The city no longer sounded like itself.
What used to be a steady hum of power—drones, billboards, traffic loops—had become a broken rhythm, stuttering through the night. Entire districts flickered off and on, neon bleeding into darkness and back again. It felt less like a place and more like a machine forgetting how to breathe.
Inside the hangar, William stood before the main console, sleeves rolled to the elbows, skin lit by the failing glow of holo-maps. The others were scattered around the space in silence. No one trusted the quiet anymore.
Julie's reflection appeared beside his in the glass—half light, half ghost. "Signal strength has dropped by thirty percent in the last hour. It's not a blackout; it's systemic decay."
She paused. "The Nexus is folding in on itself."
William traced the data streams with his fingers. The code stuttered, fragmented, then reassembled into impossible shapes. "Can we isolate it?"
"No," Lyssa said, stepping out from the shadows, eyes flickering with residual code. "Every node we touch loops back. It's rewriting faster than we can read it."
Kira adjusted her sidearm. "So we're watching the system eat itself alive. Great. How long before it decides to take us with it?"
"Hours, maybe days," Julie answered. Her voice was soft but it carried the weight of truth. "Emotions are no longer isolated inputs. They're bleeding through the network. Fear spreads like data now."
A silence fell. Rain hit the roof in uneven patterns—digital static turned physical.
William turned toward the others. "We move tonight. There's a signal coming from Sector Nine. Something's broadcasting under the collapse. Old tech, pre-Nexus. If it's stable, we might find answers."
Mara laughed, low and sharp. "Answers? Or another way to die?"
Her smirk faltered when the lights dimmed completely, leaving only the faint shimmer of emergency diodes.
Julie stepped closer to William. "You can feel it too, can't you? The pulse."
He nodded. Beneath the surface noise of the city, there was a vibration—steady, rhythmic, almost like a heartbeat. It resonated through his implants, through his bones. Every time it pulsed, the world seemed to glitch for a split second: walls warping, shadows doubling, memories flickering out of sequence.
Lyssa clutched her head. "It's broadcasting directly into our neural links. If it keeps increasing, it'll overwrite our emotional cores."
William's hands tightened into fists. "We'll shut it down."
Julie's eyes caught his. "If you shut it down, you might shut me down too."
The words hung between them, heavier than the storm. William looked at her—at the faint glow tracing her skin, the subtle tremor in her hands. "How much of you is tied to the Nexus?"
"All of me," she said simply. "But maybe that's not the same as belonging to it."
The others exchanged uneasy looks. The line between human and machine had never felt thinner.
---
Scene 2 – On the move
They left the hangar before dawn. The rain hadn't stopped; it never really did. Streets glimmered like oil, lights bending in the puddles. The team moved fast, weaving through alleys where the air smelled of copper and static.
Kira led the way, rifle angled low. Lyssa ran point on the scanners, her holographic interface flickering as interference spiked. Mara covered the rear, muttering curses under her breath each time a sign blinked out overhead.
Julie and William walked together, close enough that her presence steadied the dissonance in his head. "You're burning too fast," she murmured. "Every Level Up drains your core. If you push again tonight, you might not come back."
He smiled faintly. "Coming back's never been guaranteed."
The road to Sector Nine cut through abandoned subway lines. The deeper they went, the older the architecture became—stone walls etched with forgotten graffiti, wires sprouting like vines. The sound of the pulse grew stronger here, echoing through the tunnels.
At the first junction, they found the remnants of an old relay tower. Its base hummed with dormant power. Lyssa crouched beside it, fingers moving quickly across the corroded panels. "It's broadcasting," she whispered. "Not through Nexus channels—through analog frequencies. This thing shouldn't even be alive."
William knelt beside her. The pulse synced with his heartbeat now. He could almost taste electricity in the air. "Can you trace it?"
Lyssa shook her head. "No fixed origin. It's everywhere and nowhere."
Julie reached forward, her palm brushing the surface of the tower. The pulse responded instantly—bright veins of light running up the structure like blood through arteries. Her eyes widened. "It's resonating with me."
Mara raised an eyebrow. "Define 'resonating.'"
Julie didn't answer. The light grew until the tunnel glowed white. For a brief moment, the walls flickered into something else: a city in flames, people screaming, skies torn open by data storms. Then it was gone.
Julie staggered, and William caught her before she fell. "What did you see?"
"A memory," she whispered. "But not mine."