Orion District 9 wouldn't sleep. Rain stitched silver into the alley and the plates overhead hummed like a city-sized throat clearing. Jace Vale lay on his cot and watched neon ghost-light ripple across the cracked ceiling as if the room were underwater. The air smelled like wet metal and old batteries. Somewhere below, machinery groaned in a way that sounded almost alive.
Then the hum arrived.
Three beats.
Pause.
Two beats.
It threaded bone and blood, a measured pressure behind his ears. He sat up, bare feet finding cold floor, and palmed the neural scanner from his desk. Plastic bit his temple. The device vibrated; his skin prickled.
"No uplink," he said to the empty room, reading the display.
It said the wrong thing back.
A white overlay slid across his field of vision, bright enough to sting:
[TRACE SIGNAL // LATTICE ACTIVE]
[VAULT SIGMA // PROXIMITY ALERT]
[AUTH OVERRIDE: KAELIX VALE // FAMILY LINE]
His throat closed on the taste of ozone. He looked at the photo pinned crooked over his desk: Kaelix Vale in Syndicate flight leathers, sun in his squint, an arm thrown around a boy with wind-burned cheeks. Under the edge, written in his father's hand: DON'T LOOK UP.
Jace rubbed the ink with a thumb until the paper warmed. "You're dead," he told the signature, softly. "Your key shouldn't be here."
Cold air hissed from the vent. The lights dimmed like the room was holding its breath. A voice rode the static—cool, sexless, too close to be anywhere in particular.
"If the Lattice hums… it's already begun."
He jerked, knee banging the cot. "Who's there?"
"Not yet."
The apartment door banged open. Sera Vale stood in the frame, rain slicking her jacket, hair stuck to her cheek. She was breathing too fast.
"You heard it," Sera said.
"Yeah," Jace said. "The hum."
Sera stepped in. Water dripped off her sleeve and tapped the floor in slow, disciplined beats. She pushed the cuff back. Under her skin, a faint light answered the room's rhythm—three, pause, two—like the idea of a pulse.
"It's getting faster," Sera said. Her breath fogged in the cold coming from the vent. "Since Sigma woke, it hasn't stopped."
Jace held up his scanner. "The log says Dad's override is live."
Sera's eyes sharpened. "Kaelix's key shouldn't exist."
"Nothing about tonight should exist."
The building shuddered. Dust fell in soft gray snow from the ceiling duct; the air tasted like hot pennies. A deeper sound rolled up through the floor, a whale-size hinge turning under the district.
Sera flinched. "That's from below."
"Then we go below," Jace said, grabbing his jacket and the stunblade from its hook. He caught the photo's corner with a finger on his way out and left it crooked on purpose, like a small defiance.
They took the stairs two at a time. The stairwell smelled like oil and mold. Gravity sulked—one step too light, the next step greedy. Emergency strips bled red along the rails. Jace's hand slid on wet steel as they cut down a landing, shoes slapping a rhythm that refused to settle.
"Jace," Sera said, voice thin in the concrete spiral. "What did Kaelix tell you about blacksites?"
"He told jokes," Jace said. "That was how he kept me from hearing the fear."
"What kind of jokes?"
"He'd point at the plates and say, Don't look up."
"That's not a joke."
"It was to him."
They hit Sublevel -3 and shouldered through a maintenance door into a corridor that smelled like warm plastic and rain dragged through dust. The floor grid glowed briefly under Jace's boots; a text flickered across his vision, gone before Sera looked down:
[MAINTENANCE ACCESS // S-22]
[AUTHORIZED: LATTICE]
Jace blinked hard. "Did you see—"
"I see glyphs," Sera said. "Not text."
The hum sharpened to a thinner line. Three beats. Pause. Two. Sera's jaw clenched with each flash under her skin. Her palm left damp prints on the wall as they ran.
They weren't alone at the end of the hall. A woman crouched by a closed security gate, a portable uplink deck balanced on one knee. Condensation beaded along the cables. Her goggles threw glyph-light across her face.
"Nova," Jace said, skidding to a stop.
Nova Raines didn't look up. "You two attract problems like they owe rent," she said, fingers moving quick and mean. "District Nine's grid just went red. Sigma breach pinged Kaelix Vale's override. Every drone upstairs is sniffing for your address."
