2025-08-01 17:04:36The pod door splits with a hiss that punches through my ribcage.
Gravity. Real gravity. My legs fold like paper. “Ezren?” Kira’s voice cuts through the fog. “You’re out. You did it.” Did it. Right. The Devourers are gone. We won. At least for now. I try to stand and my knees buckle. The infirmary floor rushes up, cold tile against my palms, that antiseptic smell burning my nose. “Easy.” Dr. Aveline’s hands find my shoulders. “Muscle atrophy is normal after extended immersion.” Normal. Nothing about this feels normal. Nothing about this life is normal. Devon appears beside me, offering his arm. “How do you feel?” “Like I got hit by a truck.” The words scrape out. My voice sounds wrong, too thin, like it’s coming from underwater. Marcus would’ve made some joke about trucks. Marcus would’ve… “The mission status?” I ask instead. “We held them back. For now at least.” Kira helps me to a chair. “We can consider that a small victory” Aveline adds. “Yes. The Devourers pulled back past Neptune’s rings. They’re… regrouping.” Kira continues Regrouping. Not retreating. There’s a difference and we all know it. This is just the calm before they figure out our next move. Through the infirmary window, helicopters drone overhead. The sound vibrates in my teeth. The sound muffled by reinforced glass. “And the other teams?” Silence. The kind that sits heavy in your lungs. “Some didn’t make it out of the simulation,” Dr. Aveline says. “Neural overload during the final sequence.” My hands start shaking. I press them against my thighs. Marcus. His stupid morning ritual of making coffee too strong. The way he’d hum off-key in the shower. “How many?” “Twelve students total.” Devon’s voice drops. “Including Marcus.” The chair suddenly feels too small. I stand up, ignoring the way the room tilts. “I need air.” *** The hangar doors part with a mechanical groan. Real sunset. Real wind hits my face, carrying smoke and dust. I stumbled into a folding chair at the balcony’s edge, and the city stretched below. Kira slides in beside me, silent. “The city looks…” Kira trails off. Burning. The city looks like it’s burning. Orange light flickers against the evening sky from somewhere downtown. “What’s happening out there?” “Some idiots hit a jewelry store on Fifth,” Devon says. “Turned into a whole thing. Looters, fire department, the works.” Just normal human chaos. At least that hasn’t changed. I force my mouth into something resembling a smile. “Well, at least we’re alive to see it.” Kira’s eyes narrow. She’s always been too good at reading me. “Ezren…It wasn’t your fault.” Maybe not. But they’re dead, and I’m not. That has to count for something. I push to my feet, too fast. The floor tilts. Kira grabs my elbow before I hit it again. “You’re stable,” she says after a glance at her tablet. “But you still need rest.” “I’m fine.” I snap “You’re not.” “I need to see the damage report,” I press. “I need to know…This can’t be!” Kira steps in front of me, jaw tight. “You need to breathe. Sit. Rest. The world’ll still be burning when you wake up.” But her eyes flick toward the city. That twitch says everything. She’s lying. Or trying to. And she’s not good at it. Silence thickens around us I glance at the comm console on a cart. Screen dark. I brush my fingers across it; it flickers to life. The interface boots up. Then something else, a red pulse. Steady. Insistent. Coordinates flash: 34.0522° N, 118.2437° W. “That’s Los Angeles,” Devon says, leaning over my shoulder. “Impossible.” Dr Aveline breathes, rushing in “All civilian networks are down.” The signal pulses again. Again. Someone’s out there. Someone’s trying to reach us. “Could be automated,” Kira suggests, but her voice lacks conviction. I stare at the coordinates. A cold knot tightens in my gut, familiar and unwelcome. I’ve fought Devourers. But nothing taught me how to answer the lonely call of the unknown. The screen waits for a response I don’t have.
