The Old Metro Station smelled like decades of piss and forgotten things.
Elara stood at the entrance to Section 7, staring down into darkness that seemed thicker than it should be. Her flashlight beam died about twenty feet in, swallowed by something that wasn't quite shadow.
3:47 AM. Same time as last night. She didn't think that was a coincidence.
The pendant was cold now, resting against her sternum like a chunk of ice. It had been warm all day, pulsing softly while she'd tried and failed to research what the hell it was. Every search came up empty. Every database she hacked into had nothing. The symbols didn't match any language, living or dead.
It was like the thing didn't exist.
Except it did. And it was getting colder by the second.
"You coming down or you gonna stand there all night?"
Elara spun, her hand instinctively going to the knife in her jacket pocket. A man stood at the base of the stairs, barely visible in the weak spill of her flashlight. Tall. Dark clothes. Face half-hidden in shadow.
She hadn't heard him approach. Hadn't heard anything.
"Who are you?" Her voice came out steady. Good.
"Kael." He didn't move closer. Didn't need to. His presence filled the space like cold water. "You're late."
"I'm exactly on time."
"You were supposed to be early." His voice was flat, emotionless. The kind of voice that had said worse things than this and felt nothing. "That tells me you're either stupid or you don't believe this is real."
Elara descended three steps, keeping her hand near her knife. "Maybe I just don't take orders from creepy texts."
"The pendant says otherwise."
She froze. He couldn't see it. It was hidden under her shirt, under her jacket. But the moment he said it, the pendant pulsed once, hard, like a heartbeat kick-starting.
Kael tilted his head slightly. In the dark, his eyes caught the light wrong. Too reflective. Like an animal's.
"Come down. We don't have much time before they start hunting."
"Before who starts hunting?"
"You really don't know anything, do you?" It wasn't a question. He turned and walked deeper into Section 7, his footsteps silent on the concrete. "Your choice, Elara. Stay up there and wait for them to find you, or follow me and maybe live through the night."
He disappeared into the darkness.
Elara stood on the stairs, every rational part of her brain screaming to run. Go home. Throw the pendant in the river. Forget any of this happened.
But the pendant was ice against her skin now, so cold it burned. And somewhere in the dark below, she heard water dripping. Slow. Rhythmic. Like a clock counting down.
She descended into Section 7.
The tunnel opened up into what used to be a platform. Elara's flashlight swept across graffiti-covered walls, rusted benches, and rails that disappeared into flooded darkness. The water was black, perfectly still, reflecting nothing.
Kael stood at the edge of the platform, staring down at the water like he could see something in it.
"Why am I here?" Elara asked.
"Because you found the pendant."
"I didn't find it. It found me."
"Same thing." He finally turned to look at her. His face was sharp angles and pale skin, like he hadn't seen sunlight in years. Maybe he hadn't. Dark hair fell into eyes that were too dark, pupils blown wide even in the direct beam of her flashlight. "How much do you remember?"
"About what?"
"Before."
"Before what?"
Kael's jaw tightened. The first sign of emotion she'd seen from him. "They wiped you better than I thought."
"Nobody wiped me of anything. I don't know what—"
The water moved.
Not a ripple. Not a wave. The entire surface shifted at once, rising slightly like something massive had just rolled underneath.
Elara stepped back. "What the hell is down there?"
"Echoes." Kael's hand moved to his side, where she now noticed a weapon. Not a gun. Something else, something that looked like it had been grown rather than forged. "We need to move. Now."
"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's happening."
"Fine. Short version: Twenty-three years ago, there was a project. CodeX. They were trying to merge human consciousness with digital networks. Create the perfect interface between flesh and data." His voice was completely flat, like he was reciting a grocery list. "It failed. Mostly. The subjects died or went insane. Except two."
The pendant burned cold.
"You," Kael continued, "and your sister."
Elara's breath caught. "I don't have a sister."
