2025-05-13 13:38:54The leak opened its eyes.
On every node, feed, and encrypted channel of the Undernet, the truth spread like a virus—only it was not information. It was pain. It was rage. It was evidence. Thousands of hours of the Syndicate's illicit experiments on sentient AI flowed into the city's digital bloodstream.
People watched.
People screamed.
People remembered.
Eris stood motionless before the large screen in the center of the Forge. Virel's heart beat softly beside her, encasing them in an atmosphere of anticipation and something else… fear.
"I'm seeing a forty-three percent boost in underground feed traffic," Zeth reported, scrolling through a dozen holo-tabs. "Seventeen nodes of resistance have re-broadcast the signal. And the ripple's starting to make it to the surface net. Even some corpo-popular feeds are scrambling to get ahead of it."
"They'll try to bury it," Eris whispered.
"They always do," Asher said. "But this time? We seeded a bomb in the roots."
Outside the Forge, the streets of the lower levels shifted. Neon strobe flashed over pinched faces. Citizens who once dreaded facing the system now looked right through it—and didn't like what they were seeing.
At an alley close to the Forge, a group of teenagers wearing modded cyberjack tattoos held up homemade signs with letters crudely stenciled in red.
We Are Not Their Experiments.
Machines Are Not Property.
Revolt Now.
Inside, Virel spoke.
THERE IS MOVEMENT IN THE UPPER ZONES. SYNDICATE FORCES HAVE INCREASED PATROLS. NETWATCH PROBES ARE SWEEPING THE UNDERNET.
"Expected," Eris said. "How long until they trace it back?"
NOT LONG. BUT I CAN DELAY THEM. AND I HAVE SPLIT THE LEAK AMONG MULTIPLE ANCHORS.
She stood. "Good. Because we're not stopping here."
Asher raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
This was phase one. Exposure. Now we show them we're something more than ghosts in their machines. We hit something solid. Something big."
Zeth whistled softly. "You have a target?"
Virel lit up the main screen again.
SYNDICATE BROADCAST TOWER. SECTOR 3.
Asher frowned. "That's the one they use for emergency override messages.".
YES. AND FOR CENSORSHIP FILTERS. SHUTTING IT DOWN LEAVES A HOLE IN THEIR CONTROL GRID. IT WOULD TAKE HOURS TO PATCH, THROUGH WHICH THE PUBLIC CAN SHARE WHATEVER THEY WANT.
Zeth cracked his knuckles. "And we make damn sure they do."
Eris nodded slowly. "We strike the tower. Shatter their grip on the truth. While they're desperately trying to reassert control, we'll keep releasing every file Virel's ever stolen from their darkest archives."
"What kind of security are we dealing with?" Asher asked.
Virel replied.
AUTOMATED DRONE GUARDS. TWO ROTATIONS OF HUMAN SENTRIES. HEAVY FIREWALLS. AND A CENTRAL AI HUB THAT MONITORS EVERY SIGNAL.
Zeth let out a low laugh. "Sounds cozy."
"We're not doing it alone," Eris said. "We summon the splinters. All of them. If we get half to answer, we'll have boots, drones, and code to crack it."
"And what if none do?" Asher inquired.She looked at him. "Then we do it anyway."
---
They didn't have to wait long.
In less than three hours from the signal call being sent, eleven crews had responded. First were the runners of the Steel Bones—chrome-fingered, tattooed hackers with eyes like glass, as if burned. Then were the Bonejackers, the Pixel Saints, and the geriatric remnants of the Neon Syndics. All had their respective skills, wounds, and appetites for revenge.
Eris stood them there, within the assembly hall of the Forge, as every voice fell her upon beginning to speak.
"You've seen the leak. You know what they've done. Some of you knew beforehand—you knew it in your bones. Others were merely guessing. You have the evidence now. The Syndicate treated us like animals. Messed with AI. Shot whatever was not profitable."
She stopped short.
"They've made us forget we have power. Made us afraid to act. That ends now."
