Sometimes the silence delivers first.
— ✦ —
The rain had stopped, but the city still dripped.
Elian Ward sat by the window, eyes fixed on the skyline. Erevale shimmered in the post-rain haze — towers like dark teeth biting into a bruised dawn. The world outside hummed faintly, the static pulse of a million devices waking up. He hadn't slept. Not really.
His wrist still faintly glowed beneath the skin. He'd wrapped it in gauze hours ago, but the light still bled through — pulsing to a rhythm he was starting to recognize: not his heartbeat, but something slower. Larger.
He didn't dare open the phone again.
Instead, he watched the fog slide down from the Glass Belt district like a curtain, swallowing the morning traffic. Somewhere far off, a horn wailed — long, mechanical, mournful. The kind of sound that made you check the walls to be sure they weren't breathing.
He whispered to himself, just to hear a human voice. "Dream. It was a dream."
But even as he said it, his phone buzzed.
— ✦ —
It lay face-down on the counter. The vibration moved it slightly, as though something inside was struggling to get out. Elian stared at it, debating whether to touch it. The cracked visor of his helmet caught the reflection — his eyes, hollow and red.
He reached out.
The screen blinked alive.
[System Notification: Unattended Request Detected.]
[Pending Delivery: Reconfirmation Required.]
[Do you wish to proceed? Y/N]
Elian frowned. "I deleted that app."
[Correction: The System persists beyond deletion.]
[Please confirm your route.]
"Go to hell," he muttered, tossing the phone aside. It landed with a thud. The screen stayed lit.
[Request logged.]
[Routing… Destination: Null Entry.]
[Status: Active.]
The words burned against the dim light of the apartment, their glow reflected in the visor's crack — like a scar reopening.
Elian turned away and grabbed his jacket. The city was a sickness; the only cure he knew was motion. Maybe he could outrun whatever this was. Maybe.
— ✦ —
He hit the street. The world outside looked… too normal. Vendors shouted. Kids with earbuds jaywalked through puddles. Taxi lights blinked like restless eyes. Erevale looked alive in all the wrong ways.
Yet something had shifted — subtly, wrong-footed. The billboard above the pharmacy, once an ad for sleep aids, now showed something else: a grayscale face, pixelated, whispering behind the static. No logo, no sound. Just the faint movement of lips.
Elian couldn't make out the words. But somehow, he understood them.
Feed us.
He quickened his pace, heart hammering. "Nope. Not today."
Everywhere he looked, screens flickered. Bus stop displays, crosswalk indicators, phone ads — all glitching in unison, as if the entire city was exhaling digital breath.
And then his phone buzzed again.
[System Update Available.]
[Change Log: Increased Synchronization Efficiency.]
[Recommended Action: Accept.]
He stopped at the corner, rainwater pooling around his boots. The air smelled of static — sharp, metallic, like burnt circuits.
"Why me?" he whispered.
The screen answered.
[Response: You acknowledged Us first.]
His throat tightened. He hadn't said yes. He hadn't done anything except survive.
But maybe that was enough.
— ✦ —
Elian needed air. He ducked into an alley that connected to the main road — one of those narrow veins between crumbling brick and rusted vents. Pigeons scattered as he passed. The sky above was a strip of gray steel. He walked until he reached the old delivery depot, his former workplace: SpeedEats HQ. The logo still hung over the entrance, half-burned out.
He hadn't come back here since the fire — since the night his sister had called him, begging for a ride, and he hadn't answered.
The building stood empty now, sealed after the insurance payout. Yet as he approached, the automatic door slid open with a soft shhhh, powered by something that shouldn't have worked.
He froze."...Hello?"
Inside, the lights were on.
— ✦ —
Rows of lockers lined the walls, filled with delivery helmets and thermal bags. Everything was coated in a thin layer of dust. He stepped inside cautiously. The air smelled like melted plastic and rain-soaked metal — the ghosts of burned wiring.
He walked past the front desk, where someone had left a half-empty cup of coffee, now cold and mold-ringed. His footsteps echoed too cleanly, like the sound had nowhere to go.
Then, a flicker.
A shadow moved between the lockers. Too tall. Too fluid.
Elian froze, breath held. "Who's there?"
No answer. But the air shifted — that subtle wrongness again, like the walls had turned their attention toward him.
He took a step back. The shadow followed — matching him, step for step, just beyond the corner of vision.
He reached for his phone.
[System Alert: Anomaly Approaching.]
[Recommendation: FEAR RESPONSE ACTIVATION.]
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
[FEAR IS FUEL.]
The words pulsed across the screen. Behind him, something clicked — like metal folding, or a camera focusing.
Elian spun. A delivery helmet lay on the floor, its visor cracked down the middle, just like his own. Except inside this one, something shimmered — faintly reflective, like liquid mercury.
He crouched down, staring.
The liquid shifted, forming an image — his own face, but smiling. Not a twitch, not a flicker of recognition, just that perfect, empty smile.
