Mara felt as though she was being watched.
Not in the way that came with eyes or movement — but with attention. The kind that lingered even when nothing stood behind it.
She turned slowly.
Nothing.
The room stretched out around her, dim and quiet, lit by a handful of old Afterglow units recessed into the ceiling. Their light was thin and ambered, spilling softly instead of cutting through the dark. It didn't reach the corners properly. It wasn't meant to.
Mara slowed her steps.
"I remember these," she murmured, more to steady herself than out of nostalgia. "From the museum. That night."
The Afterglow units weren't true lights. Not like permalamps or neon holosigns.
They didn't announce themselves. They endured. Drawing power from a low energy battery. Backup illumination. Emergency use. Maintenance cycles.
Light designed to keep people calm when systems failed — dim enough not to panic, steady enough to suggest control. The glow made everything look older than it was, smoothing edges, blurring intent.
These ones were second generation.
She recognized them by the faint pulse beneath the glow — not a flicker, but a hesitation.
A rhythm that didn't quite sync with her breathing. They shouldn't have been active.
Second-generation units had been pulled from circulation years ago, quietly and without ceremony, after the Directorate issued a blanket ban on low-frequency electromagnetic emitters. Officially, it was a safety measure. Unofficially, the notices had been vague enough to discourage questions.
Mara hadn't questioned it then.
She was questioning it now.
She stepped beneath one of the lights and looked up. The casing was scratched, dulled by age, its surface warm when she brushed it with her fingers. Not hot. Not failing.
Maintained.
The sense of being watched sharpened. Not from the walls.
From the room itself.
As if the light wasn't illuminating her — but registering her. Mara withdrew her hand.
The glow did not change.
Somewhere deeper in the space, something adjusted its attention. The place gave off an unmistakably ominous presence.
It felt as though everything had been left exactly where it was in a hurry, abandoned mid- thought, mid-action. Like a process halted without warning. The room carried the uncomfortable stillness of something unfinished, its silence pressing down harder the longer she stood there. Strange markings crawled along the walls in uneven lines and faded symbols, and for a brief second, Mara felt the chill sink straight into her bones.
At the far end of the room stood a wide, slate-black surface — smooth, rectangular, and unmistakably deliberate. It looked like a board, but not one meant for display. More like a record.
Mara walked toward it slowly.
Written across the surface were two lines, stark and deliberate:
DAY 120
Sequence 5
The writing was pale — not chalk, not ink. White, but without texture.
"Strange," Mara whispered. "I don't even understand what this was written with."
Nearby stood what might once have been a bookshelf. Except where books should have been, there were server boxes instead — stacked unevenly, humming faintly beneath layers of dust. Thick cables spilled from their backs like exposed roots, their outer coating cracked and peeling with age.
The contrast unsettled her.
Scattered across the floor were children's toys.
Dolls lay on their sides, their expressions frozen mid-smile. Playhouses sat partially
collapsed, edges dented from impact or neglect. The toys weren't plastic — they couldn't be. Ever since the plastic ban decades ago, children's items had been manufactured from a lightweight metal composite. Durable. Recyclable.
Potentially dangerous.
Mara stepped carefully, remembering something Sene had once mentioned in passing — that those toys could hurt if mishandled. She never understood why children would be given
objects that could double as weapons, but she'd never questioned it either.
After all, the concept of toysitself felt distant to her. Almost abstract.
"Thank god I didn't have to play with these as a kid," she muttered.
Beside the scattered toys stood several low, brightly colored tables, clearly sized for children. Resting atop them were old analog computers — bulky, angular, with cords snaking out from their sides and disappearing across the floor. Their screens were dark, glass clouded with age.
Mara reached out and pressed a power switch. Nothing.
She tried another. Then another. All dead.
She followed the cables with her eyes and realized they all fed into a single, unified line that ran along the floor and disappeared behind a heavy door at the back of the room.
The door drew her attention immediately.
