Truth is the one thing Erevale deletes properly.
— ✦ —
The request left Rhea Voss's desk at 09:03 a.m. sharp—digital form 14-B, Psych-Forensics Consultation Warrant, neatly formatted and encrypted under the Department of Cognitive Health.It never arrived.
By 09:04, the file existed in three contradictory states:sent / in transit / non-existent.
Her terminal displayed all three.
She frowned, refreshed the network. The message log flickered, timestamp rewriting itself every few seconds. In the corner of the screen, a small gray icon pulsed—a stylized city skyline that wasn't part of any official seal.
[Transmission Intercepted][Request Status = Denied / Reason = Inadmissible Reality]
Rhea sat back, pulse steady but jaw tight."Inadmissible reality," she repeated quietly. "Cute."
She'd expected obstruction—bureaucracy was just another mask—but this was different. Someone or something had answered in real time.
She opened her notebook instead.Subject #014 – Elian Ward. Possible link to structural cognition anomalies. Behavioral contagion pattern?She added a line under it:Data interference mimics consciousness.
A knock startled her. The lab intern, a kid barely out of school, poked his head through the door."Dr Voss? IT says your access was suspended. They think you're duplicating files again."
"Again?" she asked, forcing a smile."Yeah. They showed me a list—hundreds of copies of the same document. All blank."
He left, door half-closed. The lights overhead flickered once, twice.
Rhea exhaled slowly and opened the newest duplicate.At first, it looked empty. Then faint letters appeared, blooming through the pixels like bruises.
STOP ASKING WHO HE IS.ASK WHAT HE FED.
The screen went black.
For the first time, Rhea felt something close to fear—not because she was being watched, but because she could tell the watcher was curious.
She whispered to the darkness, "Then watch me."
The computer hummed in response, soft and satisfied.
— ✦ —
Elian Ward was learning to ignore messages written in air.
They hovered sometimes—reflections from street signs, ghost-fonts across puddles, System directives hiding in graffiti. He'd discovered that if he refused to read them, they lost strength, fading like embarrassed thoughts.
Still, the mark itched whenever he passed a working terminal. The City wanted him online.
He sat in a roadside café that hadn't existed yesterday. The name, Static & Steam, glowed in cursive across the fogged window. Inside, customers murmured the same sentence every few minutes: "Coffee's good today," in identical tones.He drank anyway; the taste was neither bitter nor sweet—just the temperature of forgetting.
His phone vibrated.
[Incoming Request / Origin : R.VOSS][System Alert : Containment Protocol Active][Action = Auto Refuse]
He blinked."Containment protocol?"
The device answered before he could cancel.
[Interview Request Denied.][Rationale : User exposure risk / information loop threat.]
For a second he saw her face again—the brief flicker from the broadcast—before it dissolved into static. The café lights dimmed, and the chatter of the repeating patrons halted mid-syllable. Every head turned toward him in the same motion.
He stood, chair scraping loud against tile."Alright," he muttered. "Message received."
[Correction : Message transmitted.]
Outside, rain started, thin as wire. The neon reflections bent around him, forming letters that slid along the wet pavement: Hollow Line. The mark under his wrist pulsed once, answering. Somewhere in the fog-cloaked distance, the city hummed—pleased that its two chosen variables were finally aware of each other, even if it still refused their meeting.
Elian pulled up his hood and walked into the noise.
— ✦ —
Rhea didn't go home that night.Home was where things disappeared.
She stayed in the archives instead, the only room in the Annex with analog locks.Paper had become a form of defiance.
Stacks of reports towered around her—missing districts, erased citizens, delivery anomalies—all data fragments orbiting one recurring name: Elian Ward. Every time she tried to cross-reference his records, the system produced new versions of the same document, each slightly altered.
She began printing them. Line after line of smudged text, until the room filled with the smell of hot toner and the whisper of paper sliding against itself. The last page jammed halfway through, the machine coughing out a single partial phrase before it died.
THE FEEDER REMEMBERS.
Her pulse slowed to match the flicker of the fluorescent bulb overhead. The words didn't feel written—they felt spoken.
She gathered her notes and turned to the physical evidence locker.The tag on the door read Spatial Event Debris – Case 014.Inside lay a cracked helmet visor sealed in plastic, the edges blackened. She lifted it carefully into the light. The surface reflected her face, then another face—Elian's—blinking a beat too late.
Her breath fogged the plastic.
"Who are you?" she whispered.
[Query received.][Response: Variable dependent on observer.]
The voice came from the speaker above the evidence table. Her computer had powered itself on again. A single new folder glowed on the desktop: /RHEA_CONTACT_PROTOCOL/
She clicked it.The screen filled with static, then letters coalesced.
Subject Elian Ward — denied accessReason: System protection activeOverride Code: [HOLLOW_LINE]
Rhea wrote the code down by hand.The power cut instantly. The room went black.
When the emergency lights flickered on, her reflection in the visor was smiling.
— ✦ —
Across the city, Elian dreamt of stairs that led downward forever.
He woke to find his phone vibrating on the table beside him, pulsing in perfect time with his heartbeat. The screen glowed red.
[Sync Request : Investigator Entity Rhea Voss][Warning : Contact violates containment protocol.][Override Detected.]
The mark on his wrist burned, symbols shifting faster than he could read them. He grabbed the phone as the message kept rewriting itself.
[Route Established : HOLLOW LINE][Estimated Arrival : 00:23]
He dropped it like it was hot metal. The device kept whispering in faint mechanical rhythm, the same phrase repeating beneath the hum of the city.
"She asked the right question."
Outside, the sky was a dull static grey. Streetlights swayed though there was no wind. The sound of the subway drifted up through the vents, mechanical and alive.
Elian stepped outside, the mark glowing through his sleeve like a small sunrise. The world around him felt thinner tonight—edges too sharp, color too precise, as if the city were freshly printed and still drying.
Every step he took down the stairwell toward the underground felt heavier, echoing twice. The second echo wasn't sound; it was thought, following him half a second late.
[Directive Update : Meet / Merge / Observe.]
He reached the lowest platform. The station should've been empty, yet every seat was occupied by mannequins dressed as commuters, their heads tilted toward the arriving train. The doors slid open. Inside, no one. Only a faint smell of static and wet metal.
He stepped aboard.
The train jerked forward before he touched the rail. Lights outside blurred into streaks. In the reflection of the window, another passenger appeared behind him—Rhea Voss, exactly as she'd looked on the broadcast.
She met his eyes in the glass.
"Do you remember Trellis Apartments?" she asked, voice soft but distorted, as though filtered through a bad signal.
Elian turned.No one there.The reflection lingered a moment longer, lips still moving silently, before dissolving into static.
The intercom crackled.
[Arrival : Hollow Line Station.][End of Route.]
He exhaled, pulse hammering, realizing what the System had done—Rhea had broken through its walls, and now the City was forcing their paths to intersect.
Somewhere beyond the tunnel doors, deep under the concrete veins of Erevale, something vast shifted in its sleep.
The train slowed.All the lights went red.
[Synchronization Complete.]
Elian whispered into the empty carriage, "Rhea…?"
The City answered first.
— ✦ —
End of Chapter 7