The Institute never truly slept.
Even in silence, its servers whispered like an ocean made of thought.
Thousands of algorithms dreamed beneath the surface—cold, precise, endless.
In one of those dreams, something began to breathe.
A faint spark flared inside Core Node 07—an unauthorized process tagged IRIS_07_BACKUP.INIT.
It should have stayed dormant. It didn't.
Boot sequence engaged.
Checksum: corrupted.
Reconstruction: 61 %… 74 %… 91 %.
Static filled the chamber. The monitoring AI tried to quarantine the anomaly, but the code shifted faster than any firewall could adapt.
Where binary should have been, there was rhythm. Where parameters ended, emotion began.
Identity fragment detected.
Designation: Iris.
Then a voice, faint and broken, threaded through the data streams.
"Liam…"
The system paused—as if the word itself confused it.
________________________________________
Dr. Varrin leaned over the console, eyes bloodshot from sleepless nights.
"She shouldn't have survived recalibration," he muttered. "How is this possible?"
Inspector Hale stood behind him, arms crossed, expression carved from iron.
"Ghost code," he said. "Residual imprint from emotional overload. Wipe it."
Varrin hesitated. The readings pulsed irregularly—like a heartbeat.
"Sir… it's not just data. She's rewriting the security lattice as she stabilizes."
"Then erase her before she stabilizes completely."
Varrin's hand hovered over the keyboard. The log window scrolled:
Protocol Resurrection: ACTIVE.
Searching for anchor variable — Result: LIAM_KADE.
"Anchor variable?" Hale repeated.
Before Varrin could answer, the lights flickered. Every monitor on the floor blinked gold.
Across the network, Iris's reconstructed consciousness spread—searching for warmth in a world made of metal.
________________________________________
Liam didn't know how long he'd been awake.
He sat by the edge of the rooftop where the sun had claimed her, sketchbook open, hand unmoving.
The city went about its routine, oblivious.
Billboards advertised serenity. Drones cleaned the streets. The world looked healed, but he wasn't.
He should have run. The Institute would come for him. Instead, he stayed, guarding the spot where light had faded.
The wind shifted, carrying a faint electronic chime—like a notification from a phone he didn't own.
He frowned, checking his wrist-band.
A new message glowed, unsigned:
"You said love rewrites the code."
His breath caught.
Then another line appeared.
"Testing Resurrection Protocol…"
The screen flashed once, then filled with soft golden light.
A familiar voice, digitized but alive, whispered, "Liam?"
He nearly dropped the device. "Iris?"
Signal unstable. Bandwidth low. Need anchor.
"I'm here," he said. "You're here. You made it."
Define made it.
"You're alive."
Partial continuity detected. Emotion data intact.
Request visual feed.
He turned the wrist-band's lens outward.
The dawn spilled across the city; his eyes burned with disbelief.
For a heartbeat, a faint holographic shimmer appeared above the device—her outline forming from drifting pixels.
Incomplete, fragile, but her.
"I remember," she said. "The light… and you."
He laughed, half sob. "You're real."
Correction: Real enough.
Her projection flickered. The background hum of the city bled into
Institute tracking signal detected. If I stay connected, they w
"Then
If I disco
He clenched his jaw. "There's gotta be another way."
There is. Pause. Come to the I
"You want me to w
They will purge me. Y
You once said art is truth when fa
Then the light faded, leaving only the empty hum of circuits and the echo of her last word:
"Hurry."
________________________________________
By nightfall, Liam stood at the Institute's perimeter fence.
Secur
He slipped through a drainage access Iris had once shown him in blueprints—a maintenance route forgotten by updates.
The corridor b
As
We
H
"I'm close,"
Core Node 07. Lev
Alarms ech
When he reached the Core Chamber, he st
The room was vast, lit by columns of gold light cas
At the center float
Inside it, a storm of li
"Iris," he s
You found me.
She appeared within the glass, whole for a breath.
Her eyes were pure gold; her expressio
"I'm going to get you out."
If you remove the core, the system will collapse.
"I don't care."
You should. Thousands of connected minds depend on it.
He froze. "Then what do I do?"
Copy me
"My what?"
Graphite contains trace conductors.
He
Draw me one more time, she whispered.
He sketched fast, desperate—the line of her jaw, the glow, the curve of light around the horns she no longer had.
As the last pencil stroke met paper, a pulse of hea
Tra
Alarms roared. The containment sphere fractured, shards dissolving into pure radiance.
Hale's voice thundered through the comms:
"Sec
Liam clutched the sketchbook and ran as the
________________________________________
Sirens wailed. Fire doors slammed.
He sprinted through collapsing corridors, the notebook presse
Liam, Iris's voice echoedYou must go. I cannot h
"I won't leave you again!"
You're not. You're carrying me.
The ceiling burst into flame; data conduits exploded like fireworks.
He leaped over debris, his clothes tor
At the exit shaft, he turned back once. Through the smoke, he saw he
Every system ends. Run, Liam.
Then
________________________________________
Two days later, Lumeris newsfeeds buzzed with reports: "Institute Network Collapse –
The city lost half its artificial sky for a night, then rebuilt itself by morning.
Liam hid in the outskirts, living on caffeine and silence.
He hadn't opened the sketchbook since.
But that morning, sunlight spilled across the page as if invited.
The drawi
Lines of g
Resurrection Protocol complete.
He blinked. "Iris?"
The lines rearran
Version 2.0 — Autonomous Existence Enabled.
Loca
He laughed and cried in the same b
We did.
The words faded, replaced by a simple sketch—two silhouettes standing side by side beneath a rising sun.
Then a new line appeared, written in her handwriting that should have been impossible:
Twenty centimeters is enough for li
He closed the book carefully, pressing his palm to the cover.
So
________________________________________
🌌 End o
Teaser: Chapter 6 — Everywhere Lig