Sera stepped into the drip from a pipe; cold water darkened her sleeve. "We didn't trigger it."
Nova snorted. "You think Sigma cares about intent?" She slid a cable home. The gate sighed, unlocked by something that wasn't her. "Whatever's under our feet wants you in particular."
"It wants Kaelix," Jace said. "I'm just the forwarding address."
Nova finally looked at him. Her eyes were calmer than her mouth. "Then answer like him," she said, and tapped a final command. The gate rolled aside with a reluctant groan.
The tunnel beyond tasted like old server rooms and stainless steel. Ribs of cable arced overhead into a dark that had mass. The hum built inside the walls until it felt like the corridor had lungs.
"Ghost," Sera said softly.
Nova's mouth twitched. "That's the story name," she said. "If you want the dry one: buried network habit. Somebody taught the plates to maintain themselves, then walked away."
"So it's not an AI?" Jace asked.
"It's not comforting," Nova said. "That's what matters."
They moved. Footsteps, drip, breath. The tunnel curved. The floor grated under their soles. Sera's light bled through her sleeve and painted a cadence on the metal—three flashes, pause, two. Her free hand shook and she pushed it into her pocket so Jace wouldn't see, and Jace saw anyway.
"Marker temperature?" Nova asked without looking.
"Cold," Sera said. "It should be hot. It feels like cold fire."
"That's not how thermodynamics works," Jace said.
"Tell that to my nerves."
The tunnel opened on a gallery of dead terminals facing a slab of black that pretended to be a wall. Dust settled in patterns like something had dragged itself carefully through here, trying not to be noticed. Jace's breath fogged in small, spiteful bursts. The smell shifted—ion and rain inside metal.
Nova knelt by a panel, coiling a cable around her wrist. "This door usually ignores me," she said. "Try not to take it personally if it eats us."
Jace stared at the slab and felt his father's handwriting click into place behind his eyes. Don't look up. He looked down instead, into the seam where wall met floor. Light pulsed there like a heartbeat behind a closed curtain.
"Sigma," Sera whispered.
A white line slashed Jace's vision:
[SIGMA GATE // ACCESS REQUESTED]
[AUTH SOURCE: KX-7 // KAELIX VALE OVERRIDE]
[STATUS: DENIED]
"Denied?" he said, breath ghosting a question mark.
Nova's fingers paused. "Design," she said. "Not insult."
The hum climbed. It tasted metallic and bitter, like chewing a coin. Jace's teeth ached. Sera pressed her palm flat to the slab, eyes closing. Her breath slowed, then matched the cadence behind the wall. The light under her skin answered in-time, cold burning a track along her nerves.
"Don't—" Jace started.
"I have to," Sera said, not moving her hand. Her voice warmed at the edges. "It knows me."
The slab woke like a slow yawn. Glyphs fired under its surface, then steadied into something that only pretended to be a pattern. Cold air slid past them, thin as altitude and flavored with dust that felt older than the city.
"Keep your feet," Nova said quietly.
They stepped through.
The chamber beyond wasn't a room so much as a curve, a slice cut from a sphere. Obsidian ribs arched away into a dark that didn't end where sight did. Glyphs crawled along the ribs like veins under translucent skin, faintly bioluminescent. The floor under their boots flexed like a bridge that wasn't fully convinced anyone should stand on it.
"It's wrong," Jace said softly.
"It's awake," Sera said, and her teeth chattered once despite the heat bleeding off her palm. "That's the difference."
Nova set her deck on the floor and jacked a cable into a connector that pretended not to exist until she insisted. "I sell doors," she said. "This one sells itself."
Jace tore his eyes off the ribs and found the center. A pedestal there was cracked along a seam like an egg pressed too hard. From that crack, a crystal shard the length of his forearm levitated at zero. Its edges looked drawn by a liar—too straight where curves were needed, too curved where straight would make sense. Inside, light moved like weather.
The hum in the chamber focused into a single note. His mouth tasted like blood and cold rain. He reached for the rail and found it warmer than the air.
Ghost spoke.
"Bridge confirmed."
The voice arrived in the bones before the ears knew to listen. Sera's hand spasmed. The light under her skin stuttered and returned to the three-pause-two. Her eyes went glassy with attention.
