POV: Nivaan
The factory's dying.
Electric veins split through the walls, vomiting light like the whole building's having a seizure. Meher's yelling something, but I can't hear. There's only one sound in my head—the absence.
He's gone.
Kiyan.
The echo of him being pulled out of this world feels like someone unzipped my ribs and forgot to close them back.
I stumble forward. My vision glitches. Every pixel of reality keeps rewinding and stuttering like I'm buffering inside my own life. My chest-node burns—blue, then white, then nothing.
"Nivaan!" Meher grabs my arm. Her fingers dig in. "You can't—"
"I have to." My voice sounds like static wrapped in breath. "They took him."
Her face—too many emotions fighting for space. "That wasn't a 'they,'" she says, shaking her head. "That was him."
The word him feels like a weapon.The Retrieval Agent. The one watching us. The one who looked at me like he'd already written my obituary.
"He called Kiyan Key." I choke on the word. "What does that mean?"
Meher looks away. "It means everything we thought we knew was wrong."
The factory ceiling groans. Concrete dust rains down like ash.
I grab her wrist. "You knew he was different."
She doesn't deny it.
"I didn't know what he was," she says quietly. "Only that he was... part of the program. But not like you."
"Not like me?"
Her eyes flicker. "You were the vessel, Nivaan. He was the lock."
The words rearrange inside my skull.Vessel. Lock.
Then what the hell does that make him—the ghost who took Kiyan?
Meher steps back, holstering her gun with trembling hands. "We need to move before the node collapses."
I stare at the spot where Kiyan vanished. My pulse syncs with the blue static still hanging in the air, like his absence left an afterimage.
"I'm not leaving him," I say.
"Then you'll die here."
"Wouldn't be the first time."
Her jaw tightens. "Don't joke."
"I'm not."
Something deep inside me shifts—a memory that isn't a memory. The retrieval agent's voice—flat, clinical—You're degrading.Maybe he's right. Maybe the only thing holding me together was the boy they just took.
The floor cracks. Heat surges up through my boots. Somewhere below, the building's generator screams like it's eating itself.
Meher curses under her breath. "They'll trace the energy burst. The whole block will be crawling with retrieval units in ten minutes."
I look at her, really look—sweat on her temple, dust in her hair, fear hiding behind fury. "You could've let me die again," I say. "Why didn't you?"
Her eyes flick toward the broken light. "Because I already did. Once."
Before I can ask what that means, the ceiling caves.
We dive. Metal shrieks. A chunk of wall slams down between us, slicing the world in half.
"MEHER!"
"GO!" she screams back. "I'll find you!"
The words echo, swallowed by smoke.
I crawl toward a gap in the debris, lungs burning, vision tunneling. My badge flashes red—EMOTION STATE: UNSTABLE.
Yeah, no kidding.
I stagger into the open air. The night hits me like cold data. Sirens bloom in the distance—MindMesh's private retrieval teams inbound.
I start walking, no plan, no destination, just an algorithm made of regret.
Then my comm implant flickers. A voice cuts through the static—distorted, genderless:
"L-47. Your signal's bleeding. Stop running."
I freeze.
"You can't save the key.""He's not meant to be saved.""He's meant to open."
The line goes dead.
My breath clouds the air. Somewhere far off, the city lights flicker like they're waiting for a verdict.
I look down at my shaking hands, at the faint pulse under my skin—the same color that burned through Kiyan's eyes before he disappeared.
A glitch hums in my chest. A command I don't remember writing.
Find the Origin.
That's new.
I glance at the horizon where the towers of MindMesh pierce the night like surgical knives.
"Alright," I whisper. "You want the ghost protocol back online? Let's finish it."
And I start walking—toward the company that built me,toward the people who buried me,toward the truth that refuses to stay dead.