The rain had started.
It wasn't hard. Just a mist that clung to the glass and steel bones of the city, soft enough to be ignored, but heavy enough to blur the edges of light. Kira liked it that way. It made everything seem quieter. Easier to move in.
She crouched in the underwalks beneath the REMCORE precinct, listening.
Above her, through two meters of rebar and hollow ceramic flooring, guards passed.
Heavy boots. Paired steps. Staggered rotations.
She knew the pattern by now. Had studied it. Rerouted herself twice already when the drone pulses came too close.
The briefcase in her satchel was warm again.
Only faintly. But enough.
It didn't need a network anymore. It was reading off of him, Sterben. She could feel the sync attempting to re-engage every few minutes, like a dying heart still trying to beat.
He's alive.
That was all that mattered.
Kira touched the side of the old panel she was working on. A transit conduit, defunct. Officially sealed. Unofficially, it was how she got out the last time REMCORE tried to erase her.
Now she was going back in.
The irony didn't help.
She hooked the relay pin into the seam, bypassed the failsafe, and rewired the gate with three quick cuts.
The wall hissed.
One more crawlspace.
She slid into the dark.
Inside the precinct, Sterben sat alone again. The crown-like device was gone. So was Dr. Mor. Only the humming silence remained.
But now there was… something else.
A static in his bones. A prickle behind his eyes. He could feel it, something just beneath the surface of his skin, waiting to be called.
He didn't know what Mor had done, only that it hadn't hurt.
Not yet.
His fingers flexed. The white walls felt thinner now. Not literal, but like they were only pretending to be solid.
He stood. Pacing.
That was when the floor vibrated.
Just once.
He paused.
Then again.
It wasn't his imagination.
Kira emerged from the lower vent and landed in a utility tunnel. No alarms. No motion sensors. This floor wasn't even on the public map.
She'd timed it right.
Just ahead was a sealed door with a heat-sinked panel.
She pulled the briefcase halfway out of her satchel and let it pulse once. The metal in the panel flickered in response. Not unlocking… but responding.
Like it remembered the sync signature from earlier.
She smiled. "Thank you, Sterben."
With a flick of her knife, she pried the panel off, rewired the node, and bypassed the final lock.
The door hissed.
The white room lay ahead.
Sterben turned.
The door opened.
And there she was.
For a second, they both froze. Not because of fear, but something more jarring:
They both expected not to see the other again.
Then Sterben exhaled. "How the hell did you-"
"No time."
She tossed him a coil-jacket and a badge-stub.
"Put that on. Walk fast. Don't talk."
Sterben caught it, blinking. "Where are we going?"
"Anywhere but here."
They exited into a service hall, moving between custodial drones and glassy walls. Sterben tried not to make eye contact with anyone. The jacket made him look like a tech runner. Kira walked with her head low and posture stiff, just another junior handler in a building too big for names.
Down one stairwell. Past a drone checkpoint. Past two guards.
No one noticed them.
Until the lift.
The doors opened, and a figure stood inside.
Juna Elric.
She stared at them, mouth half-open. Kira froze.
The girl blinked. Then stepped aside.
"I'm on break," she said flatly.
Sterben stepped in. "Who was-?"
"I don't know," Kira muttered.
The lift closed.
But Juna watched the numbers descend with narrowed eyes.
She had questions. A lot of them.
But first, she had to make sure no one else noticed.
The lift doors opened at Sub-Level 3.
Kira pulled Sterben by the elbow, whispering just loud enough:"Two turns left, one freight dock. We're grabbing a supply truck and driving blind."
Sterben tried to slow his breath. "You've done this before?"
"Yes. But not with someone who can't reset."
He gave a dry, nervous chuckle. "Well. First time for everything."
Kira smiled. Just for a second.
Then the hallway lights flickered.
A voice crackled over the intercom:
"Sector access flagged. Unregistered badge signature
Sub-Level 3. Lockdown in sixty seconds."
