"They told us the Eternal Code was a weapon. They lied. Weapons obey their masters. This thing… it has no master. It only hungers."
---
The darkness hummed around me.
It wasn't the kind of darkness that pressed heavy, suffocating, but one that pulsed alive, electric, threaded with whispers I couldn't quite make out. My fingertips tingled as if I'd dipped them into a socket. The drive containing the Eternal Code felt hot against my wrist, almost pulsing with my heartbeat. Or maybe it was the other way around maybe my heartbeat was pulsing with it.
Kael's footsteps echoed behind me as we moved through the ruined tunnels, the wreckage of drones scattered across the floor like broken husks of metal insects. Every crunch beneath his boots was a reminder of what I'd done, what the Code had done through me.
I shouldn't have been able to wield it like that. No one should.
"You're too quiet," Kael said finally, his voice low, as if he feared the shadows might overhear.
I swallowed hard. "I'm listening."
"To what?"
I hesitated. The truth balanced on the tip of my tongue like a blade. I was listening to the silence but beneath that silence, there were murmurs. Faint, glitching tones, not human but eerily close. Like the aftertaste of a language my body knew but my mind didn't.
"The Code," I whispered, before I could stop myself. "It's still talking to me."
Kael froze. I didn't need to look back to feel the sharpness of his gaze burning into me. "Ayla…"
"I know what you're going to say," I snapped, more harshly than intended. My nerves were fraying, pulled too taut. "That I should shut it down. That I should lock it away before it eats me alive. But if I do that, I'll never reach him. My brother will"
"Stop." His voice cut like steel. "Don't use him as an excuse to martyr yourself."
Anger surged in me, sharp and raw. "You don't get it. You've never had someone you'd burn the world for."
The silence stretched. I finally risked a glance back at him, and his mismatched eyes one storm blue, one steel gray held mine with a weight that silenced my fury.
"You're wrong," he said softly.
I didn't ask who. I didn't want to know.
We kept moving.
---
The safehouse was a skeleton of a forgotten city block cracked concrete walls, rusted support beams, old neon signs half-burned out. But it was empty, and empty was safe.
Kael checked the perimeter while I collapsed onto the metal crate we'd dragged inside. My body trembled, exhaustion rolling over me in waves. The Code had taken something from me back there, in that tunnel. I could feel the gaps like missing teeth in the back of my mind, spaces where memories used to be.
But worse than the holes was the presence.
The Code didn't feel like code anymore. It didn't feel like a program, like a tool. It felt like something vast and patient, coiled in the shadows of my mind, watching.
And waiting.
My hand shook as I pulled the drive from my wrist. Its surface glowed faintly, like an ember that refused to die.
I should have smashed it.
Instead, I whispered: "What do you want from me?"
The glow brightened, pulsing once like an answer.
---
Kael came back, dropping into the chair across from me. His gun was dismantled on the table, each piece methodically checked and cleaned. He worked in silence, but his eyes never strayed far from me.
"You need to rest."
I let out a bitter laugh. "Rest? With this thing inside my head?"
His jaw tightened. "Then we find a way to rip it out before it takes more from you."
"And how do you suggest we do that? You can't fight what you can't see." I leaned forward, voice dropping. "It's not just inside me. It knows me. It's pulling up memories I didn't even remember I had."
Kael's hands stilled. "What kind of memories?"
I hesitated.
"My brother," I admitted. "Not just his face. Little things. The scar on his wrist from when he tried to climb the old fence near the river. The sound of his laugh when we used to chase fireflies. I haven't thought about those moments in years, Kael. And now… it's like the Code is feeding on them."
His gaze darkened. "Then it's already started."
"Started what?"
He looked at me like he wanted to say something, then shut it down. "Never mind. Just… promise me you won't touch it again."
I laughed, hollow. "That's like telling a drowning person not to reach for the surface."
---
That night, I dreamed.
Or maybe I didn't. Maybe the Code was simply dragging me deeper into itself.
I was standing in an endless corridor made of light, the walls flickering with fragments of my life my mother's voice, my brother's smile, the taste of burnt bread from the bakery near our old home. Each fragment hung suspended, perfect, glowing.
And then the shadows came.
They spilled across the corridor like ink in water, smothering the memories one by one. The fragments flickered, then vanished, leaving nothing but static.
I ran, desperate, clawing at the walls, trying to hold onto what was left. But the shadows moved faster.
At the end of the corridor, something waited. A figure made of spiraling data, faceless, infinite. Its voice filled the space, inside me, around me:
"You are the vessel. You are the price."
I woke with a scream lodged in my throat.
---
Kael was already awake, gun in hand, eyes sharp. "What happened?"
I pressed trembling hands to my temples. "It's in my dreams now."
He cursed under his breath. "Then we don't have time. We need answers."
"From who?" I snapped.
"There's someone who can help. A ghost coder. They used to work on projects like this before they went rogue. If anyone knows how to fight the Eternal Code, it's them."
"Where?"
He hesitated. "Sector Twelve."
My chest tightened. Sector Twelve was deep in corporate territory. Suicide, basically.
"Then we go," I said, before he could argue.
"Ayla"
"No." I cut him off, voice shaking but steady. "If I don't do this, I lose myself. And then my brother loses everything. I'd rather die on my feet than live hollow."
Kael's jaw worked, but finally, he nodded.
---
We left at dawn or what passed for dawn under the neon haze of the city skies.
The streets were alive with danger, every alley crawling with watchers, every tower bristling with corporate surveillance. We moved like shadows, Kael always one step ahead, always scanning.
But no matter how far we went, the Code came with me.
At first, it was subtle. A flicker in the corner of my vision. A whisper at the edge of my thoughts.
But then faces.
Not just memories. Faces I didn't know. A woman with silver eyes and a scar down her cheek. A child laughing as he reached for me. A man whose hand brushed mine in a way that made my chest ache.
"Who are they?" I whispered to myself.
"They're me," the Code whispered back.
I froze mid-step. Kael grabbed my arm, tugging me into the shadows as a drone patrol passed. "What is it?"
I shook my head, terrified to speak the truth. If I admitted it, it would make it real.
But deep inside, I already knew.
The Code wasn't just showing me my memories.
It was feeding me others.
---
By the time we reached the edge of Sector Twelve, my head felt like it was splitting in two. The streets here were dead burnt-out cars, shattered glass, old propaganda posters peeling from the walls.
"This is it," Kael said, pointing toward a crumbling tower in the distance. "That's where the ghost coder's last signal came from."
I nodded, though the world around me was already starting to blur.
Because on the wall beside us, written in faint, flickering letters only I seemed to see, was a message.
AYLA MORGAN: MEMORY ERASE 47% COMPLETE.
I staggered, bile rising in my throat.
Kael caught me. "What is it?"
Tears burned my eyes. "It's already happening. I'm disappearing."
He shook his head fiercely. "No. Not while I'm here."
But when I looked at him, for the first time in my life
I didn't recognize his face.
---
Ayla realizes her memory is already unraveling she doesn't recognize Kael, even as he vows to protect her.