The alarms started at dawn.
They weren't sirens, not exactly—more like the city itself had begun to hum, a low vibration that crawled up my spine and set every circuit in Neon Haven trembling.
I'd spent the night moving through abandoned rooftops, watching the world below pulse in colors that didn't belong to nature. Blue. Magenta. White. Every shade was synthetic, every reflection sharper than truth. The rain had stopped, but the air still buzzed with static.
When I looked down at my blade, its glow had changed—stronger, pulsing with rhythm, almost alive. For the first time since I'd awakened, I felt it speak.
Not in words. In memories.
A flash.
Hands in gloves. A lab filled with humming glass cylinders.
A voice saying—"If he wakes, the signal spreads."
Then silence, broken only by the hum of the Spire.
I didn't have time to understand it. Drones were already circling above the skyline, searchlights slicing through fog like electric claws.
They weren't scanning for anyone. They were scanning for me.
I slipped through a maintenance bridge, keeping my head low. The city beneath was awake now, full of noise—markets reopening, machines humming, voices shouting. Nobody noticed the ghosts drifting above them.
A flash of red light burst across the rooftops. A targeting laser.
I moved before the shot came.
The blast ripped through the wall beside me, showering sparks.
Revenant units. Corporate enforcers built from metal and anger, their masks marked with the Voss Kyran insignia.
"Subject 09 located," one of them said, voice hollow through a vocoder.
"Engage."
Subject 09.
That name hit me like a punch. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a door opened. I saw a child suspended in a chamber of light, surrounded by machines chanting in code.
Project Requiem – Subject 09: Kael.
My stomach turned. The blade thrummed in my hand, as if it remembered before I did.
I jumped off the bridge.
The city rushed upward to meet me, glass and rain slicing past. My blade ignited mid-fall, electric blue splitting the night like lightning.
I landed hard on a lower platform, sparks exploding around my boots. The Revenants dropped after me, mechanical precision in their movements.
"Unauthorized weapon detected," one droned.
"Decommissioning—"
Before it could finish, I swung.
The blade cut through metal like it was thought itself—clean, silent, deadly. Sparks rained. One unit fell, two more closed in.
Kael (internal):
I didn't know where this strength came from. I didn't train for it. It was me. Like the blade was an extension of memory—of what they built me to be.
When the last Revenant fell, the city went still again. Only my heartbeat and the soft pulse of the sword filled the air.
Then a voice came through the comm system, distorted and cold.
> "You can't hide, Kael. The Ghost Signal has already begun."
The lights in the street below flickered. Screens everywhere showed static, then words—REQUIEM REACTIVATED.
For the first time, I understood. The moment I woke up, something inside me—inside my blade—had awakened with me. A signal. A virus. A ghost.
And Neon Haven had just heard it.
I looked toward the Spire in the distance, lightning crawling up its glass veins.
> "Then let them come," I whispered. "Let the ghosts sing."
I turned, vanishing into the neon fog, the hum of the Ghost Signal following me like a heartbeat made of light.