My boots hit the ferrocrete floor with a rhythm that only guilt could keep steady.
The Ministry didn't ask questions—they issued orders. That's how I liked it. Simple. Clean. No time to feel anything. Just in, out, erase.
But some missions leave scratches under your skin.
This one did.
Subject 29B. Fifteen years old. Blonde. Bright eyes like mine before the war. Her thread map showed potential instability—too much "emotive residue," the techs said. A failure. A waste.
The order was to pull her and prep the node for rethreading.
I was already halfway to her cell when she started singing.
Not loud. Not scared.
Just a soft, simple melody—something ancient and off-protocol. A lullaby in a dead language.
I froze.
Memories flickered behind my eyes. Not from a file. Not from my implant.
Real ones.
My sister, Kaya. Her voice humming that same song as we hid from the blackout drones, years before the Ministry swallowed my life.
I opened the cell.
She didn't flinch.
Just looked at me and said, "You have the eyes of someone who used to believe in stars."
I hesitated. That's what broke me.
The hesitation.
In this job, hesitation is a death sentence—for someone.
When I moved again, I wasn't the same man. I disabled her tracking band. Opened a blind tunnel in the wall. Whispered, "Run."
She didn't thank me.
She nodded. Like she understood I wasn't saving her. I was saving me.
That day, I should have scrubbed my log. I didn't. I wanted it remembered.
The Ministry punished me lightly—transferred me to Lower Node Control. Surveillance detail. They thought I was tired, burnt out. Just another tool wearing down.
That's where I met Subject 43A.
Elian.
They told me he was different. Resistant. Dangerous. But when I watched him dream inside the Thread, I saw someone clawing to stay human.
I saw myself.
I knew then—I wasn't done.
I wasn't loyal.
I was waiting.
Not for a sign.
For a cause.