---
Noah had felt fear before—but this was different.
Not the sharp adrenaline of rooftop chases or the quiet tension of dodging street patrols. This was heavier. Quieter. Like standing at the edge of a memory so massive it could swallow him whole.
He crouched beside a drainage shaft behind a forgotten factory in East Sector B, boots half-submerged in black water. His skin—what was left of it—itched beneath the soaked jacket. Synthetic layers were starting to break down under stress. He could feel the wires beneath flexing with unnatural warmth.
They'd been running for two days. No rest. No shelter. Just ghosts in the dark.
Rye stood a few meters ahead, eyes fixed on the flickering remnants of a street light. She was pale, hair tucked beneath her hood, but her stance was solid. She hadn't slept either, and yet she hadn't faltered. She carried a gun with one hand and a cracked data tablet with the other—tracking the signals they'd uncovered beneath the Archives.
The information led them here: a shuttered district filled with forgotten tech, where echoes of old wars still hummed in dead wires.
"This is it," Rye said at last, voice hoarse. "He's close. I'm picking up resonance. Code signatures."
Noah stood slowly, shoulders stiff.
"Crank?"
She nodded. "Underground. Decommissioned hub station. They used it during the blackout riots to route secure feeds."
"Is it stable?"
Rye snorted. "No. But if he's there, he's been keeping it alive."
"Or feeding off it," Noah muttered.
They descended into the underbelly of Sector B, crawling through tunnels lined with roots, cables, and the bones of machines. The deeper they went, the colder it got. Not natural cold—system cold. The kind that whispered of servers still breathing, old cameras still watching.
Then they found the door.
A rusted steel gate marked with a glyph: a broken crown over a serpentine eye. Noah touched it with bare fingers. It buzzed like it remembered him.
The door slid open.
Inside, the world changed.
---
The substation was lit by dying monitors and old firelight. Broken holoscreens projected ancient footage onto walls stained with graffiti and blood. Stacks of memory cores and tangled wires littered the floor. In the center sat a hunched man, limbs shaking as he plugged new cables into his own flesh.
"Crank," Rye said, carefully.
The man looked up, and for a moment, it wasn't clear if he was human at all.
One eye was augmented—glass and red light. The other was real, bloodshot and tired. Wires trailed from the base of his neck like mechanical dreadlocks. His fingers twitched constantly, tapping invisible keys in the air.
"You brought him," Crank said, voice cracked. "You brought the Specter."
Noah stepped forward. "I need to know who I am."
Crank laughed. It sounded like static. "You're a mistake."
Rye raised her gun. "He deserves answers."
"Deserves?" Crank twitched. "You think anything down here *deserves*? You walk into the abyss and ask for *justice*?"
He lunged at a panel, slamming a fist onto it. A projector whirred to life. Images flooded the room—medical diagrams, classified footage, names.
**PROJECT SPECTER. UNIT 7-A. NOAH.**
"Prototype," Crank whispered. "Stable. Controlled. A marvel. But flawed in ways they didn't expect. You *felt* too much."
Images flipped past faster: scenes of destruction, footage of a boy—Noah—beating down armed guards, bones crunching.
"You were made for urban pacification," Crank said. "But you kept asking *why*. You hesitated. That scared them."
Noah flinched. His memories still refused to align. Nothing about his early life before Rye. Just pain. Blurred corridors. Screams without context.
"They cut it out of you," Crank continued. "Piece by piece. You were emptied. Rewritten. Then stored. Until she found you."
He pointed at Rye.
Noah turned.
Rye didn't move.
"You knew," he said.
She nodded slowly. "I didn't know it was *you*. I just knew there was a prototype locked beneath the Core—a secret the Council buried. I thought you were a weapon. A tool to fight back."
"And what am I now?" Noah asked.
Rye didn't answer.
Crank chuckled. "You're a question they can't erase. A glitch in the system."
He moved to another terminal, his hand trembling as he unlocked another file. A map blinked to life.
"Seven units," he said. "Project Specter ran seven human prototypes. One through seven. You're the only one still alive… maybe."
Noah stared.
"I need to find them," he said.
"Some are dead," Crank said. "Others… missing. Unit 2 vanished after the rebellion in D-Sector. Unit 5 was rumored to go feral in the undercities."
"Why find them?" Rye asked.
"Because I'm not whole," Noah said. "I wasn't just built. I was *shaped*—alongside them. I want to know what they became. And if they remember me… I need to know what I did."
Crank leaned back.
"You're not going to like the answers," he muttered.
Noah's eyes flashed cold. "I haven't liked any of this."
---
They stayed underground for the night. The substation's old ventilation system still worked, faintly breathing warm air into the metallic cavern. Rye curled up near a broken terminal. Crank plugged himself into a console and fell silent, twitching occasionally like he was dreaming in code.
Noah couldn't sleep. He stared at a blank wall, remembering the look on Rye's face when she admitted the truth.
She hadn't betrayed him. But she'd used him. Set him free for a purpose. And he'd let her, because something in him had wanted to believe he *was* just a tool. It was easier than facing the hollow ache in his chest.
But the more he remembered, the more human he felt.
That was the real danger.
---
At dawn, Crank gave them a data drive.
"Coordinates," he said. "Possible locations. If the others are alive, they've gone dark. You'll have to smoke them out."
"What happens when I find them?" Noah asked.
Crank shrugged. "Kill them. Save them. Merge with them. Hell, maybe they'll kill *you*. All I know is this: You were built as a network. Seven minds. Seven killswitches. If any of them go active again, so will you."
Noah nodded.
Crank's voice softened.
"And Ghost…"
He turned.
"Whatever they turned you into, whatever blood's on your hands—you're not the machine anymore. You *chose* to ask who you are. That choice? That's the only thing that's ever made anyone human."
Noah said nothing.
Then he and Rye left the darkness behind.
---
They emerged into a city on fire.
Drone patrols were tighter now. Digital screens in the sky showed Noah's face. *WANTED. HIGH-RISK TARGET. CODENAME: STREET GHOST.*
The Core Spire had declared martial lockdown in five sectors. Every alley had eyes.
Rye led them to an old contact—an ex-ganger named Juno who ran a black market in Sector C. She was short, heavily inked, and always high on synth-leaf. But she had skimmers, weapons, and encrypted maps.
"Whole city's paranoid," she said, puffing smoke. "You stir up a system like that, Ghost, and it starts cutting off limbs."
"We need to move fast," Rye said. "Get to the outlands."
Juno tapped a panel. "Then you'll want this."
A skimmer appeared from a hidden bay—a sleek, black shell lined with EM dampeners.
"You sure it flies?" Noah asked.
Juno grinned. "Faster than their dogs."
He nodded.
They fueled up and left that night.
---
The wind over the outlands smelled like ash and steel.
They flew low, dodging surveillance zones and thermal scans. Rye sat behind Noah, guiding with silent gestures. The map Crank gave them blinked in her lap.
First target: Unit 2. Last known location: Ghost Town.
An old trainyard deep past the ruins of D-Sector. A place forgotten after the riots—now home to the broken, the violent, and the mad.
Perfect hiding spot for a former specter.
As the sun bled red across the horizon, Noah felt a pulse in his skull.
Not pain—resonance.
Something ahead was calling him.
Not by name.
By origin.
---