🏚️ KORAIL SECTOR – 02:19 AM
Shohan crouched low behind a broken fiber line spool, the kind used to run black-market internet in the slums. The ground beneath him was damp, cracked. Old blood stained the bricks. The shadows here didn't shift naturally — they waited.
Korail wasn't just a forgotten zone.
It was a Frame-dead zone — no one claimed it.
Which meant if you were hiding here, you were hiding from everyone.
Shohan moved quickly now, slipping between walls, ducking past old food stalls buried in ash and rain. Rafi's shelter was beneath the ruins of an old mosque — now nothing more than cracked marble and a rusted fan dangling from the dome like a noose.
He stepped down through the old prayer room, where vines covered scripture and light only came through bullet holes.
> "Rafi," he whispered. "It's Shohan. You safe?"
Nothing.
Shohan paused.
The silence wasn't empty. It was arranged.
He spotted it: three small scratches on the tile near the entrance — right where he'd taught Rafi to mark danger. Barely visible. Smart kid.
He exhaled slowly. "So… they came."
He didn't panic. He didn't call out.
He sat down.
And waited.
---
🧠INTERNAL CALCULATIONS
He pulled out a folded packet of data from his back pocket — a printout of Frame movement patterns, courier disappearances, drone flight routes. All connected.
> They're triangulating zones where sensors go dead… it's not about hunting Rafi — it's about testing something. A weapon? A memory protocol?
Suddenly, a sound.
Light footsteps.
Too light.
Shohan reached into his other pocket and flicked a button on a micro-device strapped to his wrist. It sent a low-frequency pulse. Nothing lethal. Just enough to jam audio sensors.
> "Who's there?"
A figure emerged from the far corridor. Small. Hoodie torn. Bandage on one leg.
Rafi.
Shohan let out a breath — but didn't relax.
> "You scratched the mark," he said. "That saved your life."
Rafi looked up at him, face pale. "They… they weren't normal."
Shohan knelt. "Describe."
> "They didn't speak. They just… stared. And when I ran, I felt—like they weren't chasing me. Like they were waiting."
Shohan's stomach dropped.
That didn't sound like Frame soldiers.
That sounded like Mindless.
---
🔍 THE MINDLESS
Rumors. Data leaks. Whispers from ex-Frame defectors.
A secret project — an AI-human blend called The Mindless, created by an unknown Frame. Soldiers without thought. Just action. Controlled remotely. No emotions. No fear.
They didn't enforce laws.
They erased people who became inconvenient.
Shohan stood. "We're leaving."
> "Where will we go?" Rafi asked.
> "To the last place they'd expect," Shohan said, already plotting.
"To the heart of their network."
---
🚨 SHIFTING THE BOARD
Shohan didn't have money.
He didn't have soldiers.
He didn't even have backup.
What he had was information — and the ability to weaponize it better than anyone alive.
As he and Rafi moved through drainage tunnels beneath Sector 13, Shohan was already thinking six moves ahead.
He would:
1. Leak half-true data to a Frame informant.
2. Redirect attention to a fake rebel cell in Sector 7.
3. Send a ghost-message from a dead man's chip.
4. Visit a girl who owed him a favor. A hacker. An ex-lover. Dangerous.
> "We don't need to outrun them," Shohan said to Rafi as they walked.
"We need to make them look the wrong way — long enough for me to figure out why they want you dead."
> "Why do you care?" the boy asked.
Shohan didn't stop walking.
> "Because if someone like you gets erased before the city even learns your name… then maybe I really am just a manipulator."
> "Aren't you?"
Shohan looked over his shoulder, and this time — no smirk.
> "I am. But I'm a good one."
---