The reflection's mouth opened.
"Feed us, Elian."
The helmet shattered. The sound hit him like a slap — glass and static fused into one. He stumbled backward, crashing into a locker. The walls flickered with faint red veins of light, crawling like circuitry through plaster.
He ran.
— ✦ —
Outside, the street was empty. The city noise had gone silent, replaced by a low hum — mechanical, rhythmic, alive. His bike stood where he'd left it, though the paint looked darker now, almost wet. He climbed on and twisted the throttle. The engine growled awake.
The phone buzzed again on the dashboard mount.
[Delivery Cancelled.]
[Recipient: Null Entry removed.]
[Error: You are now the Package.]
He froze. "What?"
[Directive: Proceed to Drop Point.]
[Location: The Street That Erased Itself.]
Elian swallowed. "You're not real."
[Correction: The City is always real.]
He ripped the phone off the mount and threw it. It clattered across the road and slid into a puddle. For a moment, peace — the first silence in hours.
Then the puddle began to ripple. Light spilled from the water, white and red, forming shapes — street names, maps, fragments of routes twisting in on themselves. The puddle reflected a skyline that wasn't Erevale's — towers bent like ribs, roads spiraling inward toward a dark center.
And there, deep in the reflection, something moved.
Something large.
Elian backed away slowly, unable to look away. The water stilled. The reflection blinked.
Not rippled. Blinked.
Then his phone, still half-submerged, began to vibrate. The screen cracked from the inside as a single line of text appeared.
[The City remembers you now.]
A noise tore through the air — a low, guttural wrrrmmm like metal twisting in agony. Every streetlight around him flickered, one after another, in a ripple of red light cascading through the blocks. The buildings leaned, just slightly, like they were listening.
Elian ran.
— ✦ —
He didn't remember how long he rode — minutes, maybe hours. The streets rearranged under his tires, familiar roads folding into others he didn't recognize. Street signs changed as he passed. Ashbury Lane became Archive Row. Then Archive Row became Nothing.
At last, the bike sputtered out in a dead zone — a place where all color seemed drained. The air itself buzzed faintly. He stopped, engine dying, breath fogging in the stillness.
There were no people here. Just old posters on walls — faces without eyes, slogans half-erased.
And across one cracked billboard, written in dripping black paint:
"THE CITY THAT DEVOURS."
He stared at it, heart pounding, realizing — someone else had seen it. Someone else had known.
Before he could think further, the sound came again — a slow inhale through the concrete veins of the street. The ground beneath him trembled.
He turned the key. The bike wouldn't start.
"Come on!" He hit the handlebar again and again.
[System Rebooting…]
[Fear Points: 0.0 FP]
[Warning: Consumption Threshold Approaching.]
[Generate Fear to Survive.]
His vision blurred for a moment. The world dimmed at the edges. His pulse slowed unnaturally.
"No," he gasped. "Not like this—"
[Directive: FEED OR BE FED.]
He looked up. The reflection of the city skyline shimmered on the glass walls around him — and there, faintly visible through the mirrored surfaces, were figures. Dozens of them. People standing inside the reflections, watching him. Their eyes glowed faint red.
One of them looked exactly like him.
It lifted its hand. A perfect mirror of his gesture. Then it smiled.
He bolted.
— ✦ —
He reached the edge of the street — where the asphalt simply ended. Beyond was mist, thick and motionless, stretching into nothing. The map on his phone glitched out, showing only a white screen with pulsing text:
[End of Route.]
[No exits detected.]
Behind him, the city pulsed — red light flowing down the streets like blood in a vein. The mist ahead shimmered faintly, whispering with distant voices. Familiar voices. His sister's among them.
"Elian," she called softly. "You left me."
He froze. "No—"
[Warning: Cognitive Overlap Detected.]
[Do not engage with Echo Entities.]
But the voice was closer now, cutting through the static. "You left me in the fire."
He turned. For an instant, he saw her — standing at the edge of the street, hair wet with rain, eyes wide and empty.
He reached out.
She opened her mouth — but instead of words, a burst of white noise erupted, like feedback from a broken speaker. The city lights exploded in synchrony. The mist surged forward, swallowing everything.
— ✦ —
When he came to, he was back on the main road. Traffic moved normally. The fog had cleared. His bike stood upright beside him, engine off. His hands trembled.
No puddle. No mist. No reflection.
But when he glanced at his phone, a new notification blinked.
[Route Complete.]
[Reward: 10 FP.]
[Status: Alive.]
He stared at the glowing screen, chest heaving.
Alive. For now.
Above him, the billboard that had shown the whispering face now displayed a new ad — a smiling courier holding a delivery bag.
The tagline read: "FEEDING EREVALE — ONE SOUL AT A TIME."
The phone buzzed one last time before dying.
[The City thanks you, Feeder.]
— ✦ —
End of Chapter 2