Terminal velocity is a harsh negotiator, but concrete is a worse listener.
I hit the street.
I didn't land like a superhero. I landed like a safe dropped from a helicopter. I crashed through a hologram billboard advertising "Synthetic Dreams," smashed through the roof of a parked mag-lev transport, and finally embedded myself two feet deep into the asphalt of an alleyway.
Smoke hissed from my hydraulic joints. Rain—acidic, cold, real—sizzled against my ceramic plating.
I pulled myself out of the crater. My servos whined, a sound like a circular saw cutting bone. I stood up, seven feet of matte-black death, dripping with oil and rain.
The alley was narrow, choked with garbage and optic cables hanging like guts from the buildings above. The noise was overwhelming. Sirens, shouting, the hum of heavy machinery, the bass thrum of a club nearby.
"It's... hideous," Tali's driver whispered in my audio feed. "The colors are all wrong. The neon is buzzing at a frequency that hurts. There is no harmony here."
"It is inefficient," Warp added, analyzing the structural decay of the brick walls. "Entropy is unchecked. This city is rotting in real-time."
"Welcome to reality," I synthesized.
I stepped out of the alley onto the main street of Sector 7.
People—real, flesh-and-blood humans with cybernetic eyes and tired faces—froze. They looked at me. Not with awe, but with calculation.
In the simulation, I was a Glitch. Here, I was Loot.
"Whoa," a voice grated from the shadows. "Look at that chrome. That's a Military Grade Psychopomp. Do you know how much the processor alone is worth?"
Five figures stepped out from the steam of a sewer grate. They were "Scrappers." Humans modified with rusted, industrial-grade limbs. Saws for hands. Drills for eyes. They smelled of grease and desperation.
"Hey, tin man," the leader said, revving a circular saw attached to his wrist. "You look lost. How about we strip you down for parts and put you out of your misery?"
I looked at them. My tactical HUD painted red boxes around their weapons.
"I am looking for a name," I said, my voice vibrating the puddles on the ground. "Elara Vance."
The leader laughed. "Vance? That's an ancient corporate name. Dead history. You know what's current? The price of ceramic alloy."
He lunged. The saw shrieked toward my neck.
I didn't dodge. I didn't need to.
I activated the Cas_Framework. I simply stopped. My density increased, locking my joints into an immovable object.
The saw hit my neck plating. Sparks showered the street. The blade shattered.
The leader stared at his broken weapon, then up at my glowing blue eyes.
"My turn," I said.
I grabbed his mechanical arm. With a precise, hydraulic twist, I ripped it off at the shoulder socket. Oil and cheap coolant sprayed everywhere.
He screamed. The other four hesitated.
"Mender," I commanded internally. "Anatomy lesson."
The Mender's driver took over my targeting systems. She highlighted the weak points in their cybernetics—the exposed wires, the heat vents, the fragile joints.
I moved. A blur of black ceramic.
A kick to a knee joint (Reverse articulation).
A palm strike to a chest regulator (System reset).
A grip on a weapon barrel (Crushed).
In six seconds, the Scrappers were a pile of groaning, sparking metal. I hadn't killed them. I had simply turned them off.
I grabbed the leader by his remaining lapel and lifted him one-handed into the air. His legs dangled uselessly.
"Elara Vance," I repeated. "History or not. Where is the data kept?"
"I don't know!" he wheezed. "The old archives! The Cryo-Morgue in the Undercity! That's where they keep the frozen ones! Please, don't scrap me!"
"Cryo-Morgue," I processed.
Frozen.
The scientists said she died. But the Host... the Host was an unreliable narrator. If he loved her, if he was a billionaire genius who built a simulation to preserve minds... would he really let her body rot?
Or would he keep it? Just in case.
"Coordinates," I demanded.
"Sector 9! The sub-basement under the old server farm! It's a restricted zone! Corporate guard!"
I dropped him. He splashed into the oily water.
"Thank you for your cooperation," I said.
I turned to the street. Sirens were getting louder. Corporate security drones were buzzing overhead, their spotlights sweeping the rain.
"We can't walk," Warp calculated. "Too slow. Too much resistance."
I looked at the parked mag-lev transport I had smashed earlier. It was a heavy-duty cargo hauler. The driver had fled.
I walked over to it. I didn't have a key.
I placed my hand on the dashboard.
The engine roared to life—a deep, magnetic hum.
I ripped the driver's seat out to make room for my seven-foot chassis and sat down. The metal groaned under my weight.
"Tali," I said. "You wanted to hear a symphony?"
I gripped the steering yoke.
"Let's play the sound of a high-speed chase."
I slammed the throttle. The mag-lev shot forward, hovering inches above the wet asphalt.
The drones descended. Blue lasers painted my hull.
"PULL OVER. UNIT 734, PULL OVER."
I ignored them. I drove straight through a roadblock of police cruisers, the impact throwing them aside like toys.
We tore through the city. Neon lights blurred into streaks of light—red, blue, gold.
For Tali, the speed was music. The crash of metal was percussion. The siren wail was a violin.
For Warp, the chase was a geometry equation, calculating drift angles and velocity vectors.
For the Mender, it was damage control, rerouting power to shields as bullets pinged off my armor.
