Rain hit the corrugated metal roof like a ticking metronome, sharp and deliberate, counting down minutes Eira didn't have. He crouched in the dim guts of an abandoned storage unit on the outskirts of Zone 12, surrounded by rusted shelving and discarded synthleather seat cushions. The air tasted like oxidized metal and mildew. The only light came from his cracked HUD lens and the pale glow of the data drive pulsing softly in his palm.
He had sealed the unit from the inside with a rusted bolt latch and an override wedge. It wouldn't hold against a determined search team, but it bought him enough time to breathe—if only for a little while.
Eira sat cross-legged, elbows on knees, breathing through clenched teeth. His implant itched like rot beneath his neck skin. The last sync hadn't taken cleanly, and his time counter jittered every few seconds, dipping into decimals before resetting itself. 1d 02h 44m. Then 1d 02h 43m. Then back to 44. A countdown that mocked him with its instability.
He placed the drive on a patch of clean cloth, pulled the decrypted tablet from his satbag, and tapped it to life. The device buzzed like a dying fly. His fingers shook slightly as he fed the drive in. He could still hear Jarnis's warning echoing from the sync point: _"Your name's circulating. Someone's paying attention to this file now. And they don't forgive theft."
The interface blinked. Then loaded.
[FILE ACCESS: PARTIAL DECRYPTION SUCCESSFUL]
A spreadsheet spilled across the screen. Columns of cold, indifferent data:
ID | Name | Time of Death | Registry Tag | Extension Status
Row after row. The screen scrolled endlessly. The number in the top-left mocked him: 1,248 entries.
Most were tagged as EXPIRED. But a handful—highlighted in amber—still showed active registry tags. It was impossible. These people were dead. Legally, at least. But the registry still had them alive.
He recognized a few names. A woman from the old trade district, Evra Nor, supposedly crushed in a construction collapse last year. A freelance time-broker named Nix who had supposedly overdosed on a counterfeit boost. Even a mid-tier ChronoEnforcer captain, Jolein Farr.
All dead. All alive.
All illegal.
Eira scrolled. His fingers paused over a row like ice settling into his bones:
ID: 0937-TSN
Name: Eira Sun
Time of Death: March 2nd, Year 2171
Registry Tag: 913X-ER
Extension Status: UNREGISTERED
He read it three times.
March 2nd, 2171. Five years ago.
His breath stalled in his throat. He checked his internal registry.
Name: Eira Sun
Current Status: ACTIVE
Life Credit: 1d 02h 43m (unstable)
He couldn't reconcile the contradiction. His fingers hovered over the registry cross-check portal, running his tag through a backdoor link. But the results were sanitized—no death record, no prior timestamp inconsistencies. A perfect continuity.
Someone had rewritten his existence.
He leaned back against the wall. The cold metal seeped into his spine. Static buzzed at the edges of his vision. He tried to ground himself—remember what he had done five years ago. He remembered pain. That much was clear. A job gone wrong. Blood. The dark. And then waking up in a backroom clinic, six days later, strapped to a cot with a sync drip in his arm and a hundred minutes to his name.
He'd assumed he'd barely made it. That the clinic had been his salvation. But what if it wasn't luck?
What if someone had revived him? Stolen him back from death.
And now, five years later, the system was correcting the error.
He brought up the remaining extension tags on the list. Only sixteen names had active tags. The pattern emerged: all former couriers, enforcers, or tech handlers. Low-level people with access to the city's underbelly. Disposable assets. All presumed dead and quietly revived. All with unregistered extensions.
What kind of operation had the reach to do this? Government? The Latchkey?
His screen flickered. For half a second, a new icon appeared.
[REMOTE TRACE REQUEST: BLOCKED]
He yanked the drive loose instantly. The tablet shut down in self-defense, screen going black. He slapped a signal jamming mesh over the walls—a crumpled net of copper weave he had scavenged years ago. It wasn't perfect, but it dulled outside scans.
They were looking. Not just for the data.
For him.
He placed the drive in his coat lining, in a pocket lined with an EMP-safe sheath. Then he stared at the now-dead tablet, waiting to see if anything else would follow. Nothing did.
But it didn't matter. The message had already been delivered.
He stood slowly. His joints protested. The sync drain had taken more out of him than he realized. He had to move. Couldn't stay in one place for too long. Couldn't trust any of the old routes. Couldn't trust anyone at all.
Someone had faked his resurrection. Now they wanted their time back.
His eyes drifted again to the list.
1,248 names.
1,248 ghosts.
He whispered, "How many of us know?"
Outside, the rain softened. The countdown didn't.
To be continued…