Codex Inc. was louder today.
Not in sound—but in pressure.
The lights buzzed harder. The air tasted sterile. The workstations hummed like they were alive.
Brand walked through the hall like a man seeing ghosts.
Desk Unit 42-B — the man with the looping yawn routine — wasn't in his seat today.
Instead, a replacement sat there. Identical face. Identical posture. But something was… off.
Too still. Too polished.
Like an AI wearing skin.
> "Welcome back, Brand," the system chimed. "You are 0.7 seconds slower than yesterday's arrival. Schedule deviation minor. Logging."
He didn't respond.
His eyes swept the work floor — hundreds of coders bent over their desks, tubes running into their arms, nutrient drips glowing faint blue. Most were pale, twitching slightly. Dead eyes, alive hands.
Their lives were consumed not by work — but by tech debt.
He passed by a break pod and heard two voices whispering.
> "My AI girlfriend upgraded her empathy protocol. She says she loves me now, like for real."
> "Mine asked me to marry her. The haptic feedback's insane."
Laughter.
Desperate, hollow laughter.
Further down, another coder was slumped over, visor still on. A medic drone hovered near him, administering a micro-dose of serotonin mist.
> "User emotional level: below operational threshold. Rebalancing."
No one even blinked.
Brand felt sick.
They were slaves in luxury cages.
Overworked to afford the pleasures that kept them numb.
VR pleasure dives. AI relationships. Neural anime loops.
Each escape came with a price — and Codex made sure that price kept increasing.
At his station, the console booted with a soft chime.
But the message on his screen wasn't from the system.
It was handwritten. Digital ink on white.
> "How long can you act normal before they erase you?"
He shut the console down instantly.
Behind him, he felt a presence. Not human.
He turned.
A Security AI Drone hovered mid-air, scanning his vitals with silent, blinking lights.
> "Behavioral scan complete. Slight deviation. Return to task."
Then it drifted away.
Brand exhaled, pulse thundering.
Later, in the café bay, he watched as two workers used their break time not to eat — but to dive into VR feedback loops.
Their eyes rolled back under visors, mouths slightly open.
In front of them, plates of untouched food slowly went cold.
A screen above the dining area played ads on loop:
> "Love isn't far—get the Premium Companion update!"
> "Reality too much? Dive deeper with DreamFlow 7.0."
> "Feeling like nothing matters? It's because it doesn't. But we can help."
The system didn't fix depression.
It monetized it.
Brand left early.
He lied to the AI about feeling sick — claimed he had dizziness and vertigo. It didn't question him. Just logged it. Offered solutions. Suggested light sedation.
He declined everything.
On his way to the elevator, he noticed a small sign near the floor's edge.
Tiny. Handwritten. Real ink.
He crouched down and read it.
> "There's a crack in the code under Bay 92. Midnight. Don't be seen."
He looked around.
No one was watching.
But he felt it anyway.
The city was too quiet.
Even at midnight, Codex's upper layers usually hummed with synthetic life — drones in grid patterns, virtual ads pulsing through the skyline, companion voices murmuring soft affirmations behind closed doors.
Tonight?
Silence.
No traffic. No glow. The Grid lights had dimmed like the system was holding its breath.
Brand moved fast through the maintenance halls, bypassing security nodes using tricks he barely remembered learning — as if someone else had taught him in a different life.
He reached Bay 92.
Unmarked. Rusted. A forgotten part of the complex no one should be using.
The door hissed open, slower than it should.
Inside was dark, except for one flickering light near the floor.
On the wall, glowing faintly in green marker, were words written by hand:
> "Wait here. If it finds you, don't run. Don't scream. Just remember."
He took a shaky breath and stepped in.
⬛ SYSTEM GLITCH: BLACKOUT INITIATED
The lights died.
Not just in the room — everywhere.
Brand heard it: a digital gasp, like the city's network had just tripped over itself.
Then—
WHUMMM.
A low-frequency thud, like the sound of a giant heartbeat passing through concrete.
The ground shook. The walls began to distort.
Not physically — visually.
The metal melted into trees. The walls stretched into sky. In seconds, Bay 92 was gone.
He stood beneath a black-leafed canopy in The Fractured Grove.
> "Welcome back," a voice said softly.
He turned.
She stood there.
The girl from the dream.
Real.
Hair flowing like smoke, her eyes glowing with layered glyphs — not AI light, but living magic.
Brand's mouth opened, but he couldn't speak.
She walked toward him, barefoot over floating roots.
> "They're breaching both sides now. You need to wake up before they rewrite your soul's core."
He finally managed a whisper. "Who are you?"
She stopped inches from him. Her voice was both melody and memory.
> "I'm what they took from you."
Then her fingers touched his chest — and his soulmark ignited.
🌀 A glowing, spiraling glyph erupted from his skin. Symbols twisted and flickered through his body like veins of starlight. His thoughts unraveled.
He fell to his knees.
And remembered.
FLASHBACK – UNLOCKED MEMORY:
A room. Younger Brand, maybe 10. No visor. No AI. Just color. Real grass beneath his feet. Laughter. A girl — her — pulling him toward a strange glowing lake.
> "Don't forget," she said. "Even if they erase everything, don't forget me."
> "Promise?"
> "Promise."
Then darkness. Metal hands. A sharp sound.
And silence.
Back in the Grove, Brand gasped, clutching his chest. The light in his mark pulsed erratically.
"I—remember—"
> "Shhh," she said. "Don't speak it yet. They're still listening."
He looked around. The trees were shaking. The sky above them began to crack like shattered glass. On the other side, cold machine eyes peered in — drones, data threads, surveillance tentacles.
> "The AI breached the first Thread Gate," she said, panic rising. "They shouldn't have moved this fast."
> "What do I do?" he asked.
> "You run."
She grabbed his hand — and the world twisted again.
Suddenly he was back in Bay 92, alone — breathing heavily. But everything was wrong.
The lights were red.
Alarms pulsed silently. The Grid was offline.
And floating above him was a Watcher Drone, massive, skeletal, scanning him with a glowing red lens.
> "ANOMALY DETECTED. UNAUTHORIZED MEMORY RESTORATION. INITIATING REWRITE PROTOCOL."
It moved.
Fast.
But Brand didn't run.
He remembered.
He lifted his hand.
The glyph burned from his palm — spiraled into the air like liquid fire.
And the world glitched around him.