The NULL CODEX System

3. The first Unlock

The boots were close now and moving fast along the road above the tunnel, and the scanner clicks were coming at shorter intervals. 

Oren Vask could hear the shape of the Division's approach pattern the way you learn to hear things when you have been listening for them your whole life.

"Ten seconds," Oren whispered to himself.

The cold blue text was still there, still waiting, and still offering him a chance which came at a cost he did not know about.

MISSION STATUS: Survive the Purge Event — ACTIVE.

Reward pending: Nullfield Tier One.

Cost to activate reward: One minor unidentified memory.

Host action required.

Time remaining: 8 seconds.

Oren pressed his back against the cold stone wall and closed his eyes.

He thought about his mother's hands that used to feel so thin and light and strong, holding his in the dark. He thought of her voice that was soft and steady. And her breath that was a little slow, but not scared. Or at least not of this.

Oren thought about what the Division would do to him if they found him breathing in the middle of thirty-seven dead people.

He thought about the look on Dara's face when she hit the ground, and the way her mouth had been slightly open, as if she had been in the middle of forming a word she would never get to finish.

He opened his eyes at exactly two seconds left. "Accept," Oren said.

The cold blue text pulsed once, bright and clean. "REWARD ACCEPTED. NULLFIELD TIER ONE — ACTIVATING."

Oren felt it move through him. It was not the same as the activation in the road, which had been violent and sudden and like something breaking open. This was different. This was like something settling, like something falling into place, and like a door closing softly somewhere deep inside his chest.

Then the scanner clicked directly above the tunnel entrance.

Oren held his breath, but did not hear the scanner click again.

He waited. One second. Two seconds. And then three.

But there was nothing.

Then the boots moved on, past the tunnel entrance, and the scanner clicked three more times farther away, then the footsteps faded into the distance of Cinder Row.

Oren let out his breath in a slow, trembling exhale.

He could not believe that he was still alive, and that they had not found him.

He sat there for a long moment with his head pressed back against the stone wall and his chest rising and falling in slow steady breaths. Then he reached inward the way he had before, feeling for the shape of what was gone.

The absence was there.

The clean edge of something missing. The way a room feels empty when a piece of furniture has been moved out. He reached for it, trying to find the edges of what had been taken and trying to feel what shape it had left behind.

But there was nothing.

"Okay," Oren said softly. "Okay. It is fine. I accepted the cost and I am still here. I am still breathing, so I can live with not knowing what it took. And maybe the cost it took was not anything important." He shrugged his shoulders.

But Oren did not believe that yet. He was saying it because the alternative was to let himself feel the weight of the gap, and he was not ready to do that yet, not so soon after midnight.

He pushed the feeling aside and focused on what he had gained. Which was "The Nullfield" reward.

Oren still did not fully understand what it was or how it worked, but he understood that it had just saved his life, and he understood that it would continue to save his life if he learned how to use it correctly.

Oren looked at the cold blue text. "What is Nullfield exactly?"

"NULLFIELD, TIER ONE: Active suppression of biometric signatures within a five-meter radius. Duration: sixty seconds per activation. Passive suppression is available at all times. Active activation extends the range and reliability." His system responded with its usual text.

"So it hides me?" Oren asked. "It makes the System unable to see me?"

The cold blue text appeared with a response. "CORRECT. Nullfield creates a dead zone in the System's scanning field. The Host is invisible to any System-operated scanner within the Nullfield's radius."

Oren nodded slowly. "And the passive activation. The one that was already working before. That hides me too, or just not as well?"

Blue text responses appeared. "CORRECT. Passive Nullfield reduces the Host's biometric signature to sub-threshold levels. Active Nullfield cancels it completely."

Oren filed that away, along with everything else he had learned tonight. He understood that the Nullfield was not a weapon, it was a concealment, a shield, and a way of moving through the world without the world seeing him.

"I can work with that," Oren said quietly.

The cold blue text shifted.

MISSION COMPLETE: Survive the Purge Event.

Reward delivered: Nullfield — Tier One.

Memory cost assessed: One minor unidentified memory.

CODEX PROGRESSION: Tier One — Mission 1 of 7 complete.

HOST STABILITY: Level 1.

Oren read the notification slowly, letting each word settle into his mind.

"One mission down, six more to go," He said to himself.

He did not know what the other six missions were. He did not know what abilities they would unlock or what memories they would take. He only knew that the Codex had a plan for him, a structure, and a path that had been laid out long before tonight.