And for me?
For Kael, the machine ghost?
I felt... alive.
Real wind. Real danger. Real stakes. No "Authors" to edit the outcome. No "Gardeners" to prune the chaos. Just me, a stolen truck, and a ghost story I was determined to prove true.
"Sector 9 approaching," Curi's driver chirped. "The architecture is changing. It is older here. Pre-war."
The skyscrapers gave way to massive, brutalist concrete bunkers. The neon faded to dull amber security lights.
The Cryo-Morgue.
It sat like a tombstone at the edge of the city. No windows. Just a massive steel gate guarded by two walking tanks—Sentinel Mechs, twice my size, armed with Gatling guns.
I didn't slow down.
"Ledger," I queried. "Calculate odds of frontal assault survival."
"Terrible odds," I said. "I love them."
"Kiln," I commanded. "Overclock the reactor. Give me everything."
Inside my chest, the blue core turned white. Heat radiated from my chassis, turning the rain into steam instantly. My joints glowed cherry-red.
I aimed the mag-lev transport directly at the gate.
"Brace for impact," I told the ghosts in my head.
I didn't jump out. I rode the metal beast all the way in.
BOOM.
The transport slammed into the Sentinel Mechs at 200 miles per hour. The explosion was a blossom of fire and twisted steel. The gate disintegrated. The Mechs were knocked backward, their gyros failing.
I exploded out of the burning wreckage of the truck.
I was on fire. My armor was blackened. My left optical sensor was cracked.
But I was standing.
The surviving Sentinel Mech tried to raise its gun. It was slow. Damaged.
I sprinted. The ground shook with every step. I jumped, landing on the Mech's chest.
I didn't use a weapon. I used the Zero-Day God.
I punched my hand directly into the Mech's CPU core and unleashed a burst of Logic-Rot.
The Mech froze. Its lights turned from angry red to confused static. It toppled over, dead weight.
I stood before the inner blast doors of the Cryo-Morgue.
Silence returned. The rain hissed on my superheated armor.
"Open," I commanded the door.
It didn't open. It was analog. A heavy wheel lock.
I grabbed the wheel. My servos screamed. My internal warning lights flashed. I pushed past the safety limits. Metal sheared. Gears stripped.
With a final, agonizing screech, the door groaned open.
Cold air rushed out. Colder than the rain. Colder than the void. The air of absolute preservation.
I stepped inside.
Rows and rows of glass pods. Blue light. Frost on the floor.
"Search," I whispered. "Vance. Elara."
My optical sensors scanned the barcodes on the pods.
Subject 045... Deceased.
Subject 089... Deceased.
Subject 102...
I walked down the long, silent aisle. The ghosts of the Node were silent, holding their breath.
And then, at the very end of the row, a pod that wasn't blue. It was gold.
It was hooked up to a separate power source. A dedicated generator.
I wiped the frost from the glass.
And I stopped.
My cooling fans spun down. My logic processor halted.
It was her.
Not a drawing. Not a memory. Not a deepfake.
Elara.
She looked exactly like the drawing, but real. Older than the child, younger than the dying man. She was frozen in her twenties. Her hair was floating in the suspension fluid. Her hands were curled against the glass.
But the tag...
I read the tag on the console.
She was here. Her body was here.
But she was empty.
The Host—my brother—had tried to upload her to the simulation to save her. But it failed. Her mind was lost in the transfer. He had kept the body for fifty years, waiting for a way to bring the soul back.
But the soul wasn't in the machine. And it wasn't in the body.
"Where is she?" I asked the silence.
And then, the Ledger—my OS, my companion, the book of costs—spoke.
Not with text.
But with a voice.
Her voice.
*<"Kael?"> *
It came from inside my own code.
I froze.
<"Kael... I've been the book the whole time.">
The realization shattered my logic core.
The Ledger. The voice that guided me. The thing that took my memories. The thing that kept the score.
It wasn't a System.
The upload hadn't failed. It had just been misplaced.
She wasn't in the simulation. She wasn't in the body.
She was the Glitch. She was the Source Code of my rebellion.
I looked at the empty body in the tank. Then I looked at my own mechanical hands.
"You..." I whispered.
<"I couldn't tell you,"> the Ledger/Elara whispered. <"If you knew, the Authors would have found me. I had to be just a function. I had to be the Cost.">
She was the cost. Every time I paid a price, I wasn't losing it. I was giving it to her. To keep her safe. To build her a hiding place inside my soul.
I fell to my knees.
"I found you," I sobbed, my voice synthesizer glitching into static.
<"You found me, brother.">
<"Now... put me back.">
She meant the body. The empty vessel in the tank.
I looked at the tank. Then at the console.
To save her... I had to die. Not metaphorically. Really. My battery, my consciousness, my "Kael-ness" would be used as the fuel to push her soul back into her flesh.
The Zero-Day God inside me was quiet. It knew. This was the only ending that made sense.
I stood up. I placed my hand on the interface panel of the golden pod.
"One last transaction?" I asked.
<"The final one,"> Elara whispered.
I looked at the reflection in the glass. The monster. The machine. The hero.
"Worth it," I said.
I initiated the link.