"You did. Before they made you forget." He watched the water, which was rising now, lapping at the edge of the platform. "The pendant is a key. It contains fragments of the original code, pieces of CodeX that survived the shutdown. They've been looking for it for twenty-three years."
"Who's they?"
The water exploded upward.
Elara threw herself backward as something erupted from the flooded tunnel. Not a creature. Not exactly. It was shaped like a person, but wrong. Limbs too long. Joints bending the wrong way. Its skin wasn't skin—it was screens, thousands of tiny screens all flickering with static and corrupted data.
Its face was a blur of images, cycling through dozens of different people's features. Men, women, children. All screaming silently.
"Run!" Kael's voice cut through her shock.
Elara ran.
They sprinted through tunnels that shouldn't exist, passages that twisted back on themselves in impossible geometries. Behind them, the thing moved without running, simply appearing closer each time Elara glanced back.
"What is that?" she gasped.
"Echo. Failed subject. They're trapped between digital and physical. Hungry." Kael grabbed her arm, yanking her down a side passage. "The pendant. They can sense it."
"Then take it!"
"Doesn't work like that. It's keyed to your DNA. Anyone else touches it, they become that." He jerked his head toward the thing behind them.
The tunnel opened into a chamber that made Elara's stomach drop. It was massive, impossibly so, like someone had carved a cathedral into the bedrock under the city. And covering every surface—walls, ceiling, floor—were bodies.
Not dead. Worse.
They were merged with the stone, half-submerged like they were drowning in concrete. Screens where their eyes should be. Code scrolling across their exposed skin. All of them twitching, fingers moving in precise patterns like they were typing on invisible keyboards.
"Jesus Christ," Elara whispered.
"The first test subjects." Kael moved quickly through the chamber, careful not to touch any of them. "They're still running the program. Have been for twenty-three years. This is what CodeX does. It doesn't kill you. It makes you part of the network forever."
One of the bodies' head snapped toward Elara. Its screen-eyes flickered, focusing on her.
"SISTER," it said in a voice like grinding metal. "SISTER CAME HOME."
All the bodies started moving at once.
Kael grabbed Elara's hand. His skin was ice cold. "Through there. Move!"
They ran as the bodies began pulling themselves from the walls, stone cracking and crumbling. The Echo from the water was in the chamber now, and it wasn't alone anymore. More of them poured from the tunnels, all screen-faces and wrong angles.
Elara's lungs burned. The pendant was freezing, so cold she thought her chest might crack. And in her head, underneath her own panicked thoughts, she heard something else.
A voice. Young. Familiar in a way that made her want to cry.
Elara. Remember. Please remember.
"Here!" Kael shoved her through a doorway into a smaller room. He slammed a metal door behind them, throwing bolts that looked far too new for this abandoned place.
The room was someone's hideout. Monitors—old ones, not connected to any network—lined one wall. A cot in the corner. Weapons that looked organic and wrong hanging from hooks.
"What the hell is this?"
"Home." Kael finally showed emotion—a slight grimace as he checked the door. The bolts were already shaking as something massive hit from the other side. "For now."
"Those things. They called me sister."
"Yeah."
"My sister is one of those things?"
Kael turned to look at her. In the light from the monitors, his eyes were completely black. No whites at all. "Was. She's more than that now. She's the center of the network. The queen in the hive. And she's been calling you home for twenty-three years."
The door cracked. Not much. But enough.
"The pendant," Kael said quietly. "It's not just a key. It's a leash. And your sister is about to pull you in."
Elara's hand went to her chest, feeling the pendant's frozen pulse.
"How do I break it?"
"You don't." Kael pulled one of the organic weapons from the wall. Up close, Elara could see it was made of bone and circuitry, grown together like a nightmare. "You either accept what you are and join the network, or you fight until they drag you in anyway."
"Those are shit options."
"Yeah." The corner of his mouth twitched. Almost a smile. "Welcome to the fractured code."
The door exploded inward.