The corridors breathed with static. Lights flickered above, spilling fractured shadows over the concrete walls. The hum of distant machinery was a low, constant pulse, almost alive.
hum… flick… drip…
I crouched behind a grated vent, fingers brushing against the cool metal. Scrambled comms floated through the network, voices broken, layered. A code twisted in my ear, partial phrases repeating, distorted: "They don't fear rebels… they rewrite you…" Rei's warning from weeks ago echoed sharply, unbidden.
I let the fragments wash over me, cataloguing every stutter, every pause, every unexpected emphasis. The Syndicate didn't just communicate they performed, even in deception. Every static-riddled syllable was a thread, and I intended to tug at them all.
click… whir…
"Then I'll use them first," I muttered under my breath, a smirk hidden behind the shadow of my hood. Each message I intercepted, each pattern I noted, became a weapon. A misdirect. A test.
I traced the signals to junction boxes and junction nodes, marking anomalies in my mental map. Each node hummed differently, vibrated differently. It was subtle, almost imperceptible if you weren't listening closely. But I was. Always.
tap… static… flick…
Somewhere deeper in the vein, a pipe groaned, sending a shiver along the wall. I leaned closer to a transmitter, letting my breath fog the cool surface, eyes scanning lines of broken code. One wrong move, one misread frequency, and the Syndicate could overwrite everything I thought I knew about the Veins. That was the point. That was the game.
I planted small traces of fake chatter, feeding loops into the network. By the time anyone noticed, the threads would lead them exactly where I wanted. Each seed, each deliberate distortion, was a trap disguised as insight.
hum… drip… click…
Pulling back from the vent, I let my fingers trace the cool floor, taking stock of the corridors ahead. Each shadow, each echo, each vibration was now a note in the symphony I conducted silently.
The Syndicate believed in their order. I believed in their errors. And in their mistakes, I would thrive.
fade… hum…
I stepped lightly into the darkness, already calculating which voice I would turn first, which whisper I would weaponize, and which fear I would set loose. The Veins were alive, and I was learning its rhythm one distorted signal at a time.