
A soft chime—her deck was still running. But the display now showed an untagged, unauthorized memory sequence, downloading at full sync speed.
"What the hell—?"
She stepped closer. The screen shimmered, then solidified into a playback. Her own voice whispered through the room:
"I didn't mean to see it. I swear. But the blood—Kael, there was so much blood—"
Kael? Her stomach turned. That name had no place in her deck. She hadn't seen him in nearly three years, not since—
The footage played.
A narrow corridor. Harsh fluorescent light.
A man—government uniform—lay twisted on the floor, his throat carved open.
Aeris stood over him, gasping, trembling. Her hands were slick with blood.
She looked up—
And stared directly into the lens.
Directly at herself.
Her eyes wide.
Whispering:
"They know."
Then static swallowed the feed.
Aeris stumbled back, breath shallow. This wasn't a client memory. This wasn't even possible.
She checked the metadata.
Timestamp: Four days from now.
Location: Central Justice Complex.
Subject: Aeris Calderon.
Status: PENDING ENTRY.
A knock came at her door.
A single, heavy rap.
She froze.
A second knock.
Slower.
Then a voice—distorted by the security intercom, yet unmistakably familiar.
"Aeris, it's Kael. I need you to come with me. Now."
[TO BE CONTINUED]