The credits from Kira's project didn't come in a chip. They came for a meal.
Three days after filming Cycle 1, Julian returned to his capsule to find a sealed thermal pack taped to his door: roasted root tubers, fermented soy curd, and a single synth-pear, enough to last a week. No note. Just a small, hand-stamped glyph on the wrapper: a broken string mended with light. Kira's personal sigil.
He ate slowly, savoring each bite like a sacrament. In The Hollows, food wasn't fuel. It was acknowledgement.
That night, he uploaded Still Breathing – Cycle 1 to the Open Resonance Archive, the unmoderated public feed where anyone could drop a story into Veyra's collective stream. He tagged it only with #StillBreathing and #JL_Null—his new creator handle, a nod to his erased identity.
He didn't expect virality. He didn't want it.
He wanted to be seen with the right eyes.
By dawn, it had been shared 1,842 times, the exact number of credits he'd started with when he walked out of Veridian Estate. A coincidence. Or a sign.
Comments poured in:
"She looks like she's arguing with the gods. And winning."
"This isn't documentation. It's archaeology of the present."
"Who is JL_Null? A ghost with a camera?"
Then, one that made his breath catch:
Veridian Internal Feed – Restricted Tier 3 Monitor
Subject: "Still Breathing – Cycle 1"
Analysis: Visual style matches archival footage of Julian Thorne (age 19, private exhibition, Obsidian Wing). Recommend passive observation. Do not engage.
Julian's blood turned to ice.
They were watching.
Not hunting. Not yet. But tracking.
He deleted the notification instantly, wiped his local cache, and ran a ghost protocol through three proxy nodes. His hands didn't shake. They'd trained him too well for that. But his pulse hammered against his ribs like a trapped resonance coil.
They knew.
Or they suspected.
And if they confirmed it…
He forced himself to breathe. You're not Julian Thorne here. You're Lennox. Just another voice in the static.
The next morning, a message arrived, not from Kira, but from The Echo Wards Council.
Subject: Commission Inquiry – JL_Null
Your visual work on Kira Vale's Level 9 soundscape prototype has been reviewed by our Cultural Integration Panel. We propose a collaborative installation: a dual-medium experience (sound + image) for the new Transit Nexus Core, opening in 8 cycles. Budget: 12,000 credits.
Confirm by cycle-end.
Twelve thousand credits. Enough to rent a proper studio. Buy equipment. Eat for months.
It was a lifeline.
It was a trap.
Because accepting meant registering his alias officially, linking JL_Null to a civic contract, and once in the system, Veridian could trace him in a heartbeat.
He spent the day pacing the rusted catwalks above the Static Bunk, weighing silence against survival.
That evening, he found Kira testing feedback loops in an abandoned aqueduct tunnel near Dock 14. She didn't look up as he approached.
"They offered me the Nexus commission," he said.
She paused, a tuning rod hovering over a suspended glass harp. "And?"
"I think it's a way to make me real again."
"Real how?"
"Official. Tracked. Known."
She finally turned. "You're hiding from someone."
It wasn't a question.
Julian hesitated, then nodded. "From the person I used to be."
Kira studied him, her expression unreadable. Then she gestured to the harp. "This instrument was salvaged from a decommissioned Veridian transit hub. They threw it away because it couldn't be calibrated to standard frequencies. Too wild. Too human." She struck a note. It shimmered, dissonant and beautiful. "But I kept it. Because some things are only valuable when they refuse to fit."
She looked him dead in the eye. "If you take the commission, don't register as JL_Null. Register as Legacy in the Spotlight."
Julian blinked. "What?"
"Make it a collective. A studio. A myth. Let L.I.T.S. be your name. Not you. Then even if they trace it, they'll find a company—not a boy who ran away."
He stared at her. "You just gave me a way out."
"I gave you a better story," she corrected. "Now go write it."
He spent the night drafting the contract reply.
From: Legacy in the Spotlight (L.I.T.S.)
To: Echo Wards Council
We accept the Nexus Core commission.
Deliverables: A dual-channel immersive experience titled "Still Breathing – Cycle 2: The Commute", exploring the emotional topography of daily transit.
Terms: Full creative control. No branding. No interviews.
Signature: J. Lennox, on behalf of L.I.T.S.
He hit send before dawn.
By midday, confirmation came.
Contract approved. Funds allocated. Identity: L.I.T.S. – Unverified Creative Entity.
No Julian. No Thorne. Just a name that meant nothing to Veridian… yet.
That night, he stood on the rooftop of The Static Bunk, the city spread beneath him like a circuit board dreaming of poetry. He pulled out his mother's camera and took a single photo: his own shadow, stretched long across the rooftop, reaching toward the glowing spire of the Obsidian Wing in the distance.
He titled it: "Still Breathing – Cycle 0.5".
He didn't upload it.
Some echoes weren't meant for anyone but himself.
Meanwhile, deep in the Obsidian Wing, Alistair Thorne reviewed a new file on his private terminal.
Subject: "L.I.T.S." – Emerging Cultural Entity
Primary Contact: J. Lennox (alias)
Notable Work: "Still Breathing" series
Threat Level: Low. Cultural Interest: High.
Alistair leaned back, steepling his fingers.
"Build me a profile," he said to the shadows. "Quietly."
Across the city, in a capsule no larger than a coffin, Julian Lennox slept for the first time in weeks without dreaming of boardrooms.
He dreamed of strings. And light. And the sound a city makes when it remembers it has a soul.
And far below, in the tunnels where Kira tuned her broken instruments, a single resonator hummed a frequency no algorithm had ever mapped;
as if answering him.