It was reinforced metal, thick and industrial, clearly designed to resist force. Not something a passerby could pry open on a whim. Yet what surprised her most was the locking mechanism.
Manual.
She frowned.
Almost everything in the city was bio-tagged now. Access was automated. Monitored. Entering a restricted area without authorization usually meant drones, alerts, consequences.
This door didn't fit.
She stepped closer, reaching out—
The keepsong flared.
Light burst from it, sharp and blinding, accompanied by a shrill screech that pierced straight through her skull. Mara recoiled, clapping her hands over her ears as pain bloomed behind her eyes.
"Stop it! Stop— stop— stop!"
She shouted, panic breaking through her composure, as if yelling might silence it — as if the keepsong could hear her at all.
Then, just as suddenly— It stopped.
The light vanished. The sound cut cleanly, like a switch thrown. The silence that followed was heavier than before.
Mara lowered her hands slowly, heart hammering, breath shallow. And before she could react—
The silence didn't last.
Footsteps echoed from behind her.
Not hurried. Not cautious. Each step landed with a measured certainty, as if the floor had already agreed to receive them. The sound wasn't loud, but it carried — clean, deliberate, impossible to mistake for accident.
Mara froze.
Her instincts screamed at her to move, to turn, to do something, but she didn't. She'd learned long ago that sudden motion was how attention sharpened. Instead, she stayed where she was, hands slowly lowering from her ears, breath shallow and controlled.
The footsteps stopped.
Close.
Close enough that she could feel the disturbance in the air, a faint displacement like pressure before a storm. The Afterglow units hummed softly overhead, their light wavering just enough to suggest strain.
"You shouldn't be here," a voice said behind her.
It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be.
Mara swallowed. "Neither should you."
A pause.
Then, a low sound — not quite a laugh, not quite amusement.
"That's fair," the voice replied.
She turned.
The man stood a few steps behind her, half-submerged in shadow. His coat was dark and unremarkable, the kind that absorbed light instead of reflecting it. A hood obscured most of his face, but she could tell he was watching her closely — not her expression, but her posture, her hands, the subtle ways her weight shifted.
Assessing.
"You triggered the keepsong," he said, glancing briefly toward her chest. "That's… unusual." Mara's fingers curled reflexively around the device. "You followed me."
"I noticed you," he corrected. "That came later." She tightened her jaw. "Who are you?"
He tilted his head, as if considering how much the question deserved. "Not a custodian," he said. "Not compliance. And not your enemy — at least not tonight."
"That's not an answer."
"No," he agreed. "It's a boundary."
The room seemed to listen.
The hum beneath the silence deepened, almost imperceptibly. The black slate at the far end of the room flickered once, the pale lettering dimming before steadying again.
DAY 120
Sequence 5
The man glanced at it and frowned faintly. "Still counting," he murmured. "That's new."
Mara felt her unease sharpen. "You know this place."
"I know what it does," he said. "And what it used to pretend it didn't."
She took a step back without thinking.
The keepsong warmed sharply, a warning pulse against her palm. The Afterglow units flickered in response, their amber light wavering as if caught between two instructions.
The man noticed both.
His posture shifted — subtle, but real.
"Easy," he said. "You don't want it reacting again."
"You sound like you care." Mara said slowly.
"I sound like someone who doesn't want to clean up a mess," he replied. Then, more quietly, "This room doesn't like interruptions."
Mara's heart kicked hard against her ribs.
The man stepped aside slightly, giving her space without retreating. "You can leave," he said. "Right now. Walk back up the stairs and pretend this was curiosity."
"And if I don't?"
"Then it starts asking questions," he said. "And it doesn't ask kindly."
The Afterglow units dimmed a fraction. The room felt smaller.
Mara exhaled slowly, fingers tightening around the keepsong. She had come too far to turn back.
"Then talk," she said. "Before it decides for me."
The man studied her for a long moment. Then, quietly:
"…All right."