Silence pressed down like a weight.
Not peace, not calm — silence that came after screaming, when the air itself was still vibrating from the noise.
Maya blinked through the haze. The world was smoke and sparks, fractured light strobing through twisted metal. The chamber was gone, ripped apart in the collapse. Whole sections of the ceiling lay like broken ribs over the floor. The hum of the Archive, once deafening, had retreated to a faint ember, thudding weakly in her veins.
A shadow moved above her. Hands gripped her shoulders, shaking.
"Maya!" Vector's voice, raw and desperate. His face swam into focus — streaked with grime, one eye bloodshot, jaw locked so hard it trembled. "Stay with me. Don't you dare give up now."
She tried to answer, but her throat rasped dry. The words stuck, caught between the Archive's aftertaste and her own fear. "The… Archive—"
"Forget the damn Archive," he snapped, but the edge in his voice cracked into something softer. "You're alive. That's what matters."
Alive. The word felt wrong. She didn't feel alive — she felt emptied out, like someone had hollowed her chest and left her with the echo of borrowed voices.
And beneath the faint static in her blood, one voice lingered. Weak, broken, but sharp enough to cut her open.
Kiran.
Her breath hitched. "He's… he's in there."
Vector stiffened. "Who?"
"Kiran." Her voice fractured on his name, but she forced it out. "I saw him. He's alive."
Before Vector could answer, a ragged cough came from the rubble. Rei pushed himself up, leaning heavily against a shattered console. Blood soaked his side, but his eyes burned with a fevered light. He smiled faintly through cracked lips. "Alive… or embedded. If the Architects tethered him, pulling him out won't be simple."
"No." Maya shook her head violently. "It wasn't—he wasn't gone. I heard him. He spoke to me."
Rei's expression softened, almost pitying. "Maya… if he's inside the Archive, even his voice could be nothing more than a construct. You have to consider—"
"Shut up," Vector snarled. He shot forward, towering over Rei. "Don't you dare tell her to give up on him. Not now."
Rei's hands rose weakly, defensive but calm. "I'm telling her the truth. Better she hears it from me than from—"
"From who? From them?" Vector's voice cracked, loud in the hollowed chamber. "You think she'll survive this if all she has is your cold logic? You think she doesn't need hope?"
Maya pressed her palms over her ears, but it wasn't enough. The Archive hissed in her blood, drowning their voices with its own.
Carrier compromised. Location: withheld.
She froze. The words weren't hers. She could feel them vibrate in her bones, mechanical and absolute.
Her lips moved before she realized. "Carrier compromised. Location: withheld."
Vector spun, his face tight. "What the hell does that mean?"
Rei, pale and shaking, stared at her like she was a puzzle snapping into place. "It means he isn't gone. Not yet. They've got him somewhere in the system. Maybe inside the Archive, maybe held by the Architects themselves. Either way—"
"Either way, he's alive," Maya cut in. The ember in her chest burned hotter, pushing her to her feet though her legs screamed in protest.
The ship groaned above them, a hollow, dying sound. Drones sparked faintly in the rubble, some lifeless, others twitching like insects half-crushed. The air was sharp with ozone and smoke.
But all Maya could hear was Kiran's voice — not the Archive's storm, not the Architects' roar — Kiran's, threading through the silence like a tether.
She clenched her fists. "We're going to find him."
Vector looked at her, jaw tight, torn between hope and fear. Rei bowed his head, whispering something she couldn't hear.
The ship's fractured lights flickered once more, stuttering across the walls in broken glyphs. For a heartbeat, the shadows stretched long, pulling into the shape of a figure — not Vector, not Rei.
A glitch of light. A ghost.
Kiran.
And then the lights died, leaving them in silence once more.
Cliffhanger (Ch. 31): Kiran's presence confirmed — alive, but "compromised." Maya swears she'll find him, even as the ship hints he's already bound deeper than she know