The rain never stopped on Orberos-9.
It wasn't natural.
Just a side effect of the atmospheric scrubbers malfunctioning years ago—leaking silver mist, acidic moisture, and static charge across the broken skyline. Some said it was the planet weeping. Others said it was a cover, something to keep the signals drowned.
KaiMaxim01 didn't care.
He'd stopped believing in poetry the night the factory fell.
Now he stood alone at the edge of SEVEN-OMEGA sector—what remained of it.
Before him stretched the shattered ruins of a skyforge unit, once a heart of fire and thunder. Now it was a skeleton: black steel ribs arching upward, torn cables dangling like veins, and ash pooled where humans once worked. No life. No sound. No memory.
Except for one.
bzzZZT—[unit.k01.recall]
His HUD flickered.
That code again. Repeating.
"Impossible," he muttered, brushing rain off his metal jawplate.
The implant behind his left eye vibrated. A pulse. A voice embedded in frequency.
But it wasn't speaking. It was… humming.
A tune he hadn't heard since—
Stop.
Not now.
Kai reached into his longcoat, gripping the rusted grip of his handcarved pulse revolver. Not standard tech—this one was analog. Immune to interference. It hissed faintly, reacting to the charged air.
He stepped over collapsed scaffolding, his boots sinking slightly into oily water. Around him, drones hung dead from broken rails, their eyes cracked open like skulls. Neon tags glitched across concrete: "NO MEMORY // NO MOUTH // STILL SCREAMING."
Typical gutter cult graffiti.
Still, it unsettled him.
Inside the forge, the light shifted.
Something moved.
Kai crouched low, flicked on thermal. Static.
He switched to sonar-ping. Nothing.
Then—movement again.
He raised the revolver.
"Come out," he called, voice low, vibrating through the rain.
A whisper responded.
Not in the air.
Not in sound.
In his head.
"Do you remember the red room, KaiMaxim01?"
His vision glitched.
For a moment, he wasn't in SEVEN-OMEGA anymore.
He was somewhere sterile. Cold.
Surrounded by glass walls filled with fluid.
A child floating inside.
Skin peeled. Skull open. Mouth whispering data into the black.
His own voice screaming.
"Do you remember Vessel Zero?"
The whisper cracked into a scream.
The forge around him lit up—red emergency glyphs flaring on every wall.
▌█ERROR: ACCESSING LOCKED CORE
▌█WARNING: SUBJECT KAI.MAXIM01 BREACHED CLASS-9 MEMORY SEAL
The rain turned to ash.
Kai staggered back, breathing heavy.
Then—a sound.
A single, high-pitched tone, sharp and endless.
Like metal being cut apart in another room.
It was coming from beneath.
The Deep Core.
Where nothing living had ever returned.
And yet…
The whisper said one last thing before fading:
"Your memories were never yours. Return them to us."