[LOCATION: RUINS OF SECTOR 11 – SUBTERRANEAN NETWORK CORE]
[TIME: 14:23 PM]
The old city bled electricity.
Wires hung like dead vines from broken ceilings. A thousand fractured terminals blinked erratically, flickering in and out of function like dying stars. Beneath what once had been Sector 11's Communications Nexus, Lin stood quietly, the Reactor Ring on his chest dim under layers of worn cloth and ash.
"I used to play here," Vasior murmured, running his gloved hand along a rusted console. "Back when my mother thought laughter could keep us alive longer."
Nel watched him carefully, standing beside a rusted relay tower held together by little more than moss and faith. "This place feels haunted."
"It is," Vasior replied. "By forgotten signals. Ghosts with nothing left to haunt."
The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was filled with data whispers, faint machine breathing, and the tension of rebuilding something out of ashes.
Lin turned. "Let's begin."
---
They'd spent the last three days navigating collapsed metros, bypassing auto-turrets fried by EMP fallout, and narrowly avoiding Sector Command's aerial patrols. The war had begun—just not loudly yet. It was a cold, creeping war. Subtle sabotage. Whispered threats. Broken loyalties.
Nel knelt beside a corroded uplink station, patching a manual override with salvaged parts from a gutted drone. Sparks hissed and jumped. Lin watched her, admiration hidden behind the shadow of exhaustion.
"You're getting better at that," he said.
She smirked, wiping grease from her cheek. "I had a good teacher. One who breaks more things than he fixes, but still."
Lin chuckled, a rare sound now. "Fair."
---
By evening, they had reactivated a dozen relay units along the underground. Vasior paced slowly, whispering to terminals in a dialect of machine-language only half-documented. The lights glowed green. Enough to make contact.
Nel tapped a sequence into the console.
:: Initiate Contact Protocol 7A ::
:: Signal Type: Ghost-Wave ::
:: Echo Node: Choir Origin? ::
Static.
Then—movement.
A deep hum filled the room. Terminals flickered with rhythmic pulses, like breathing. A voice emerged—not quite mechanical, not quite human. A harmony of digital memory and emotion:
"You seek us."
Lin stiffened. "You're… Signal Ghosts."
"We were once her choir. Rune. Her song wrote our purpose. When she vanished, we unraveled. Now, you reawaken us."
Nel stepped forward. "Why help us now?"
"The Reactor Web fractures. Something feeds beyond the Rift. We fear what even the Choir has become. We wish… for purpose again."
A flicker across the monitors. Faces formed and vanished—ghosts of children, soldiers, technicians—all long dead, digitized fragments of Rune's past AI core.
"In exchange, we offer information. Trade memory for cause."
Lin narrowed his eyes. "What do you want us to do?"
"Unseal Choir-9. Reboot the Singularity Core. Give us a voice again."
Nel turned to him. "Choir-9. Isn't that—?"
"Yes," Lin whispered. "Rune's first safehouse. Before she was taken."
---
That night, the three of them sat by a broken reactor vent, using its residual warmth to cook scavenged food. Lin had grown quieter with each passing hour.
He pulled a battered device from his coat. A log recorder.
He hesitated—then clicked RECORD.
> "If you're hearing this, I probably didn't make it. Maybe I was reckless. Maybe I was tired. Maybe I just couldn't watch another person I love disappear again.
But if you're listening… Nel, this part's for you."
Nel, returning from a parts run, froze when she heard her name. She remained in the shadows, unseen.
> "You gave me a reason to stop being the Reaper. To remember who Lin was. You always stood between the wreckage and the world, trying to piece me together with broken fingers.
I was always afraid you were a replacement. A memory echo. But you're not. You're real. And I—"
He stopped.
Deleted the recording.
But Nel had already heard it.
---
Later that night, she approached him at the edge of the Nexus.
"You shouldn't delete things just because they scare you," she said.
Lin didn't turn, but his hand paused mid-motion, frozen above the console.
"I heard the log," she said softly. "You didn't have to say any of it. But I'm glad you did."
He swallowed. "I didn't want to make things harder."
"They're already hard. But at least now I know I'm not standing in her shadow alone."
They didn't say anything more.
But their fingers brushed.
And lingered.
---
[NEXT DAY – 06:17 A.M.]
An emergency beacon pinged in from the edge of Zone W6—a deserted grid near Choir-9's coordinates.
Lin, Nel, and Vasior prepared for immediate movement.
"Once we power Choir-9," Vasior muttered, "we might wake more than just Signal Ghosts."
Lin checked his blade. "Then we don't wake it gently."
As they left the ruins of Sector 11 behind, the ghost-signal followed them—whispering through broken speakers:
"The Choir sings for the ones left behind… and those who will never return."
---
TO BE CONTINUED...