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Kael Varn's hand hovered over the rig's crown, the clamps glinting like fangs in the flop's dim bulb. Mira's ping burned in his neural queue—*Jack in now, or they upload you permanent*—but the words felt distant, muffled by the two weeks' worth of scar tissue on his soul. Level 17 waited in Aetherion, Veyra's rematch a siren's call, the relic core in its cage thrumming like a caged storm. But as the undergrid's drizzle pattered against the window—real rain, not sim-showers—he pulled back. Not yet. One last tether to the flesh, before the code swallowed him whole.
Family. The word tasted like rust. Vaporized in the 2120s Cull—the Pantheon's "optimization purge," when orbital strikes glassed the sprawl's edge to "reallocate resources." Kael had been 12, jacked into a bootleg rig to escape the sirens, watching holo-feeds of fireballs blooming over the hab-blocks. Mom—Lira, welder in the arc-forges, hands callused from sparking durasteel. Dad—Joren, a decker who taught him his first neural hack on a scavenged console. Siblings: Elara, 15, with her sketches of pre-Cull skies, and Miko, 9, always tinkering with glitchy drones. Gone in a flash of plasma, their cube reduced to a crater etched with radiation warnings. Kael had survived by sheer dumb luck, scooped up by undergrid runners, the rig his only inheritance—a cracked crown that birthed his addiction.
But ghosts demanded visitations. He caged the relic tighter, stim patch slapped on for the road (+15% Endurance, 4-hour burn), and slipped into the sprawl. The mag-lev to the Cull Memorial was a rattling beast, cars packed with hollow-eyed commuters, their augs dimmed to save power. Kael rode in silence, the window's grime framing ruins: skeletal hab-towers twisted like broken fingers, weeds reclaiming the blast scars. The memorial loomed at journey's end—a vast, Pantheon-mandated slab of obsidian plasteel, etched with 2.7 million names in flickering LED script. No flowers, no vigils; just drones humming overhead, scanning for "disruptive sentiment." Kael's print got him through the gate—registered as "Varn, K., Survivor Class C"—but the neural suppressor field made his scars itch, the relic's hum a distant echo.
The family plot was a slab midway up the hill, names glowing faint: *Lira Varn, Joren Varn, Elara Varn, Miko Varn. Cull of '27. Remembered.* Kael knelt, the damp earth soaking his knees, fingers tracing the etchings. No tears—those had burned out years ago—but the weight hit like a Blood Nova: the last real hug from Elara, her sketchpad pressed into his hands ("Draw the stars for me, Kay"); Miko's drone buzzing around his head, laughter cutting the sirens; Mom's callused hand on his fevered brow during a rig-overload scare; Dad's voice, low and steady, "Code's just math, son. Bend it, don't let it bend you." Vaporized. Not even bodies to bury—just a crater, now a toxic pond where mutant fish glowed under rad-lamps.
He sat there as the acid rain started, hood up, letting it sting his skin unfiltered. Hours bled—commuters thinning, drones whirring closer. A memory surfaced, unbidden: pre-Cull, family nights in the cube, Dad hacking flat-vids of old Earth skies while Mom welded toy drones for Miko. Elara sketching constellations, Kael tracing them with grubby fingers. "We'll see 'em one day," she'd promised. Lies, all of it. The Pantheon had scorched the stars from the sky. But in that moment, under the memorial's false glow, Kael felt the void not as enemy, but anchor. The relic pulsed in his pocket, syncing with his breath—*fuse,* it whispered. Not yet. This was his, flesh and fracture.
A shadow fell. Not a drone—a figure in a weathered coat, aug-eyes dimmed to brown. "Varn?" The voice was gravel and synth, familiar in a way that prickled his neck. Lena—Elara's old friend from the arc-forges, survivor like him, now a memorial keeper. She'd aged hard: scars from cull-shrapnel, a limp from botched aug-repairs. "Heard you were topside. Thought you were ghosted." Kael rose, wary, Crimson Sense's echo pinging no threat. They talked—halting at first, then spilling like the rain. Lena had Miko's drone, rebuilt from scraps: a palm-sized buzzing thing that hovered, its lights mimicking stars. "Elara would've hated the Pantheon sims," she said, passing it over. "Fake skies. She wanted real."
Kael held it, the drone whirring to life in his palm, projecting a holographic constellation—Orion, flawed but fierce. "Thanks," he murmured, pocketing it like a talisman. Lena's gaze sharpened. "Rumor mill says you're tangled in Schism shit. Voss's kid reaching out?" Kael stiffened—Mira's leak? But Lena waved it off. "Undergrid looks out for its own. If you need a ghost-route out of the dome, say the word." She slipped him a datachip: safehouse coords, anti-scan mods. Family, extended. Not blood, but forged in the cull's fire.
Dusk fell, rain turning to sleet that clawed at his skin. Kael lingered at the slab, drone humming softly.