"The heart isn't a weakness. It's the one thing they could never code."
The alarms screamed like banshees in the void.
Red holograms flooded the underground bunker, flickering over cracked concrete and rusted steel. Kairo Valen moved like a ghost through the chaos, fingers gliding across air as he typed on a projected keyboard. Code streamed across the transparent screen faster than any eye could track.
HEARTWARE UPLOAD: 72%
He gritted his teeth. "Come on, come on..."
Behind him, gunfire rang out. The heavy stomp of mech-troopers echoed closer. Sparks burst from the ceiling. The enemy had found him.
Again.
A voice crackled through his comms. "Zero, the firewall's collapsing! You need to jack out—now!"
"Not without finishing the upload," Kairo snapped. "They've already sterilized Sector 5. If Heartware doesn't go live, emotions will die with me."
Another explosion shook the bunker. The wall to his left caved in. Smoke swallowed the light.
A mech-trooper burst through—nine feet of black armor and a single, glowing red eye. It raised its pulse rifle.
Ping—
UPLOAD: 99%
Kairo spun around just as the mech fired.
Pain. Searing, white-hot. He stumbled backward, blood spraying from his shoulder. He hit the wall, gasping.
"Zero!" the voice screamed through the comm.
Kairo smiled bitterly. "Too late…"
UPLOAD COMPLETE.
HEARTWARE INJECTED INTO THE QUANTUM STREAM.
He chuckled once. "Let's see them decrypt that."
Then the world blinked out.
---
BLACK.
Darkness swirled like liquid code. Memories shattered and rewrote themselves mid-fall. Data fragments buzzed around him, whispering old regrets.
You chose code over connection.
You abandoned her.
You're not a hero.
He tried to speak, but there was no mouth. Tried to scream, but the void swallowed everything.
Then—
LIGHT.
---
He woke up gasping. Cold sweat. Burning skin. And…
Noise.
A soft mechanical hum replaced his heartbeat.
Where… was he?
Kairo opened his eyes.
Sterile white lights glared overhead. He sat on a metal gurney inside a glass room. Monitors blinked with graphs he didn't understand. His wrists were cuffed with glowing restraints.
He moved his fingers—slow, sluggish. Everything felt… wrong.
Then the screen beside the bed flashed:
> Welcome, Subject 000-Z. Emotion Index: 0%
Status: Emotionally Defective
"What the hell…" His voice cracked, alien to his own ears.
A soft hiss.
The glass door slid open. A woman walked in, wearing a pristine lab coat and a silver visor that obscured her eyes. Her skin was flawless. Too flawless. Like a painting rendered by AI.
She spoke in a voice so calm, it felt unnatural.
"Good morning, Kairo Valen. You've been reborn."
He blinked. "Reborn…?"
"You died in the Age of Chaos. This is Neurolux City, Cycle 2391. You are one of the last organic minds ever uploaded into a host shell."
He stared. "A… host shell?"
She turned a tablet toward him.
His reflection stared back.
Same black hair. Same sharp jawline. But his eyes—cold, silver, synthetic.
"Your emotional data was lost during the transfer. You are classified as Emotionally Defective."
She smiled faintly.
"But that makes you… controllable."
---
Outside the glass chamber, the world was like something out of a dream—or a nightmare.
Towering holograms lit the sky. Drones zipped between spires. People walked with vacant eyes, every wrist bound in sleek emotion-monitor bracelets. Screens above their heads displayed glowing bars: JOY: 15%, ANGER: 2%, LOVE: 0%.
Emotions were currency now.
And he had none.
---
Days passed.
Tests. Scans. Neural drills.
They told him the world had changed. War, pain, heartbreak—they were "coded out" of society. Emotions caused instability. Now, only the elite could buy feelings on the black market. The rest lived like drones.
He was placed in the "Undersoul Unit"—a school for emotional defects. A cage for those who couldn't feel.
And yet…
Even with zero emotion, he remembered the scream of code, the warmth of love once felt, the pain of a girl he had betrayed before he died.
That pain lingered.
And that meant…
It wasn't gone.
---
One night, as he sat in the dormitory staring out over the neon city, a strange alert blinked across his neural HUD:
> EMOTIONAL FREQUENCY DETECTED. Source: Unauthorized. Distance: 17 meters.
His breath caught.
Someone nearby was leaking real emotions.
He stood slowly. The others in the dorm remained still, blank, eyes glowing faintly from nightly data injections.
He followed the alert down a corridor of steel and silence, past security drones and flickering screens, until he reached an old storage door.
Inside, in the darkness—
A girl.
She was humming.
Actual music. Not system-fed noise.
She sat curled on the ground, pale hair falling over her eyes, and a faint light shimmered around her—a pulse of pink and violet.
Emotion made visible.
Kairo whispered, "You're not chipped…"
She turned. And when their eyes met, he felt it.
A glitch.
A surge.
A heartbeat.
He hadn't felt one since he woke up.
And then—
ALERT.
EMOTIONAL ENTITY DETECTED.
TERMINATION PROTOCOL ENGAGED.
---
> To be continued…
---
✅ Author's Thought (End of Chapter)
Thank you for stepping into the beginning of Eclipsed Emotions. This chapter is the spark—the revolution begins now.
What would you do in a world where emotions are illegal? Would you fight… or forget?
Comment below—next chapter drops soon. Let's rise together .