The city shimmered beneath its dome, a perfect bubble of light in a ruined world. Virelia was always beautiful from above—an illusion Lyra Vale knew better than most. Its curved glass ceiling reflected a false sky, tinged a soft pink in the early hours. The architects had programmed the dome to mimic sunrise even though the real sun hadn't touched this part of the Earth in years.Lyra crouched on the outer rim of Sector Delta, her boots clinging to the steel scaffolding like second skin. Below, crowds moved like clockwork, unaware someone watched them from the city's hollow bones.She adjusted the collar of her cloak, its shifting threads adapting to the concrete shade. The memory shard pressed against her ribs, pulsing faintly through the cloth pouch. Freshly harvested. Raw. Untouched. She could feel its heat—not literal warmth, but something deeper. Something psychic. Memories were never truly inert. That was why they were dangerous.A flicker of static crackled in her earpiece. "Yo

The tunnels roared around them—old wind ducts now pulsing with alarm resonance. Each turn Lyra took sparked faint glimmers of embedded glyphs—directions laid long ago by the founders of Sector Wren's resistance. It was a map hidden in heat and code, invisible to the Index unless you knew how to read the shimmer.Elias was a step ahead, moving like muscle memory led him. Lyra followed with her blade sheathed but ready, pistol primed. The echo of bootsteps behind them grew louder, less human with every beat."They're deploying Trackers," Elias called over his shoulder."Can you slow them?""Temporarily." He skidded to a halt at a conduit panel, jamming his fist into the control slot. Sparks jumped. A burst of light blinked through the mesh floor, and with a sudden whumph, half the corridor caved in behind them. Smoke filled the passage like breathless fog.Lyra coughed, pulling her jacket over her nose. "That'll buy us two minutes at best.""We only need one."They turned another corner

The shriek of the alarm tore through the ruins like a blade, followed by the metallic whir of approaching drones. Lyra didn't hesitate. She tucked the memory core into her jacket's hidden pocket, drew her pulse-blade, and turned to Kael."East access tunnel," he said quickly. "Still stable if we move fast."Elias was already on the comms, fingers flying across his wristpad. "I'm jamming their first tier signals. Won't last more than sixty seconds.""That's all we need," Kael growled.The three of them sprinted from the amphitheater stage as the air shimmered—an Index assault drone phased through the ceiling, scanning. Lyra flung a shiv of code from her implant; the drone stuttered mid-air, sparks blooming like electric flowers before it dropped, twitching, to the ground.The tunnel beyond was cramped and foul with decades-old rot. Kael led the way, torchlight slicing ahead, while Lyra brought up the rear, adrenaline sharpening her senses. She could feel the memory core pulsing against

Lyra had never seen the Glass Cathedral up close—only in flickers of stolen memory or archived footage buried deep in rebel data nodes. From the outside, it was beautiful. Shimmering spires of fractured crystal stretched into the gray sky like frozen lightning, each surface catching slivers of sunlight and throwing them across the ruined city like shards of stars. But beneath its gleam, it pulsed with something older. Something that watched.They approached under the cover of the morning haze, climbing over collapsed overpasses and twisted steel bridges. The old transportation grids had long since fallen into disuse. The silence around the cathedral wasn’t natural—it was enforced. No birds. No machines. Even the wind moved more slowly here.Elias’s voice came through the comm again. “You’re two hundred meters from the outer shield. Keep your resonance levels low. The perimeter sensors don’t track heat—they track intent.”Kael arched an eyebrow. “Intent?”“They’re psychometric barriers