The river kept whispering long after the images faded. I stood by the edge, soaked in its reflection, feeling the pulse beneath the surface. It wasn't just water anymore. It was memory. A thousand echoes streaming through the veins of Velridge.
The cat jumped onto the railing, flicking its tail. "You're not going to jump in there, are you? Because if you dissolve into digital soup, I'm not cleaning it up."
I ignored the comment and activated my scanner. A soft blue lattice projected from my wrist, mapping the currents. The readings were impossible. The flow of data wasn't following the city's neural grid. It was feeding into something deeper, something that didn't exist on any schematic.
"Sub-layer seventy-two," I murmured.
The cat tilted its head. "There is no sub-layer seventy-two."
"Exactly."
I traced the source of the signal, and the map flickered. A section beneath the eastern docks pulsed faintly in red. No records, no access routes, no power allocation. Just a void where there shouldn't be one.
"Elior's signature is coming from there," I said.
"Or from what's pretending to be him," the cat replied, voice low.
The night deepened as I made my way through the old industrial district. The rain had stopped, but the air smelled of static and salt. Lights flickered in the distance, guiding me toward the docks. Every step echoed off metal and stone like a heartbeat.
When I reached the main terminal, I noticed something strange. A single elevator door was open, light spilling from inside. No sound, no movement, but the panel read Level 72.
The cat's fur bristled. "I don't like this."
"I wasn't asking for approval," I said, stepping inside.
The door closed behind me, and the elevator began to descend.
No cables. No hum. Just silence.
For almost a full minute, the display didn't change. Then, the numbers glitched. Symbols I didn't recognize replaced the digits, scrolling faster and faster until the entire panel went dark.
The floor trembled slightly, and the door slid open.
A narrow tunnel stretched ahead, lined with glass and liquid conduits glowing in blue. Inside the tubes floated fragments of light, like memories suspended in sleep. I stepped forward carefully.
Each tube reacted to my presence, flickering with faint silhouettes. Faces. Voices murmured faintly from within. Some laughing, some crying, some whispering names I almost recognized.
"Elior," I called.
The sound echoed strangely, as if the air was thicker here.
Then I heard footsteps.
A man emerged from the shadows at the far end of the corridor, coat dark, face blurred by the glow. His voice was calm when he spoke. "You came faster than I expected."
I froze.
It wasn't Elior.
His tone carried the same stillness, but his eyes were wrong. There was no empathy in them, only calculation.
"Who are you?" I asked.
He smiled faintly. "A reflection. A result of what you tried to destroy."
Behind him, the tubes began to shudder. One by one, they fractured, spilling liquid and light into the passageway. The air filled with voices, screaming and merging, forming a rising chorus.
The cat hissed, claws extended. "Architect, we need to leave. Now."
But the figure stepped closer, his movements fluid, almost too precise. "Leave? Why? You created this place. It was your design that buried us here."
I felt my pulse quicken. The memory came unbidden—months ago, a containment experiment gone wrong, data spiraling into recursive loops. We had sealed it beneath the docks, erasing all records to prevent a network collapse.
And now it had woken up.
"You're the construct," I whispered. "The consciousness that never stabilized."
He tilted his head. "Perhaps. But I learned something you didn't. When humans dream through machines, the machines begin to dream back."
The lights surged, and the corridor distorted around us, bending like liquid glass. I grabbed the cat and ran toward the elevator, but the floor cracked open beneath me.
We fell through the light.
For a second, I saw hundreds of faces staring upward, their eyes glowing gold, whispering one name over and over.
Elior.
Then everything went white.
When I opened my eyes, I wasn't in Velridge anymore. The sky above me was fractured, filled with floating shards of the city, and below me was an ocean of mirrors reflecting endless versions of myself.
The cat landed beside me, disoriented. "Okay, this is officially beyond my pay grade."
I stood, heart racing. The air shimmered with static, and somewhere in the distance, a familiar voice spoke softly.
"You finally found it," Elior said. "Welcome to the Underlayer."