Chapter 21: Static Veins
Kaito didn't stop running until his legs gave out near a vending machine that flickered against the wet alley walls. His breath came in shallow gasps. The storm had eased, but the wind still hissed like it carried voices. His hands trembled as he pulled his coat tighter.
He tried to make sense of what he'd seen.
The sacs.
The altar.
Aiko.
No—not Aiko. Not anymore.
He touched the comm at his collar. Static. The signal was gone, or jammed. The orb in his pocket was warm again—alive. It pulsed against his thigh in rhythm with his heartbeat, or maybe it was the heartbeat of something else.
Then he heard it.
A slow, wet dragging.
Not from the alley.
From inside his head.
Like something had followed him out.
He pressed his palms to his ears and squeezed his eyes shut. "Get out," he muttered. "Get out get out get out—"
"You shouldn't have touched the pillar."
His eyes flew open.
A figure stood at the edge of the alley. Cloaked. Hood up. No footsteps. No breath.
Only the symbol.
Etched onto its brow.
The spiral and the eye.
"You're part of it now," the figure whispered. "You bear the signal. The others will come."
"I didn't ask for this."
"They don't care. Neither did we."
The orb flared in his pocket—bright enough to burn. The figure hissed and recoiled into the dark, vanishing like steam under headlights.
Kaito stared at the empty space. The silence that followed was heavier than noise.
Something had changed.
No—everything had.
---
Aya's Warning
When he made it back to the safehouse, Aya was already there, pacing. Her face was pale. Her hands shook, not from fear—but fury.
"You went in without backup?" she snapped.
He threw the blueprint onto the table. "Didn't have time."
"Didn't have time?" she echoed. "Kaito, whatever's down there—it's rewriting biology. Systems. People."
"I know. I saw it." He hesitated. "Aiko was there."
Aya stopped moving. "What?"
"She's gone. Or… she was taken."
She didn't speak for a moment. Then: "And the signal?"
"It's awake. She said I freed it."
Aya stepped back like he'd struck her. "You're carrying it."
He nodded once.
And she didn't flinch. "Then we'll burn it out before it uses you."
---
Echo Protocol
By morning, the rain had washed nothing away. The city was brighter, cleaner—but Kaito saw through it now. The surface meant nothing.
Aya loaded files into the encrypted drive and passed it to him.
"We have one shot. The last known access node to the BioCore servers is beneath the old Nerve Tower. Everything they buried—it's archived there."
"Nerve Tower was shut down years ago."
"Not completely," Aya said. "We'll use Echo Protocol. Cloaked signatures, false neural IDs. It'll get us in."
"And out?"
Aya smiled grimly. "Let's not plan that far."
Kaito slipped the orb into his chest holster. "What happens if we fail?"
Aya looked at him, dead serious. "Then the city isn't the first to fall. It's the last."
---
At the Threshold
They reached the tower after sundown, disguised beneath repair crew uniforms. Drones passed overhead but didn't slow. Inside, the place still hummed—machines left to rot in silence, blinking red every few seconds like a dying heartbeat.
Aya hacked the main gate. It opened with a long, reluctant groan.
Kaito stared inside.
Something watched from the dark. Not eyes—something deeper. Intention.
Aya touched his shoulder. "You okay?"
"No," he said. "But let's go anyway."
They entered.
Behind them, the gate sealed shut.
And the hum deepened into something that sounded almost like a voice.
Calling him by name.
--
End of Chapter 21