The abandoned warehouse, which Lyra ironically dubbed "The Convent," became the feverish cradle of their rebellion. The air was charged with ozone and static electricity, mixed with the smell of dust and cold metal. Lyra's holographic consoles projected a bluish glow that cut out moving shadows onto the bare concrete walls.
Their first objective was clear: to contact other regulators. But the task was more perilous than their flight. The system, now on high alert, had strengthened its defenses. Official communication channels were traps, and establishing a face-to-face connection, as with Lyra, would require exposure each time.
"We can't reproduce the method used for Lyra," she said, her fingers brushing against the light interfaces. It now monitors any abnormal neural activity, especially near the regulator nodes. A direct approach would make us spot in less than a minute."
Kim-Do, sitting on a crate, was massaging his temples. The residual pain of her connection with Lyra was a constant reminder of her vulnerability. "So how do we do it?"
Joon, who was looking at a map of data streams, looked up. "We use a frequency that they don't monitor. A frequency that they consider background noise."
Lyra turned her piercing gaze towards him. "Les Échos."
Joon nodded. "Les Échos."
Kim-Do looked at them, lost. "The Echoes?"
"When a subject is erased... or when a replacement fails catastrophically, it doesn't disappear completely," Joon explained, his voice deeper than usual. "Fragments of their consciousness, corrupted data, persist in the network. These are digital shadows, memories that repeat over and over again. They wander through the lower layers of the system, ignored because they are considered unstructured, and therefore non-threatening."
A chilling horror invades Kim-Do. Ghosts. The system was haunted by the ghosts of those it had destroyed.
"And you want to use these... Echoes... as a cover?"
"More than that," Lyra corrected. "We're going to use their singing. Their despair is a constant, chaotic melody. We can hide our own signal in theirs. Send a coded message, a simple rhythmic impulse, which will seem to be part of their cacophony."
The plan was macabre and awesome. Hiding in the cries of the dead to speak to the living.
"But who listens to this kind of frequency?" asked Kim-Do.
"Regulators who doubt," Joon whispered. "Those who, like Lyra, are beginning to perceive the horror behind the facade. They are attracted by the Echoes, by this tangible proof of the failure of the system. They study them in secret, hoping to find answers."
The preparation was meticulous and strangely funeral. Lyra located a particularly active Echos aggregate - the digital remains of several replacements who had fallen into madness in the same area together. Their "singing" was a heartbreaking symphony of fear, anger and confusion.
Kim-Do had to be the vector. Its hybrid nature made it more sensitive to these frequencies. Sitting cross-legged in the center of the Convent, he closed his eyes and let Joon and Lyra guide his conscience. He plunged, not into the light of active consciousness, but into the dark, swirling underworld of the network.
It was like swimming in a sea of pain. Fragments of shattered lives struck her mind: a child's laugh that turned into a sob, a last look of love tinged with betrayal, the sensation of being torn from her own body. It was unsustainable. He wanted to flee, but Joon and Lyra's cold, stable consciences held him in place, like anchors.
Remain focus, ordered Joon's voice in his mind. Find the rhythm.
In the midst of the chaos, Kim-Do actually perceived a structure. A slow, irregular pulse, like a wounded heart. The song of the Echoes. He synchronized his own consciousness with this pulsation, making himself as thin as a shadow among the shadows.
Now he instructed Lyra. The message.
The message was simple. A repetitive binary sequence that, when decoded, meant: The Cage has Bars. Look for the crack. Contact details: [those of the Convention].
He imprinted this sequence on the background of the Echoes, again and again, like a pulse in the pulse of despair.
The effort was less violent than a direct connection, but more mentally exhausting. It was like whispering in a storm, hoping that only good ears would hear.
They did this for hours, spreading their call for rebellion through the system's digital sewers. Kim-Do emerged from trance to trance, exhausted, haunted by the shreds of lives he had brushed against. Each time, Joon or Lyra was there to help him refocus, giving him water, forcing him to rest.
Then, finally, an answer came.
It was not a clear connection, but a quiver in the network. A resonant, weak but distinct impulse that took their sequence and added a new code: Heard. On the way. Distrust.
It was signed with an indication: Orion.
Then another quiver, a few hours later. Cassiopeia. I'm coming.
A third. Sirius. Wait for me.
One by one, like fireflies lighting up in the night, the answers came. A total of five regulators had heard the call and responded to it. Five beings, each trapped in their own ivory tower, who had chosen to risk erasure for the hope of a glow.
Lyra's team set up to welcome them, preparing for any potential betrayal. But when the new regulators arrived at the Convent, hidden under dark capes and using convoluted routes, there was no deception or cunning in their eyes. There was only the same glow that Kim-Do had seen in Lyra: a mixture of fear, determination, and hope so fragile that it was painful.
They introduced themselves: Orion, a former military regulator, broad-shouldered and with a scarred face. Cassiopeia, fine and elegant, whose voice had the sweetness of a poison. Sirius, the youngest, whose eyes shone with sheer anger. And two others, more discreet, but whose presence was just as tangible.
They formed a circle around the holograms of Lyra, an assembly of fallen angels determined to retake the sky.
"The system lied to us," Orion began, his hoarse voice. "He used our loyalty to perpetrate a silent genocide."
"It's time to return the favor," added Cassiopeia with an icy smile.
Kim-Do looked at them, this unlikely council of war, and felt an immense weight on his shoulders. These powerful beings were looking at him. Anomaly. The key.
Their eyes were on the future, on the core of the system to be knocked down. But Kim-Do couldn't help but think of the Echoes, the chorus of shadows that had allowed them to find themselves. They had used the pain of the dead as a tool. Were they becoming as ruthless as the system they were fighting?
The rebellion had found its army. But at what cost?