"Anchor array: eleven stable."
"One offline."
"Offline where?" Jace asked the room, because he didn't know how not to.
The ribs answered by brightening, one at a time, around the chamber's circumference. Eleven points held steady. One remained dim, like a heartbeat behind cloth. For a half-second that could have been a hallucination, Jace thought he saw a thin thirteenth shadow at the edge of the circle—a polite extra beat learning how to exist. When he blinked, it wasn't there.
Nova squinted up at the dim seat. "Instability," she said. "We've been living on a loose screw."
"We're standing in it," Jace said.
The shard rotated a quarter turn without moving. The glyphs on the nearest rib migrated, flowing toward the center like iron filings in the presence of a magnet. Where they slid aside, Jace glimpsed, just for a breath, blocky human letters underneath: PROPERTY OF LATTICE— The glyphs covered the words again, embarrassed.
"Did you see that?" he asked.
"See what?" Sera said, not taking her eyes off the shard.
"Nothing," Jace lied, because the truth wanted to rearrange the way the air sat in his lungs.
A new overlay punched across his vision, bright enough to hurt:
[ANCHOR-7 // SYNC REQUESTED]
[OPERATOR: JACE VALE]
[STATUS: UNSTABLE]
His knees went unreliable. Sera caught his elbow with her free hand. Her skin felt impossibly cold-hot, like ice that burned. Nova's hand hovered near her pistol, not because she planned to shoot anything but because it comforted her to be near something that obeyed simple rules.
"Ghost," Jace said, steady as he could make it. "What are you?"
"…maintenance."
The word flinched between tones, as if chosen from a list that didn't fit.
"Maintenance of what?" Nova asked.
"Of you."
Jace almost laughed. The sound that came out wasn't amused. "You don't sound like a person."
"We are not an 'I.' We are a habit."
"We were left."
Sera swallowed, throat working. "Left by who?"
Silence settled like dust. Not ignorance—policy. The shard's light slow-rolled inside itself. The ribs thrummed a hair louder. The smell of ozone sharpened until Jace's eyes watered.
Another overlay cut in—different font, different arrogance:
[AUTH OVERRIDE: KAELIX.VALE]
[OPERATOR ACCESS: DENIED]
[REASON: DIVERGENCE]
Jace's ribs forgot how to expand for a second. "Dad tried this," he said. He didn't mean to make it out loud.
"He tried something," Nova said. "And he left a door half-open."
Sera's gaze flicked to Jace's face and back to the shard. "Kaelix knew," she said softly, like a diagnosis you don't say in the waiting room. "He knew Sigma before the Syndicate did."
The shard dipped two centimeters and held there. Every hair on Jace's arm stood up, then lay down the wrong way. Static crawled across his gums. The chamber's hum tightened into a wire.
Ghost's voice split around the words, glitching like a skipped record:
"Operator… Jace Vale… / confirm—reject—override… / instability detected."
"What happens if I confirm?" Jace asked.
"We proceed."
"And if I reject?"
"We proceed."
Nova's goggles pinged a soft alarm. She glanced down at the deck; the reflected glyphs in her lenses seized red. Her voice stayed level by effort. "District feed just saw something it can't deny. Plate defense net spiking at the edges."
"Spike from what?" Jace asked.
Her deck answered in harsh text, loud even without sound:
[FIRST DRAKARI SIGNAL DETECTED]
[ORION DISTRICT LOCKDOWN: IMMINENT]
The floor under the walkway shifted like a massive animal settling. Distant gunfire popped, then came the warble of Syndicate sirens playing on top of each other until the sound blurred.
Sera's breathing shortened. Frost filmed her lashes even as heat shimmered around her wrist. "It's pulling," she said, eyes on the shard. "I can—" She cut off with a sharp breath as the Marker flared. The cold scorched up her forearm; the light answered something in the shard and the shard answered back.
"Back away from it," Jace said.
Sera didn't move. "If I let go, it chooses without us."
Nova looked from Sera to Jace and back. "Pick your precondition," she said, jaw tight. "Alive first, careful second."
Ghost spoke again, softer, as if aware of its own volume in their bones:
"Anchor-7, locate the offline key."