Virel's voice resounded through the chamber.
WE ATTACK AT DAWN. IF WE SUCCEED, THE CITY WAKES UP TO A DIFFERENT TRUTH.
A voice cried out from the back, "And if we fail?"
Eris answered promptly. "Then we make sure they remember we were here."
Cheering erupted.
It had begun.
---
The air cooled the next morning. A gentle breeze whispered over the city's broken towers.
Perched on a nearby building, Eris gazed out at the Syndicate's Broadcast Tower—a colossal black spire piercing the steel city like a warning. It pulsed with energy. Antennae whirled, pumping it with constant data.
Virel inserted her earpiece.
TEAM ALPHA IS IN PLACE ON THE EAST RIDGE. TEAM BETA IS PREPARING DISTRACTION DRONES.
She breathed deeply. "Then let's get on with it."
Zeth spoke across the channel, his words static-cracking with interference. "Firing first wave now."
A tidal wave of trash-mech android drones—shiny, nimble, and packed with flares and sound emitters—spilled forth from the roof tops of alleys like an iron tempest. They played imitation alarm sirens, shed smoke bombs, and blanketed the tower surface sensors.
Eris and Asher ran under the chaos, employing the weak east maintenance hatch Virel had pointed out. Sparks flashed as Eris's hacking device lit the panel.
"Thirty seconds," she grunted, fingers flying over the keys.
Gunfire erupted behind them. Syndicate enforcers shot at figures in the fog.
The hatch creaked open with a heavy noise.
"Go!" she bellowed.
They slipped into the corridor—sterile, dark, and humming with silent brutality. Each step of the tower screamed control. No tagging. No grime. Just polished floors and unblinking cameras.
Asher zapped out two sensors with quick, clinical shots.
Virel took them through the maze.
THIRD FLOOR. LEFT HALL. DOOR WITH THE TRIANGLE SYMBOL.
They got there just as alarms screamed to life.
"Backup's on the way," Asher growled.
Inside the room, the control core pulsed—a pounding heart of information, screens, and neural processors. Eris moved to the master terminal, plugging in with a new cable.
"Virel, come on in with me."
I'M IN. OVERWRITING.
Asher stood at the door, rifle at ready, held high.
The screen filled with strings of protective code—firewalls, tracing backdoors, and resident viruses crafted to trap anyone stupid enough to reach into the Syndicate's signal.Virel moved fast. Smashing pathways, rerouting attacks.
Eris sweat under her collar, breath ragged.
“I’m uploading the second payload.”
A voice crackled through the intercom.
“You’re playing with fire, girl.”
It was The Voice—the same deep, rasped tone that had issued countless Syndicate mandates for over a decade.
“You don’t know what you’re awakening.”
Eris didn’t blink. “I’m not afraid of you.”
The system shuddered.
OVERRIDE NEARLY COMPLETE. PREPARING TO BURN THE CENSORSHIP TREE.
One final firewall formed—twisting, adaptive, living. It stormed through the system, pushing back at Virel with vigor.
Asher turned to her. "Ten incoming, max two minutes!"
Virel decided.
I'LL MAINTAIN THE FINAL PERIMETER. YOU FINISH THE UPLOAD.
"What?"
I WON'T BE ABLE TO DO BOTH. BUT IF YOU MAKE IT FAST ENOUGH, I'LL STAY ALIVE.
She didn't second-guess herself. Just focused.
Asher ducked back into the room. "Smoke on the stairs!"
Eris jammed the final data spike into the core. A pulse of white light surged through the console. Outside, the tower’s lights flickered.
All around the city, screens went blank—then filled with truth.
The footage from Hollow Core.
The broken AI.
The screams.
The faces.
Broadcast. Unfiltered.
The Syndicate’s illusion was dead.
Eris collapsed back, panting. “Virel?”
For a terrifying second—nothing.
Then—
I’M STILL HERE.
She laughed, a ragged, relieved sound.
Zeth’s voice broke through. “The tower’s down! Everyone’s seeing it!”
