The silence after the storm was a different kind of noise. It was the hum of a city pretending it had never bled light and data. Arata and Yuiri moved through the pre-dawn crowds of the Akatsuki District like ghosts, their presence muted by the sheer, crushing normalcy around them.
Office workers slurped synthetic noodles, their eyes glued to news feeds scrolling about sports and weather—a perfectly curated forecast of more neon rain. Students laughed, their memories untainted by the existence of grey-coated men who could un-write a building from reality. The dissonance was a physical pressure in Arata's skull.
He led them to a place even the data-streams ignored: "Cafe de la Lune," a cramped, analog relic tucked between two towering data-banks. The air inside smelled of real coffee beans and oxidized metal. The owner, a wizened old man with a cybernetic eye that whirred as it focused, merely grunted as they entered a back booth shielded by a curtain of hanging beads.
"This is Jin's spot," Arata murmured to Yuiri, his voice low. "If anyone can access a ghost file without triggering a NOKRA audit, it's him."
"Jin?" Yuiri asked, her fingers tracing the condensation on her glass of water.
"A data-smuggler. A cynic. He trades in the things NOKRA hasn't gotten around to deleting yet. He's... reliable, in his own way." As reliable as a snake, Arata thought, but didn't say. They had no other options.
They didn't have to wait long. The bead curtain rattled, and a man slid into the booth opposite them. He was lean, dressed in a worn synth-leather jacket, with a sharp, fox-like face and eyes that missed nothing. A faint, glowing tattoo of a circuit pattern crept up his neck.
"Arata," Jin said, his voice a lazy drawl. "Heard the Integrity Bureau had a little... system crash tonight. Lots of noise from the Kurosawa Gallery. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" His eyes flicked to Yuiri, and the casual demeanor tightened almost imperceptibly. He was analyzing her, and what he saw didn't compute. "And who's the glitch, pretty one?"
"This is Yuiri," Arata said, cutting off any further commentary. "We need your help. We're looking for a file. 'Project Vein'."
Jin's smirk vanished. The circuit tattoo on his neck pulsed once, a dull red. He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Are you trying to get us all scoured? You don't look for a file like that. A file like that finds you, right before a Censor finds you."
"You've heard of it," Arata pressed.
"I've heard whispers. The kind that stop mid-sentence." Jin's eyes darted around the cafe. "That's not a deleted file. That's a forbidden one. It's not in the trash bin; it's locked in the director's office, surrounded by armed guards and logic bombs. The access logs alone would flag a Reviser."
"We have a location. Akatsuki District," Arata said, pushing his dead scanner across the table. The faint ghost of the file's name had long since faded, but Jin didn't need to see it. He could smell the truth.
Jin stared at the scanner, then back at Arata, a calculating light in his eyes. The smuggler was weighing the immense risk against his own insatiable curiosity and the potential value of a secret of this magnitude.
"Fine," he said finally, the word tasting sour. "But the price is high. Not credits. I want in. Whatever this is, it's big. And big things have... collateral value." His gaze settled on Yuiri again, lingering on her strange, shifting eyes. "And I want to know what she is."
Before Arata could refuse, Yuiri spoke, her voice clear and certain in the hushed cafe. "I am a memory that NOKRA failed to erase. And 'Project Vein' is the reason why."
Jin let out a low, appreciative whistle. "Well then. That's a hell of a product description." He pulled out a sleek, transparent data-slate from his jacket. "Akatsuki District, you said? Let's see what the ghosts are whispering about."
His fingers flew across the slate, pulling up layers of encrypted city plans, utility maps, and energy readings. He was a artist of the digital underworld.
"The district's clean. Too clean," he muttered. "But there's a sub-basement. Off the grid. Not on any public or private schematic. It's being powered, though. A tiny, steady draw from a shielded line." He zoomed in on a seemingly innocuous commercial building. "There. It's a black spot. A hole in the world's data."
He looked up, his expression grimly excited. "Your ghost file is in a vault that doesn't exist. Getting in will be one thing. Getting the file out is another. And getting out after we trigger every alarm in the NOKRA central nervous system..." He grinned, a sharp, dangerous expression. "That's where the fun begins."
Suddenly, the cafe's front window flickered. The view of the street dissolved into a uniform, official grey. A single line of text appeared, hovering in the air for everyone on the street to see:
//PUBLIC NOTICE: DATA HAZARD. TEMPORARY COGNITIVE QUARANTINE IN EFFECT. REMAIN CALM.//
A Cognitive Quarantine. NOKRA was locking down the entire district. They were sealing the exits and preparing to scrub the area's memory clean. They weren't just searching for Arata and Yuiri anymore.
They were preparing to delete the entire block to be sure.
Jin's slate flashed with a proximity alert. "Well," he said, his grin not fading but turning brittle. "Looks like they rolled out the welcome mat. The back door it is." He slid out of the booth. "Stay close. And try not to remember anything important. They'll probably try to take it."
As they slipped out the cafe's hidden rear exit into another grimy alley, Arata felt the walls closing in. They were no longer just hunting for a secret.
They were racing against the total erasure of their very selves, diving deeper into the static to find a single, fading candle of truth.
To be continued...