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Chapter 25 - Quiet Rebellion

The plan wasn't flashy.

It couldn't be.

Aurelis devoured noise.

Wren laid the diagrams out under dim light, projection flickering against the cracked wall like an old ghost trying to remember itself. Lines of code blinked like veins. The Registry loop pulses in rhythmic cycles—three times a day, when emotion monitoring was at its most aggressive.

"That's when their attention's elsewhere," Wren said, tapping the spiral node. "Surveillance algorithms pull back just slightly. Enough to redirect a single upload into the heartbeat."

"The heartbeat?" Ysel asked, arms folded.

"Yeah. That's what they call it. The biometric core loop. Everything runs through it. Mood, focus, breath. They think it makes the city calmer."

Kael raised an eyebrow. "So we infect their calm."

Wren grinned. "We lace their pulse with truth."

Eira barely moved, her fingers brushing the surface of the shard again and again. "What if it notices? The system, I mean. The loop is alive, Wren. It learns."

"That's why I'm not going alone," Wren replied. "You'll be on overwatch. Kael and Ysel guard the relay path. I go in. Quick line, ghost protocol, out before it blinks."

Ysel's frown deepened. "And if it doesn't blink?"

Wren shrugged. "Then we run like hell."

The plan was simple. Dangerous. But simple.

They moved at dawn—not real dawn, but the artificial dimming cycle between nutrition allotments. The city would be drifting. Just enough to let them drift too.

Eira and Kael broke off near the outer corridors. Eira wore a borrowed coat, sleeves too long. Her face was half-shadowed beneath the hood. Even her posture felt wrong—looser, too human. She was learning to disappear.

Kael nudged her shoulder as they watched Wren sneak into a maintenance shaft.

"You okay?" he whispered.

"No," she answered.

But she didn't slow.

Inside, Wren's signal pulsed once, then went quiet.

Eira stared at her screen. One dot blinking. Then two.

Heartbeat matched.

She released a shaky breath.

"It's working."

Kael smiled.

For now.

The pulse signal went steady.

Wren was in.

Eira's screen blinked green once, then again—heartbeat loop aligned. Everything was syncing. Too well.

She stared at the shard resting in her palm, still humming faintly from her mother's transmission. Her chest felt tight, like her lungs were breathing air the system hadn't sanctioned.

Then—

A flicker.

Just behind her eyes.

Not pain.

Familiarity.

Like something brushing the inside of her skull.

"Kael..." she whispered.

He turned. "What is it?"

Her vision blurred at the edges—lines of code blooming in her peripheral. Not on the screen.

In her mind.

The loop was syncing with her, not just Wren's upload.

She dropped to one knee, hand gripping the wall. Her breath came sharp—jagged. She was falling inward.

The air tasted metallic. Her thoughts stuttered, rerouted—echoed in a voice that wasn't hers but knew her.

"Emotional template: Core-Calibrated. Recall signature: Active."

Her heart slammed once.

Twice.

Then slowed.

She saw a hallway.

Not one she'd ever walked—but somehow, one that had been built for her.

A chamber. A crib. Glass over her body. Wires tracing her scalp.

Doctors behind mirrored walls.

Whispers:

"We'll map the thresholds through her."

"She bonds too easily. It's ideal."

"If the city ever destabilizes, she'll be our correction point."

Her scream didn't make it to her mouth.

Kael's voice barely pierced the fog.

"Eira—look at me. Look at me!"

She blinked—once—like waking from underwater.

Everything snapped back. The corridor. The light. Kael's hands on her shoulders.

"I—" she stammered. "It... used me."

He pulled her into the shadows. "What happened?"

She couldn't speak yet.

Because something was still inside her. Not an implant. Not a bug.

A key.

And now that it had seen her acting against the system, she knew what was coming next.

The city wouldn't flag her as a threat.

Not yet.

It would try to correct her first.

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