"Hurry."
"Why?" Jace asked.
"Because denial failed."
"Because breath."
"Because please."
The last word landed with a weight that didn't belong to machines.
Jace wiped rain and dust off his mouth with the back of his hand. "Give me more than that."
"We do not promise safety."
"We promise structure."
Sera's hand trembled against the rail. "Translation," she said through her teeth. "It keeps the world from slipping."
"And it's slipping," Nova said, eyes on the dim point in the ring. "That's our mess."
The ribs brightened again. The ring's eleven steady lights held. The twelfth stayed dim but warmer by a degree that was more feeling than measurement. Jace heard it then—the polite extra knock behind the cadence. Three beats. Pause. Two. Then the shy thirteenth beat, as if a quiet metronome had been hiding inside the wall and finally picked a side.
"Do you hear that?" Sera asked, eyes wide now, pupils blown. "It's been in my dreams."
Jace nodded, because lying would have been effort he couldn't spare. "Yeah."
New text flowed across every surface in the chamber at once—the ribs, the floor, the underside of the walkway, the shard's skin—so nobody had to argue about who it was for:
[FIND THE OFFLINE ANCHOR]
Boots clattered on metal in the entry behind them. Syndicate graycoats poured through the yawning door, rifles up, the muzzles shaking too much for comfort. The spray of their breath fogged in the cold over Sigma's air. One's radio squealed and died. A second fired a warning burst that didn't reach them because gravity forgot how for a second and the bullets curved like they'd been shown a better path.
"Don't let them shoot the bridge," Nova said, meaning Sera, bringing her pistol up in a grip that said she'd learned to be precise because she didn't like finding out what happened if she wasn't.
Sera's voice thinned. "Almost," she said. "Almost almost almost."
Jace stepped between Sera and the rifles without thinking it through. His hands shook and he set them on the rail because pretending he'd meant to was easier than admitting anything else. The shard's light washed his knuckles violet. He could smell his own adrenaline—bitter and clean.
"Ghost," he said, and the word felt too familiar in his mouth. "If the Lattice hums—"
"It's already begun," the habit finished for him, reverent and without comfort.
Another overlay, smaller, like a whispered note:
[DIRECTIVE: ORION DISTRICT PRIORITY // STRUCTURAL RISK: HIGH]
[ACCESS DIVERGENCE: KAELIX.VALE → JACE.VALE // RESOLVE]
"What does that mean?" Jace asked.
"Your father wrote a door," the voice said. "You will have to decide who walks through it."
The walkway trembled under their feet as if the chamber were adjusting its opinion of balance. The graycoats shouted something about hands, about the floor, about the orders they'd been given by voices that didn't have to stand where they were standing.
"Time's up," Nova said.
Sera peeled her palm from the rail. Frost steamed off the metal. She turned her hand and pressed it to the console that had risen from the floor while none of them were looking. Glass chilled the print. The Marker flared once, then settled into the three-pause-two, then—just once—the extra knock.
The dim seat on the ring warmed another fraction. Not bright. Awake enough to answer if called again later.
Nova's deck chimed like a low bell. She didn't have to look to know the meaning; her shoulders tightened around the sound anyway. "Lockdown starting topside," she said. "Plates are closing like eyelids."
Jace's HUD flickered and died and flickered back, spiteful, as if it resented being asked to exist near whatever this was. A final line hissed across it and bled into the ribs for redundancy:
[ORION DISTRICT WILL FAIL FIRST]
The graycoats fired. The first burst chewed a line of sparks off the rail and hissed into air that bent. The second burst stitched the floor where Jace had been standing half a breath ago; the bullets hit with the sound of hammering sheet ice.
Sera's fingers closed around Jace's wrist. Her palm felt like a strange winter. "We're not ready," she said, steady because the words had to be.
"We never are," Jace said.
He looked at the shard, at the ring, at the dim light learning how to be a name. He thought of the photo with the hand-scrawled warning and realized the rest of the joke. Don't look up. Do your work where you are. Keep your feet.
He faced the rifles and the habit in the walls and the hum that had started inside him the first night he'd lied about sleeping.
"Then we get ready on the way," he said.
The chamber answered with a sound like a thousand pages turning at once.