Kira swore under her breath. "How?"
Sterben jerked his head behind them. "That girl in the lift?"
"No. She… I don't think so." Kira hesitated. "Come on!"
They broke into a run. Kira yanked open the emergency bypass door, dragging Sterben into a side corridor lit only by red emergency strobes.
The sirens hadn't started yet. But they would.
Thirty seconds.
They reached the freight dock's access gate. The large industrial trucks were lined in the dark, silent and sleeping.
Locked.
Kira slammed her palm into the override. "Come on-"
A static pulse answered. Access Denied.
Then a voice, tinny and hidden in the ceiling speaker.
"Try the blue one. Key's still in it."
Kira froze.
Sterben stared up. "Who the hell-"
But the voice was already gone.
They turned to the farthest vehicle, an old cargo hauler with scratched paint and flickering lights.
She jumped into the cab, found the key in the socket, and jammed it forward.
The engine sputtered… then roared to life.
The dock doors were still closed.
"Kira," Sterben said. "Uh-"
She threw the hauler into gear.
"Hold on."
Three levels up, Juna Elric leaned back from her terminal.
The guards were rushing toward the elevator shaft. None had time to check the comm logs. Not yet.
She'd wiped the audio and rerouted the camera feeds on that level.
It wouldn't hold long.
But it would hold just long enough.
She stared at the grainy photo still flickering on her hidden pad.
Sterben Stein.
Her mouth twisted into something unreadable.
Back at the freight dock, the hauler smashed through the security gate with a metal screech. Sparks showered the floor. The dock doors cracked, then bent open under the weight of the vehicle.
Sterben held onto the passenger rail, his heart slamming in his chest.
Outside, the open air greeted them with rain and spotlights.
Alarms followed.
Security drones swarmed from the top decks. Kira floored the accelerator.
The hauler roared down the slope into the industrial maze, tires screeching on wet pavement. Gunfire crackled behind them, nonlethal, but enough to make Sterben flinch.
"We're gonna make it, right!?" he yelled.
Kira didn't answer.
Instead, she reached into her jacket and pulled the briefcase forward. It hummed again. Stronger now.
Alive.
Sterben looked at it. His hand trembled. "It's reacting to me again…"
"Then don't lose it."
At the edge of Sector V, the hauler broke into the outbound lanes, past surveillance towers, through an unpatrolled blind zone.
Behind them, the precinct was already locking down. By the time REMCORE triangulated their path, they were gone.
For now.
They parked in an abandoned ferry lot outside the city ring. The hauler hissed with steam, engine ticking as it cooled. Sterben climbed down, breathing hard. His hoodie was soaked. Kira collapsed next to him, arms resting on her knees.
Neither spoke for a moment.
Finally, Sterben said:
"I've never felt this… awake before."
Kira looked at him.
"I mean it," he said. "Like, I've been sleepwalking my whole life. School. Internships. Work. Always chasing the next thing I didn't even want. But now?"
He looked at the device.
"I don't know what this is. Or what I am. But… I feel real."
Kira watched him. The cold wind tugged at her hair.
"Don't mistake adrenaline for clarity," she said.
Sterben smiled anyway. "Even if it is? It's the first time in my life I've felt like I matter."
Kira didn't reply. Not for a long time.
But eventually, she leaned her head back against the metal siding.
"I used to believe that too. When I joined the Reset initiative. I thought I'd make a difference."
"You didn't?"
"I died twelve times," she said quietly. "Trying to."
Sterben blinked.
"And the worst part," she added, "was realizing that every version of me gave up a little more."
She looked at him now, not with pity, but with something closer to recognition.
"Maybe you are something different."
Sterben exhaled.
Kira reached into her jacket and tossed him a half-crushed protein bar.
"Eat. You're going to need it."