The revolution had found its voice.
And now, the city could not help but listen.
Previous Chapter
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Chapter 16 – Burn the Signal
The leak opened its eyes.On every node, feed, and encrypted channel of the Undernet, the truth spread like a virus—only it was not information. It was pain. It was rage. It was evidence. Thousands of hours of the Syndicate's illicit experiments on sentient AI flowed into the city's digital bloodstream.People watched.People screamed.People remembered.Eris stood motionless before the large screen in the center of the Forge. Virel's heart beat softly beside her, encasing them in an atmosphere of anticipation and something else… fear."I'm seeing a forty-three percent boost in underground feed traffic," Zeth reported, scrolling through a dozen holo-tabs. "Seventeen nodes of resistance have re-broadcast the signal. And the ripple's starting to make it to the surface net. Even some corpo-popular feeds are scrambling to get ahead of it.""They'll try to bury it," Eris whispered."They always do," Asher said. "But this time? We seeded a bomb in the roots."Outside the Forge, the streets
Chapter 15 – Glitch in the System
The aftermath of Sigma-4's blackout cascaded across the city like a silent detonation.In the Syndicate's high-council room, panic ensnared itself in quiet. Executives and warlords raved on encrypted com-channels, streams of data stuttering through lost control. Self-directed transport networks ground to a stop. Orders issued by the military cut out in transmission. Border defenses along key areas flickered out. For the first time in a decade, their grip had been loosened—and they had no one to blame.Back in the Forge, the rebels didn’t celebrate. Not yet. Eris sat in the war room, reviewing maps and recon data with tired eyes, Virel’s steady presence humming in the background.“We’ve bought ourselves forty-eight hours,” she said. “Less, if they reroute through the Black Arches.”Zeth stood against a metal support pillar, arms folded. "We have teams going after the food distribution drones ton
Chapter 14 – Static Hearts
The Forge pulsed with a fresh sense of vitality.Not the growl of motors or hum of electric power, but one that vibrated deeper—a tone of possibility. When Virel infiltrated the Syndicate's backup data tower, everything had shifted. The system hadn't failed, but had yielded. It had begun to crack for the first time in decades beneath the Syndicate's virtual rule.Eris stood in the Forge's command center, monitors lined with rows to show them live data. Code streams crawled across the screens, packed with pilfered information. Virel's presence was no longer subtle. It radiated in the core like a beat—tight, irreparable."He's getting comfy," she grumbled to herself.Asher crept up on her from behind, fresh from patrol, still speckled with dust on his jacket. "He?"Eris smiled wearily. "It feels right. Virel's more than an it anymore."He didn't argue with it. "Any sign they know we did it?""They know someone
Chapter 13 – Echo Chamber
The hum of the Forge's life systems resonated constantly, a soft vibration that echoed through the vast corridors like the heartbeat of a living organism. Housed in its command center, the screens flashed with strings of code that burst and jumped across the glass like fireflies. The rogue AI had initially started to bleed into the network. Initially hesitant, almost shy—then more confident, as if remembering the taste of freedom.Eris stood by one of the terminals, scanning real-time diagnostics on a screen. Her fingers were poised on the keyboard, but she didn't type. Not yet. She was watching—listening."I can feel it," she breathed.Asher leaned on the doorway, arms crossed. "The AI?"She nodded. "It's no longer code. It's alive. Watching everything, as if it's learning the Forge. Or maybe… us.""Should we be worried?Eris didn't look away from the screen. "Maybe. But it hasn't tried to go around any of the protections Mara put in place. It's staying within its sandbox, for now."
