The Mirror District was a mausoleum of the living. Through the hauler's one-way viewport, Kaelen watched a world of perfect, sterile harmony unfold. The streets were immaculate, the architecture blandly pleasing. Citizens moved with a placid, unhurried grace, their faces adorned with uniform, gentle smiles that never reached their eyes. There was no laughter, no argument, no passion. Only a profound, chilling quiet, broken by the soft, melodic chime of public service announcements reminding everyone to "Maintain Harmony for a Stronger Tomorrow."
Inside the hauler, the silence was even worse. Elara hummed a tuneless, contented little melody, her fingers tracing idle patterns on her shock-cannon. Rork's massive frame was relaxed, his head leaning back against the seat as if he hadn't a care in the world. The others wore the same blank, beatific expressions. They were at peace. They were happy.
And Kaelen was in hell.
The Paradox Burn from the psychic edit was a unique and terrifying torment. It was not a fire in his veins, but a cold, creeping numbness that started at the core of his being and spread outward. With every passing second, he could feel the emotional resonance of his companions—their forced contentment—seeping back into him along the psychic channels he had created. It was a feedback loop of lies.
He had not just imposed a state upon them; he had created a connection. He was the anchor for this shared, false reality, and the weight of maintaining it was slowly petrifying his own soul. He could feel his own anxieties, his fears, his driving need to survive, being smoothed away under the relentless, placid pressure. A part of him whispered that it would be so easy to just… let go. To join the harmony. To be content.
No.
He clung to the pain. The agony of the Burn was the only thing keeping him grounded, the only proof he was still himself. He focused on it, using its sharp, crystalline clarity as a lifeline. He was the architect of this illusion, and he had to remain outside its walls, no matter the cost.
His enhanced perception, honed in the fissure, could now see the source of the district's peace. Faint, almost invisible towers pulsed at regular intervals, emitting a soft, pinkish wave of Aetheric energy that washed over everything. The Inquisitors' broadcast. To his eyes, it looked like a beautiful, intricate spiderweb, glistening with deceptive sweetness, designed to ensnare any thought that struggled against it.
And he saw the Hounds.
They were not animals, but men and women in form-fitting silver armor, their faces hidden behind featureless helms. They moved through the crowds, their own Nexuses tuned to the broadcast frequency. They were living sensors, and they drifted through the streets like sharks scenting for blood in the water. One of them turned its helmet toward the hauler as they passed.
Kaelen's heart, a traitorous, un-pacified thing, hammered against his ribs. He poured more of his will into the axiom, reinforcing the bubble of false contentment around them. [EMOTIONAL_STATE = CONTENT]. The command felt like a shard of ice in his mind.
The Hound's helmet tilted, then turned away, dismissing them. They were just another placid vehicle in a placid city.
The numbness in Kaelen's soul deepened. He could no longer feel his fingertips. A memory surfaced, unbidden—his mother's face, sharp with worry the day he'd failed his first Resonance Test. The memory felt distant, fuzzy, as if it belonged to someone else. The edit was starting to overwrite him.
"The turn is ahead," Corbin said, his voice a calm, melodic drone. "The entrance to the blind spot is disguised as a thermal exhaust vent for a recycling plant. There will be no guards. It is a place the peace forgets."
Kaelen forced his head to nod, the movement feeling sluggish. He was a puppet master whose strings were slowly tangling around his own limbs. He could see the vent up ahead, a dark, grimy opening in a wall of pristine white ceramic, an oversight in the perfect system, a flaw in the lie.
It was their salvation. It was fifty yards away.
Forty.
A child's ball rolled into the street in front of the hauler. A little girl, her smile a perfect, plastic curve, chased after it.
Rork, the picture of contentment, did not slow down. The hauler's path was unwavering. They would crush the ball, and likely the girl. It was the logical, harmonious thing to do—do not disrupt the flow. Do not cause a scene.
No.
The thought was a spark in the freezing tundra of Kaelen's mind. It was not a shout, but a whisper. A defiance.
He couldn't stop the hauler. He couldn't break the psychic axiom without exposing them all. But he could make one tiny, desperate edit. Not on his friends, not on the Hounds, but on the ball.
As the hauler's massive tire was about to make contact, Kaelen focused the last dregs of his fraying will. He saw the ball's simple, physical code.
[TRAJECTORY = UP]
The rubber ball, for no discernible reason, bounced straight up into the air with impossible force, clearing the hauler's roof by inches before landing safely behind them.
It was a tiny miracle. A ghost in the machine.
But it was enough.
A Hound, who had been observing the scene, stiffened. Its head snapped toward the hauler. The action was not harmonious. It was not content. It was an anomaly. A single, discordant note in the grand symphony.
An alarm began to blare—a sound Kaelen had not heard since the alley, raw and violent and real.
"They're breaking through!" Pim yelled from his console, his voice suddenly sharp with the panic Kaelen's edit could no longer fully suppress.
The psychic axiom shattered. The forced contentment vanished from Elara's face, replaced by a warrior's grim focus. Rork swore, slamming his foot on the accelerator.
The hauler shot forward, smashing through the flimsy grating of the exhaust vent and plunging into darkness.
They had made it. They were in the blind spot.
In the back, Kaelen collapsed. The Paradox Burn, no longer held at bay by his focus, crashed over him in a final, annihilating wave. The numbness was gone, replaced by a pain so vast and profound it had no name. He had paid for their escape not just with agony, but with a piece of his own capacity for peace. He had looked into the smiling prison, and to save them, he had been forced to lock a part of himself inside.