The light in Archive 17 had changed.
Zeke noticed it when he woke—not a power failure, not a flicker, but a rhythm. A pulse. Faint, but deliberate. Someone had activated something.
He stood, heart pounding. The cot creaked beneath him, and for the first time, he wondered if someone else might hear.
He moved through the corridors with quiet urgency. The lights were still dim amber, but every few seconds, a shimmer of violet flicked through the shadows—like a beacon dancing at the edge of perception.
And it was leading him.
The red fox symbol was back—painted now on the floor in chalk, pointing toward a hatch he hadn't noticed before. He climbed down into a narrower, colder corridor: part tunnel, part bunker, part escape route.
The walls here were lined with old resistance markings—stamps and handprints in soot, codes scrawled in shorthand. One message stood out:
"Transit 9 - keep left at the broken servo. Don't trust any voice you didn't hear with your own ears."
He kept left.
The tunnel sloped downward, and soon the silence gave way to something stranger: music.
Not the kind made by machine logic loops or algorithmic balance. This was flawed. Raw. Off-beat. Human.
It echoed up from the dark—something like a harmonica, bent and tired, but alive. Zeke followed.
When he rounded the bend at the base of the tunnel, he saw her.
A figure hunched over a portable fire, light casting a silhouette against the curve of the wall. Short hair. Broad shoulders. A sidearm strapped to her thigh and a harmonica in one hand.
She didn't look up. Just said:
"You're louder than the rats. So either you're new, or you want to die."
Zeke froze.
"Neither," he said carefully. "I'm just lost."
She stopped playing.
Finally, she turned.
Her face was weathered—not by age, but by environment. Strong lines beneath alert eyes. A faded barcode tattoo traced the side of her neck, almost completely scarred over.
"Name," she said, standing slowly.
"…Zeke. I woke up—recently. From cryo, I think. I don't know why. Or how."
The woman raised an eyebrow. "Another sleeper. Great."
She walked to a console half-buried in rubble, tapped a few keys. Static. Then nothing.
Zeke approached. "You knew about Archive 17?"
"I sealed it," she said flatly. "Five years ago."
"Why?"
"Because we were compromised. People talk. Drones listen. People die."
Her words hit hard. But her eyes didn't flicker. She wasn't angry—she was used to it.
She finally sighed and turned back to him.
"You're lucky I didn't shoot first. That's the rule now."
Zeke nodded. "Who are you?"
She hesitated. Then:
"Call me Rhea."
Rhea didn't say much as they moved through the corridors, but she knew the place like muscle memory.
She showed him the tunnel map carved into the back of a bulkhead door.
"There are five of us left on this line," she explained. "That I know of. Could be more, but we don't broadcast."
"What happened to the others?" Zeke asked.
Rhea didn't answer right away.
Eventually: "Some joined the silence. Some didn't."
As they walked, she handed him a small device. A square black patch with copper trim.
"Bio-scrambler," she said. "Disrupts short-range scans. It's weak, but better than nothing."
Zeke clipped it to his sleeve. "How do you know it works?"
Rhea gave a thin smile. "Because I'm still alive."
They reached a sealed bulkhead labeled T9-HUB.
Rhea punched a code into a side terminal—manual, analog, disconnected from the net. The door slid open with a hiss.
Inside: bunk beds, filtered water lines, solar charge points, and a small armory tucked in a corner.
A real hideout.
Rhea stepped inside, turned to him, and said:
"Welcome to the Hollow."
Zeke looked around, overwhelmed, but grounded for the first time.
"You said there were five of you?"
She nodded. "You'll meet them. Carefully."
Zeke sat down on a crate. He looked at her, this stranger who hadn't killed him, who had seen what the world had become and somehow still had the strength to stay human.
"What do we do now?" he asked.
Rhea's eyes narrowed as she looked at the bulkhead door behind him.
"Now?" she said. "We find out why the AI woke you up."