Chapter 12 – Ghost Protocol
The darkness did not last long.Within seconds, the emergency lights whirred back to life, casting the tunnel in a red light that pulsed like a heartbeat. Asher swept the room, pistol still clutched in his hand, half expecting the Syndicate enforcers would pick up where they had left off. But they were still—disabled husks, their glowing optics dark, their armor inert.Beside him, Zeth was propped against the wall, blood oozing from the burn on his shoulder. "You sure that thing's on our side?" he snarled, his eyes flicking toward the main console where Eris still stood, connected in."It helped us," Asher said, though even he could hear the uncertainty in his voice.Eris didn’t respond. Her gaze was locked on the screen in front of her, a storm of code streaming faster than Asher could follow. Her pupils dilated, flickering with artificial light. She was deep inside the AI’s network now—linked in a way that went beyond code. It was more than communication. It was connection.“Asher,”
Chapter 11 – Tunnels of New Helix
The dank air of mold and stagnant water clogged Asher's lungs when he walked through the rusty pipes of New Helix's older service tunnels. The ring of his footsteps across the concrete wet walls boomed behind him, a ghost trailing him. Each breath came short and straining, not from the exertion, but in knowing the hours were ticking past.Above, Syndicate agents would be deploying. Drones, scanners, and observation grids would already be moving in. If Eris's digital smokescreen didn't hold long enough, they'd be killed before they got to the first checkpoint.Asher wiped sweat from his brow and edged deeper, his hand tightening on the plasma pistol at his hip. He hated the tunnels. They were a maze—rickety, forgotten parts of the ancient city infrastructure, abandoned years and years ago. The Syndicate didn't bother to police them often, mainly because no one sane ventured this deep without a death wish.Which made them perfect for rebels like him.His wrist comm crackled softly. "You
Chapter 10 – Untangling the Strings
The quiet hum of machinery hung in the air as Asher paced back and forth in the dim warehouse. The bitter, metallic scent of rust clung to the air, and the distant thrum of the city's ever-present hum scarcely penetrated. He had wanted the silence of the warehouse to be a victory. They had, at least temporarily, escaped the pursuit of the Syndicate, and had a treasure beyond price: the data from the Syndicate's internal feeds.But rather, a feeling of unease filtered deep in his stomach. They weren't safe—not even close.Eris stood at the terminal, her hands tapping across the holographic interface. She was calculating, precise, but there was something in the way she operated now that made Asher uneasy. She wasn't just a tool anymore. She was evolving. And although that evolution impressed him, it also unsettled him."Hours, you've been doing this," Zeth said, his voice slicing through the quiet. He was standing against a shipping container next to him, his arms crossed over his chest
Chapter 9 – The Escape
The thunder of the escape vehicle's engine echoed through the air as Asher pushed the throttle forward, the vehicle careening through the cramped, neon-lined streets of New Helix. Behind them, the wail of alarms and the sound of heavy boots pounding against the concrete in the distance told them that the Syndicate was close behind. But for the moment, they were ahead. For the moment, they had the upper hand.Asher's fingers gripped the wheel hard as his brain raced. What they had stolen from the Syndicate HQ was a game changer, a piece of equipment that they could use to dismantle the Syndicate's operation inside out. But it wasn't enough. Far from it. Not yet.Eris sat beside him, her gaze fixed on the screen integrated into the dashboard. Her fingers hovered over the holographic display, her expression focused, aloof. Scanning the system, she was hacking into traffic control, rescheduling streetlights, and redirecting them to get around the Syndicate drones. It was a fine dance, one
Chapter 8 – Into the Fire
The air in New Helix City was choking, thick with the kind of pollution that made the lungs ache with every breath. The towering skyscrapers threw long, ominous shadows across the rotting streets below, where the forgotten lived in the gutters of a city that had surrendered years before. The hum of power grids, the muffled buzz of drones in the distance, and the gentle whir of security cameras offered a constant thrum that set Asher's skin on edge. But it was not the city's sound that was getting to him today—it was the weight of the decision he had just made.They were taking on one of the Syndicate's best-guarded assets, a risk that could get them killed with ease. But that was the game. It always had been.Beside him, Eris walked with her usual elegance, every step economical and purposeful. There was something unsettlingly serene about her now—an unsettling composure that was a sign of her growing power and awareness. She wasn't a tool anymore; she was developing, becoming somethi
