The sanctuary's fragile calm held only for a heartbeat before a soft vibration pulsed through the quiet—a subtle reminder that even here, nothing was truly safe.
Eira lifted her head from Kael's shoulder, eyes searching the dim corners of the room. The faint hum of the city seeped through walls thick with age, but it was different now—a low, uneven rhythm like a heartbeat slowing to a crawl.
Kael tensed beside her, his gaze narrowing. "Something's wrong."
Eira nodded, swallowing the tight knot forming in her chest.
Outside, far from their hidden refuge, the city churned with unseen movement.
Ysel moved through shadowed streets with practiced ease, but the usual fluidity was absent. Her steps faltered near an alley stained with flickering neon—a place where memories and silence collided.
Her breath caught when she passed the faded memorial plaque, worn by time but impossible to forget. The names etched there were hers—fragments of a past carved from loss.
Her fingers brushed the cool metal, trembling.
She hadn't told Eira the full truth—how her brother had been taken, swallowed by the system's cold machinery, erased like a bad line of code.
Every day since, the weight of that absence gnawed at her resolve.
In the distance, a soft mechanical whir echoed—the unmistakable approach of a patrol drone.
Ysel slipped into the shadows, heart pounding.
Back at the sanctuary, Eira and Kael listened to the silence, too quiet and too thick.
Suddenly, a faint tapping sound came from the room's small terminal.
Kael rose cautiously, fingers hovering over the worn keyboard.
On the screen, a message blinked—a string of coded warnings and coordinates.
Wren's signature was there.
Eira's eyes widened.
"Wren's warning," Kael breathed. "He's been watching."
They decoded the message carefully: the system was shifting, rerouting patrols, closing off safe zones. A purge was imminent—an effort to root out any remaining fragments of 'flawed' existence.
Eira's hands clenched.
"We're running out of places," she whispered.
Kael's jaw tightened. "We need to move soon. Stay here too long, and we'll be trapped."
The weight of Wren's warning settled like a stone between them.
Neither spoke for a long moment, the gravity of their situation sinking deep.
"I wonder where Wren is now," Eira finally said, voice fragile.
Kael's eyes darkened with worry. "He's out there, taking risks we can't even imagine."
The silence returned—thicker, colder.
Eira felt the walls closing in again, the safety of their sanctuary slipping through her fingers.
Her mind raced with unspoken fears.
Could they trust Wren? Had he betrayed them, or was he their last thread to survival?
Kael reached out, grasping her hand firmly.
"We face this together," he said, voice steady.
But beneath their quiet bond, the creeping threat loomed—a relentless shadow hungry to erase them both.
Wren moved like smoke—never where he was supposed to be, always three seconds ahead of being caught. He ducked under a scaffold coated in ash and time, the air thick with burnt plastic and city rot. Most people wouldn't breathe here if they could help it.
He liked it. No cameras. No polished glass. Just ruin.
The shell of Old Aurelis had become his chapel—cracked halls and forgotten tunnels, all carved with rust instead of laws. Places the system didn't bother maintaining. Places that didn't matter to the Registry.
But Wren mattered.
He mattered because he remembered too much. And he'd made himself useful.
The tablet in his gloved hand blinked once. Coordinates confirmed. Message sent.
He'd burned most of the path clean, masked the signal with decoy tags. If Kael and Eira didn't get flagged for that warning, it'd be a miracle.
Still. It had to be done.
The purge wasn't theoretical anymore.
He'd seen it begin.
He crouched near the shattered remains of what was once a surveillance tower—now barely functioning, the lens warped from heat and something angrier. A cold wind passed through the broken slats, bringing the scent of ozone and smoke.
That's when he saw it.
Movement. Too smooth.
Wren dropped instantly into the shadows, breath vanishing into silence.
A Vigil.
Not the kind that walks openly through Sector roads.
This one had no faceplate. No form. Just a distortion—like heat in the shape of a man. Its limbs twitched in sharp, staccato bursts. It didn't scan. It listened.
Thought residue.
Fear frequencies.
Wren held his breath as the Vigil turned.
It stopped exactly where he'd been two seconds before. Tilted, unnaturally.
The wall where he'd leaned sparked faintly. Barely visible, but enough.
It was reading memory echoes.
He mouthed a curse and slowly slipped into the chute behind him, the narrow tunnel just wide enough for a body. He slid down fast, catching metal rungs to avoid full silence-breach detection.
He landed in what used to be a filtration plant—stained, corroded, silent.
The Vigil didn't follow.
Not yet.
Wren sat in the dark for a long moment, heart pounding like a drum made of regret.
That thing wasn't just hunting rebels. It was learning.
His hand went to the old patch sewn into his sleeve—a star made of fractured lines.
He didn't wear it for style. He wore it for her.
Tarin. His sister.
Taken by a prototype model two years ago. Her name erased from all system records. Her face wiped from the citizen banks. Her voice... only alive in memory.
He hadn't even said goodbye.
That's why he kept moving. That's why he watched, mapped, warned.
And that's why Kael and Eira mattered.
They still had something to fight for.
He opened his comm slate and began writing a new message. Not coordinates this time.
A name.
"Project Recall is active. You need to move."
He hesitated... then typed one more line.
"If I don't make it back—don't stop."