The city was crumbling above them, but the real hell was below.
Aiko ran after Kael through a maze of rusted passages, abandoned vents, and staircases that creaked like old bones. With every meter they descended, the world grew darker, colder, more… forgotten. As if they weren't going down into a place, but into a memory buried alive.
"Where are we going?" Aiko panted, stumbling over an exposed wire that sparked like a dying snake.
"To a place where not even the drones dare to go," Kael replied without turning around. "Oblivion."
Behind a hidden hatch nestled between two concrete pillars, Kael entered a code into an old panel. The metal groaned, and the door opened with a rusted hiss.
What Aiko saw wasn't a refuge.
It was a ghost city.
A sublevel abandoned by the authorities decades ago. Ruins of old data centers, collapsed hangars, and tunnels infested with glowing graffiti and encrypted messages. People lived there. Broken people. Exiles, hackers, former soldiers, deformed cyborgs, fugitives from labs and failed experiments. No one spoke unless necessary. Everyone was armed. And they all stared at her.
"Welcome to Oblivion," Kael murmured. "Here, the past still bleeds."
A woman approached them. Her face was completely covered by a copper mask, and her arms were mechanical prosthetics with fingers as sharp as scalpels.
"Brought another one?" she said with a distorted voice. "How long before this one dies too?"
"She's different," Kael replied. "She has the file."
The woman fell silent. Then she nodded and let them pass.
They walked into a semicircular room filled with old monitors, cracked chips, and blinking red lights. A group of hackers surrounded them, connected to terminals by cables running from the backs of their necks like infected roots. In the center, a makeshift throne built from broken server parts.
"That's Z3R0," said Kael. "He's the one who's going to try to open your mind."
A shiver ran down Aiko's spine. Z3R0 wasn't human. Or at least, not anymore. His face was a melted blend of flesh and circuitry, and his voice didn't come from his mouth, but from the speakers in the room.
"You're the marked girl?" his voice boomed. "What a waste of pure code."
"What do you mean?" Aiko asked.
"I mean you don't know what's in your blood. And still... someone wants it. Someone is already looking for the key that is you. If we don't open your file, they're going to open your skull."
Kael nodded. Aiko clenched her fists.
"Do it," she said. She was scared, yes. But she was more afraid of going on without answers.
Z3R0 plugged a cable into the back of Aiko's neck. She felt an icy current shoot down her spine. The world shut off. Everything went black, and then…
A false memory appeared.
She was a child. Crying. Not from pain… but for another child.
A boy with silver eyes.
Kael.
But that was impossible.
She woke up with a jolt, trembling, gasping, blood dripping from her nose. Z3R0 stared at the data like an addict who just saw God.
"Project Hikari wasn't an experiment. It was a sentence."
"What does that mean?" Kael asked.
Z3R0 looked at Aiko.
"It means she wasn't born. She was activated."