--
REMCORE, Sector V Control Tower Observation Deck
The rain glazed the glass with streaks of silver as Helbrecht stood alone, watching the city hum beneath him. The escape had gone public, footage leaked by a third-party drone, timestamped and watermarked by a local data-ghost. Someone inside had helped them. And someone outside had made sure the world saw it.
Behind him, the airlock hissed open.
Dr. Ilena Mor entered silently, holding a tablet.
"They're gone," she said. "But not off the grid. They're moving west. Industrial sector first, now near the outer ferry rings. We'll catch up."
Helbrecht didn't turn. "The intern?"
"Contained," Ilena lied smoothly. "For now."
He was silent.
She approached him, casting a glance at the rain beyond the glass. "We should accelerate the backup prototypes. The boy's interaction with the device isn't sustainable. It's syncing, but it's clumsy. No anchor. No safety net. He's tearing through Reset layers like someone born without a skin."
Helbrecht's voice was low, calm. "Because he was."
Ilena narrowed her eyes.
"You knew?"
"Project Nadir," he said simply. "You ran the field tests. I ran the children."
Ilena looked down at her tablet. "He was part of it?"
"More than that. He was the only survivor."
She frowned. "But he had no neural scars. No post-cognitive fragmentation."
"Because he never Reset," Helbrecht said. "He never needed to."
Ilena went still.
Helbrecht finally turned to her. His voice, quiet, deadly:
"Find him. Before he does need to."
Elsewhere in REMCORE Sub-Labs
Juna Elric sat cross-legged in her dorm's maintenance shaft, the stolen data crystal flickering against her palm. She didn't sleep. Couldn't.
Sterben Stein wasn't just a Zero.
He was a living reset point.
Not someone who went backward, someone who others might be able to anchor around. A human base-state.
She chewed her lip, remembering the field notes she'd read in passing. Fragments of theory, all classified.
One line stuck out:"If Reset is light, the Zero is shadow. Not void, but reference. Constant."
She whispered it now. "He's the axis."
She shut the crystal off and slipped it into her boot. Time to choose.
She opened her pad and began compiling a report. Not to REMCORE, but to an old blacksite node marked DeadNet. A whistleblower relay long assumed defunct.
She had one message:
Subject Zero is real. He is awake. And REMCORE is already hunting.
She hit send.
Aboard a Ferry, Two Hours Outside City Limits
Kira sat on the bench, legs pulled up, hood low.
Sterben was fiddling with the briefcase again, though not opening it this time. Just holding it. Feeling the low hum.
"You think it's alive?" he asked.
Kira didn't look at him. "Not in the way you think."
"It responds to me. Changes when I touch it. Isn't that alive?"
"It's not just responding to you," she said. "It's recognizing you."
Sterben tilted his head. "As what?"
Kira looked out over the water. "As the origin. Everything in REMCORE's Reset Network ties back to a base-code template. They used thousands of samples. But there was always a first."
She glanced back at him. "The template everyone else loops back to when things go wrong."
Sterben shook his head. "I never signed anything. Never volunteered. My parents-"
"You don't remember them, do you?"
Sterben hesitated. "Not clearly."
"They were part of the project," Kira said. "You were probably never meant to live outside it."
He looked down at the case in his lap. For a moment, he felt like the water beneath them. Quiet, deep, unknowable.
"I just wanted a job," he muttered.
Kira smiled faintly. "Welcome to purpose."
He looked up. "What's the next move?"
"We need allies," she said. "People outside the reset net. Old world survivors. Data runners. DeadNet nodes."
"DeadNet? That's real?"
She nodded. "I sent a burst before we left. If anyone's listening, they'll find us."
Sterben grinned. "That's comforting."
Kira stood, stretching. "We make port in six hours. Rest. After that, there's no turning back."
Sterben leaned back, eyes half-closed. The hum of the engine, the rain against the ferry glass, the flicker of light through the clouds, it all blurred together.
He didn't know what tomorrow looked like.
But for once, he wanted to meet it awake.