And Oren was on it now.

He sat in the tunnel for a while longer, letting his heartbeat slow, letting his breathing settle into something steady and even. The night stretched on above him, and the Division did not come back, and the sky began to lighten in the way that Cinder Row mornings always began, looking gray and slow and reluctant.

Oren thought about what had happened to him. He thought about the thirty-seven people lying in the road, and he thought about the Codex and the Nullfield and the cost he had just paid.

His mind drifted to the old man's room and the symbol scratched into the floor. The Codex had recognized it and the Codex had pulsed with recognition when Oren looked at it, and that meant something. That meant the symbol was connected to whatever was happening to him, or connected to the Codex, and maybe even connected to his bloodline.

Oren leaned his head back against the stone wall and stared up at the dark ceiling of the tunnel. The pieces were there, scattered in his mind like fragments of a shattered cup. He just needed to find the shape of them the way they fit together.

Oren thought about the old man who had left three days before the Purge. He thought about the symbol, and he thought about his mother's words. "The Codex knows your name. Do not be afraid when it calls."

Oren let out a slow breath. “Why did the Codex choose me?” He said out loud in the empty tunnel. “Why did it choose my bloodline? Why had the Purge targeted Null-born residents specifically non-stop? And how had the old man known it was coming?”

The questions piled up, one on top of the other, and Oren felt something shift in his chest. It was not fear and not anger, it was something else. Something that felt like a decision forming in the dark, and taking shape the way things take shape when you have been pushed too far and you have no choice but to push back.

Oren let out a deep breath and lifted up his head. "I am going to find out who built the Null classification," Oren said to the empty tunnel. "I am going to find out why my bloodline was the target. And I am going to burn everything they built before I forget why I started."

The cold blue text pulsed once at the edge of his vision.

"MISSION NOTED. The Codex confirms: this is the correct direction."

"Is that encouragement?" Oren asked.

"ASSESSMENT. The Codex does not offer encouragement. It offers accuracy." His system responded.

"That is almost the same thing," Oren said.

Oren almost smiled at that. He was surprised by the almost, the same way he had been surprised earlier in the night, and he thought that perhaps the capacity for almost smiling in the middle of the worst night of his life was itself a kind of information about what he was made of.

He filed that away too.

Then suddenly, Oren heard a soft sound from the entrance above him. It was a footstep that was small, careful, and deliberate, like the person was trying not to get caught or noticed.

Oren's entire body went still. His heart slammed against his ribs, and he pressed himself flat against the tunnel wall.

"Division," Oren whispered to himself in panic, but more to his new found system. "They came back. They must have found something."

He looked frantically at the cold blue text system with his breath coming in short sharp gasps. "Is it Division? Are they back? How many are there? Can you see them?"

The cold blue text did not respond.

Oren stared at it, waiting, but the text remained still and silent. The system that had been so present, so responsive, and so ready with information was now offering him nothing. There were no warnings, no assessment, and no guidance.

"Why are you not responding?" Oren whispered urgently. "Please. I need to know. Is it Division? How many are there? Where are they?"

But still, there was nothing.

Oren pressed himself harder against the wall with his hands flat against the cold stone and his eyes fixed on the tunnel entrance where the footsteps had come from. He could hear his own breathing that was too loud in the silence, and he tried to slow it down, he tried to make himself small, and he tried to become the nothing he had always been.

The footsteps stopped, and Oren held his breath.

And through the narrow gap of the tunnel entrance, he could see the shape of a person standing at the edge of the road, looking down into the darkness where he was hiding.

It was a woman that was small and slight and bruised, with a cut above one eye and dirt smeared across her cheek and her hair in disarray. But she was alive and breathing and standing.

The surprising part for him was that Oren knew that face.

It was his neighbor Petra Wynn. She was nineteen years old, and she had lived in the house above this tunnel for her whole life. The house was empty now because her father had been caught in the Purge, and her mother was gone. But somehow, Petra was still standing, still here, and still breathing.

Oren stared at her for a long moment, unable to speak.

"Petra?" Oren said carefully with his voice barely above a whisper. "Petra, is that you?"

Petra Wynn crouched down at the edge of the tunnel entrance and looked at him with dark sharp eyes. Her face was streaked with dirt and something that might have been dried blood. Her hands were shaking slightly, and her breathing was uneven, like she had been running for a long time and had only just stopped.

"Oren?" Petra said, her voice cracking. "Oren, is that really you?"