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We Hold the Whole
MITCHELL’S POVThe Gatekeeper’s words refuse to fade.We hold the whole.They echo through every secure channel, every encrypted briefing, every hurried whisper between aides who were not supposed to panic… but did anyway.Mitchell stands before a wall of screens that curve like a broken horizon. World leaders flicker into place one by one, faces arranged like constellations: presidents, ministers, elders, chairs of councils that once thought themselves permanent. Some sit rigid. Some lean too close to their cameras. A few try to look calm and fail.A chime sounds. The channel seals.“Director Mitchell,” says the Secretary-General, voice low. “You asked for this emergency convening. You have the floor.”Mitchell exhales once. She does not raise her voice.“Thank you,” she says. “I will speak plainly. The Gatekeeper claims to possess a complete copy of the root library.”The reaction is immediate.“That’s impossible,” snaps a trade minister from the northern bloc.“We were assured…”“D
Root Library
EZREN’S POVThe message strikes the room like a dropped blade.A copy of the root library has been moved.No signature. No timestamp beyond the automated one. No pathway trace. Just that single, terrible sentence blinking at us on the archive console, the cursor pulsing like a heartbeat out of rhythm.Mitchell is the first to speak. “This is a breach.”Aveline whispers, “Or a rescue.”Devon makes a strangled sound. “Don’t sugarcoat it.”I don’t say anything at first. My body goes cold… not the panicked kind of cold, but the hollow, sinking kind. The kind that comes when you realise something sacred might have slipped through your fingers. Or worse… been taken.The root library isn’t just a directory. It’s the master index of all preserved cultural components… the map to everything we’ve sworn to protect. Whoever holds a copy doesn’t just keep records; they keep the record.They hold the architecture of memory.The Gatekeeper. Prism. Contractors. States are hungry for narrative control
Not All Save
AVELINE’S POVThe archive chamber is quieter than usual… more peaceful than any room has a right to be after the week we’ve had. The vault lights hover like pale moons above the aisles, soft and cool, steady in the way my pulse isn’t. After Devon’s exposé detonated across the networks, the world fractured again. Protest threads, counter-threads, emergency statements, legal fireworks… It’s all still unfolding, jittering, mutating.I came here to breathe.The temperature is always kept a few degrees lower than the main facility. Preserved media need the cold. So does my mind, apparently. I step into the central aisle, where the shelves rise higher than I can stretch, each row stacked with recorded lives… voices, memories, fragments saved from the noise. My fingertips hover near a sealed capsule, not touching, just feeling the gravity of what’s inside.“Not all preserve to save.”The phrase has been looping in my head since the message hit Devon’s relay. It’s a warning. Or a philosophy.
Prism
DEVON’S POVThe terminal room is too quiet for what I’m doing. Too still. The coffee on my elbow has cooled into a dead thing, and the screens in front of me gleam like constellations scattered across a moonless sky. Code blinks. Logs hum. And somewhere beneath my ribs, something crawls.Prism.The word keeps surfacing in contractor logs and donor ledgers, slippery and precise, like someone wanted it to be both hidden and found. I lean closer to the screen and scroll.PRISM CHARTER, REVISION 3: Managed Preservation for a Stable Tomorrow. Ethical Streamlining. Confidence in Continuity.My jaw locks.“Oh, that’s rich,” I mutter. “‘Ethical streamlining.’”Zara, standing beside the door with her arms crossed, raises an eyebrow. “Sounds like a euphemism for selective memory.”“It is,” I say. “Look… here. Their models use the same framework that the contractors used for packet filtering. They’ve just polished it and slapped a bow on top.”She steps closer, peering at the screen. “And they e
Order
MITCHELL’S POVThe briefing room smells of old coffee and sharpened pencils, a strange comfort against the cold steel of the folding chairs and the humming projector. A new map hangs on the wall … same regions, same fault lines, but now it’s threaded with red pins marking fresh flashpoints: data seizures, contractor raids, public demonstrations swelling into something hotter.Mitchell stands at the front, arms folded, her posture a blade barely sheathed. Her team filters in, murmuring, exchanging wary glances. The encrypted message sits on her tablet like a bruise: Reparations are noble. We prefer order. Aveline forwarded it immediately. And Mitchell recognised the phrasing with a cold certainty.The voice behind it belongs to a diplomat she’s argued with for years … the unofficial emissary of a faction obsessed with stability. They never call it authoritarianism. They call it stewardship. They cloak it in silk: preservation, continuity, rational governance. But the meaning is the sam
Paid For
AVELINE’S POVThe hospital ward hums with the subdued rhythm of convalescence… soft beeps, the hiss of a humidifier, the low murmur of nurses exchanging clipped instructions. I breathe in the antiseptic air and steady myself before pulling back the curtain around Bed 12.He’s thinner than when I last saw him. The wounded activist… Jalen… lies half-upright, a sling bracing his left arm, eyelids heavy but alert. He registers me with a faint smile.“Aveline,” he rasps. “If you’re here, it must be important.”“It is,” I say softly, taking the chair beside him. “But you’re more important. How’s the arm?”He snorts, then winces. “Feels like it was introduced to the concept of shrapnel the hard way.”“That’s because it was,” I say. “You shouldn’t joke with fractured ribs.”He closes his eyes briefly, then opens them again. “You came for more than wellness checks.”I hesitate. Jalen senses it.“Ask,” he says. “I’m tired of carrying the old lies.”The curtain rustles as a nurse passes, but we
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