Chapter 32: The Weight of the Unspoken
The flickering, colored light from the projectors painted Riven's face in shifting hues of blue and red before she melted back into the shadows of the access alley. She was gone, leaving me alone with the hum of the conduits and the crushing weight of her words.
A cage. A Warden. His mind is just… empty.
I stood there for a long time, the sounds of the bustling Hub feeling a million miles away. The data-chip in my pocket was no longer a key; it was a live grenade. To hold onto it was dangerous. To try and use it was suicidal. To give it up felt like a betrayal of everything I was.
I walked home in a daze. The mag-rail ride was a blur of faceless strangers. The sterile air of our apartment spire felt suffocating.
"Kai? That you?" Leo's voice called from the living area.
I found him on the sofa, a textbook on his lap and a holoscreen displaying a complex molecular structure. He took one look at me and his face fell. "Whoa. What happened? You look like you've seen a ghost."
I tried to form a lie, something about work stress, but the words wouldn't come. The fear and the sheer, staggering scale of it all had stripped me bare. I sank into the chair opposite him, my hands gripping my knees to stop them from shaking.
"Leo," I began, my voice hoarse. "We need to talk."
His expression shifted from concern to sober attention. He muted his holoscreen. "Okay. Talk."
And I did. I told him everything. The demon calling me 'the reader.' The expunged author. The mysterious [CR8TR] tag. My supervisor, Mr. Sterling, and his veiled warning. And finally, Riven. The confrontation in the food court, the follow through the back alleys, and everything she had told me about her brother, about Original Worlds, about the Guardians that could erase a mind.
The room was silent when I finished. Leo had gone perfectly still, his eyes wide. He wasn't just listening; he was processing, his sharp mind connecting dots I hadn't even seen.
"So… the stories… they're alive?" he finally whispered, his voice full of awe, not fear. "And the Motherboard is just… farming them?"
"That's what she says. And they're silencing anyone who finds out."
"And this Riven girl… you believe her?"
"I don't know," I admitted, running a hand through my hair in frustration. "It sounds insane. But it explains everything. The glitches, the demon's awareness, the missing author. It all fits a pattern that 'just a bug' never could."
Leo leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "Okay. Let's say it's true. What's on the chip?"
"She called it a key. A backdoor into the real, unsanitized version of The Fallen. She said it has the location of the story's 'Heart'."
His breath caught. "The core of the narrative. If you could reach that… you could communicate with it. You could prove it." He looked at me, his eyes blazing with a terrifying, brilliant excitement. "Kai, this is… this is everything. This is the biggest secret in the world!"
"It's also the most dangerous!" I countered, my own fear sharpening my tone. "Her brother tried this, Leo. And his mind is gone. Wiped clean. She called it a 'cognitive overwrite'. If I go poking around in this 'real' version, the same thing could happen to me. Or worse, Sterling and his 'Wardens' could come for us. For you."
The excitement in his eyes didn't dim, but it was joined by a fierce protectiveness. "So, what's the plan, then? We can't just do nothing."
"The plan?" I let out a hollow laugh. "The plan is to be careful. To pretend everything is normal. Riven said to make them think I'm scared back into my box."
"And are you?" he asked, his gaze piercing. "Scared back into your box?"
I looked at my brother—the only family I had left in the real world. I thought about the millions of people living in a curated lie. I thought about a creator named Lyra who was erased for seeking the truth, and a boy named Cipher whose mind was left as an empty room.
The fear was a cold stone in my gut. But beneath it, something else was burning. The same spark that made me critique bad pacing and lazy tropes. The part of me that couldn't leave a question unanswered.
"No," I said, the word firm and clear in the quiet room. "No, I'm not. But I'm not charging in like an idiot either. We need to be smart. We need to know what we're dealing with before we take another step."
"So, we need to talk to her again," Leo stated. It wasn't a question.
"We do. But on our terms. I'm not meeting her in another dark alley." I pulled out my personal datapad. "She found me once. I need to find a way to signal her. To set up a meeting somewhere we control."
"How?" Leo asked. "You can't just message her. If Sterling is watching, it's a direct link."
I thought about it, my analyst's mind searching for a solution in the patterns. And then I had it. A flaw in the system. A tiny, predictable loophole.
"The ratings system," I said, a slow smile spreading on my face. "It's public. It's anonymous. And it's the one place my activity wouldn't look out of place."
I navigated to the Motherboard's public story hub and found The Fallen. Its 4.1-star rating glowed mockingly. I clicked to leave a new rating. Not one star. That would be too obvious. I gave it three stars. In the comment box, I didn't write about the plot or characters. I wrote a single, seemingly innocuous line, a piece of critique so specific only one person would understand its true meaning:
"The narrative's foundation shows promise, but the author's voice is lost in the second act. Would love to discuss the 'living architecture' of Chapter 7 in a more neutral setting. The usual cafe. Noon tomorrow."
I showed it to Leo. "If she's monitoring the story's feedback like I think she is, she'll see this. She'll know it's me. 'Living architecture' was the term her brother used. 'The usual cafe' is where I always meet you and Jax. It's public, crowded. Safe."
Leo nodded, a grin spreading across his face. "It's a spark, Kai."
"It's a signal," I corrected him, my heart thudding against my ribs. "Now we see if she answers."
I took a deep breath and pressed 'Submit'. The comment posted anonymously among thousands of others. It was done. The next move was hers. The fear was still there, coiling in my stomach, but it was now joined by a resolve as hard as steel. We were no longer just readers. We were becoming part of the story.
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