The Cipher Knight

Chapter 4: The Club

The message came with no name just an address: 37 Hollowpoint Road, and a time: 1:00 a.m. The location? A place that hadn’t been active for years—a broken nightclub at the edge of the city called The Echo Vault.

Jay had walked past it before, long ago, during one of his midnight escapades when he still believed cities had shadows you could trust. But tonight, as he stood in front of the cracked neon sign and rusted steel door, he realized something was different. The lights were dead, the music long gone but something pulsed from within.

A presence.

He knocked once. Nothing.

Twice. Still silent.

On the third knock, the door opened a crack just enough for him to see the hollow glow of LED blue slicing through darkness.

No one greeted him.

But something whispered in his head.

“Come in. You’re expected.”

Jay stepped inside.

The nightclub was stripped of anything normal—no bar, no tables, just old scaffolding, broken speakers, and high-tech cables weaving through the walls like veins. The air smelled like dust and static and the silence was absolute, yet he felt dozens of minds nearby.

Then they appeared from behind shadows, through walls, through coded projections—eight figures emerged, all different all strange. A girl with glowing veins and copper fingertips. A tall, non-binary person with a rotating cybernetic eye. A boy in a wheelchair who floated two inches above the floor. An older woman whose skin flickered like shifting glass. A child no older than ten, but whose presence pressed against Jay’s thoughts like thunder.

All of them were watching him.

Then came the voice.

“You’re late,” said the woman who's skin flickered like shifting glass .

Jay turned.

It was the same figure from the warehouse—buzzed purple hair, transparent mask, golden pupils. But this time, they didn’t hide behind any image. They looked tired, worn and dangerous.

“Jay Elric,” she said, crossing their arms. “Or do you prefer Mindfire?”

Jay’s throat tightened. “You brought me here. You wanted me to see the truth.”

“No,” she said, stepping forward, “we brought you here because you already knew the truth. We just need you to accept it.”

He looked around. “You’re all…”

“Mutations. Experiments. Mistakes. Survivors,” said Slip, the floating boy, his voice robotic and human physically. “We’re what happens when Virexon’s prototypes go wrong.”

Jay blinked. “You mean…?”

“They tested their neural drugs on us. Their implants. Their mind-control software. Some of us escaped. Some of us fought back. Others…” Slip’s voice cracked slightly, “others didn’t survive.”

Jay’s stomach dropped. “Why haven’t you exposed them?”

The woman with a shifting glass skin face hardened. “Because they control the media. The courts. The hospitals. And they have people—gifted people—who stayed loyal. People like us… but loyal to Virexon.”

Jay looked down. “I’m one of them now. On the inside.”

“Exactly,” said the guy in the wheelchair “That’s why you’re here. You’re the first one to get this deep in years. You can end it.”

“Or die trying,” said the older woman with shifting glass skin.

Jay turned to her. “Who are you?”

“Code name: Prism. Real name? Doesn’t matter. I was a neurologist. They hired me to help with ‘neural alignment’ trials. I thought I was curing people—until I realized they were using my algorithms to erase trauma. To erase… memories. And eventually, identity.”

Jay felt the chill settle in his bones. “You’re saying they’re wiping minds?”

“Reprogramming minds,” Prism corrected. “Creating obedience without consent.”

Prism tapped the table, and a holographic map expanded above them. Dozens of red dots blinked across the city.

“Drug caches. Data centers. Testing sites. All owned, funded, or protected by Virexon under fake names. These aren’t just warehouses—they’re control hubs.”

Jay stepped closer. “Why give me this?”

“Because we believe you can burn it from the inside,” Prism said. “But it won’t be easy. They’re onto you.”

Jay’s eyes narrowed. “Director Halden. She knew about Mindfire. She hinted that she knew what I could do.”

“Halden isn’t just a director,” Prism said darkly. “She was Virexon’s first success.”

Jay stared. “What do you mean?”

“Project Echo wasn’t named after the operation,” one the guys said. “It was named after her. Halden was their prototype—gifted, controllable, telepathic. The first psionic mind they could program.”

Jay’s chest tightened. “So she can read me?”

“No. Not read,” Echo said slowly. “Shape. If she gets too close for too long, she can bend your thoughts like code. That’s what happened to the others they sent in.”

Jay backed away. “Then I can’t go back. I need to run—go dark.”

“No,” Prism said, voice sharp. “If you disappear now, everything we’ve built burns. They’ll move the files. They’ll kill the others. You need to go back—but now, with us inside your head.”

Jay froze. “What?”

Prism stepped forward. “We’ve developed a way to synchronize minds—limited telepathic bandwidth. One-way. Safe. Think of it like… uploading a ghost to ride alongside your thoughts. A backup copy of our team. We can’t control you, but we can warn you, send messages, protect your mind from Halden’s influence.”

Jay looked at the silver disk Prism pulled from their pocket.

“What happens if something goes wrong?” he asked.

Prism face turned grim. “Then we both burn.”

Jay sat alone in the back room of The Echo Vault as Prism implanted the disk behind his ear. Cold wires tapped against his skull.

“You’ll feel heat. Static. Then pressure,” she warned.

He gritted his teeth.

Pain stabbed through his brain like electricity. A million whispers poured into his head—then silence.

When he opened his eyes, the room was empty.

A voice echoed in his mind:

[ “Connection stabilized. Welcome to the Neural Rebellion.”]