She did not sleep. She only sat in stillness until the fire within her veins faded and her thoughts calmed enough to rise. She stepped from the shadows of the old chamber, her expression unreadable, footsteps deliberate.
Silas stirred in the hallway as she passed, the green glow of his augmented eye narrowing with quiet alertness. Talia looked up from the dim-lit corridor, the edge of concern masked in her usual calm.
“Do you remember anything?” Silas asked, voice low.
Vesper tilted her head slightly, as if listening to something distant. “I… I remember fragments. Shapes in the mist. Nothing concrete. But… I know this world now. I understand it, at least a little.”
Talia stepped forward, her eyes narrowing. “The serum turned blue. That shouldn’t happen. That thing is engineered to be green. Pure Crown signal. But with you… it changed.”
Vesper held her gaze, letting a moment pass in silence before she spoke. “Then perhaps I was never meant to be part of their system,” she said softly, her voice like silk woven with steel. “Or perhaps the system itself senses something it cannot command. Either way, Miss Talia, I do not believe the Crown will rest until I am contained. And that makes me a danger to you all.”
She paused, glancing toward the ceiling where unseen machines hummed faintly, a reminder that even here, nothing was truly hidden. “I must leave. I fear the anomaly triggered their attention. They are searching, and it is only a matter of time.”
Silas looked away, jaw tight, his cybernetic fingers curling and releasing with frustration. Talia’s expression was unreadable for a moment before she nodded once. “Then we help you move.”
She turned to a rusted panel embedded in the wall and pulled a lever. The metal groaned and slid aside, revealing a dormant holomap projector. It sputtered to life with a flicker of light and projected a translucent map of London into the air before them. The map trembled as it stabilized, layers unfolding, shattered districts, surveillance corridors, Crown-owned towers, rebel havens, and dark zones unclaimed by either.
“This is what we know,” Talia said. “Though what we know is far from whole.”
Vesper stepped closer, her eyes fixed on the map as if reading its wounds. Her hand drifted to her belt. The tracker was still there, but it felt cold now, its pulse faint, erratic. When she touched it, the soft blue glow sparked like a dying ember, flickering under the weight of the city’s Green Aether saturation.
“It is failing,” she whispered. Her tone was not one of loss, but reverence. “He was never meant to survive this place.”
Talia observed her quietly. “If you’re heading northeast, you’ll need to pass through the Mad Market. From there, depending on your path, the tunnels might lead you into the Lungs, or even the Orchard. And if you’re mad, or brave enough, you could try the descent beneath the Shard from the eastern ridge. There’s an old mag-rail tunnel there, sealed decades ago. Most think it collapsed. But some of us know it still breathes.”
She paused, then continued, her voice lower. “The Lungs… that’s a biotech zone now. Crown-sealed. It was once a medical research node, sprawling corridors lined with filtration engines, spore containment cells, and cryo-bays. Back then, it was meant to purify air and study airborne pathogens, a place where the city could still breathe. But something went wrong. The systems decayed, the walls cracked, and nature, or something like it, crept in. Rumors say the walls still pulse, that something from the old experiments never stopped growing. Some say a heartbeat echoes through the tunnels, and those who follow it vanish. Others whisper that the researchers left something behind, something alive, something that watches. Whatever it is, the Crown sealed the zone and never went back.
Talia’s voice dropped. “Some say the air is alive. That the filtration nanites evolved. That they whisper through the vents. You breathe them in, and they breathe you back. We’ve lost people in there. Not to ambushes. Just… lost. But if you know the way, it’s one of the few routes left the Grid can’t see.”
She met Vesper’s eyes. “It’s dangerous. But for ghosts like us, it can be sanctuary too.””
Talia pointed farther across the map. “The Orchard… or as most call it now, the Iron Orchard. That one’s stranger. It used to be an experimental greenhouse, part biotech, part machine, meant to sustain the inner districts during the great famines. But that was before the fall. Before the Crown turned it into a data farm, laced with subterranean servers and automated harvest units.
Then something changed. The tech was abandoned. The Crown pulled out almost a decade ago, citing system instability and containment issues. But no one ever shut the place down. And it never went dark.
Talia’s voice hardened. “It draws power from somewhere. Still hums, still feeds something down there. We’ve sent scavengers into the Orchard. Some returned, shaken, bloodied, missing time. Others… didn’t.”
She traced her finger across the map’s eastern fringe. “They say the machines kept growing. Not just farming the soil, but replicating themselves. Rooted into the walls, the servers, maybe even the old irrigation lines. A graveyard of steel and bone, where every vent might be watching you. The locals say it learned from us, then turned inward.”
Talia looked back at Vesper. “We don’t go near it unless we have to. But if you’re looking for ghosts, that’s where they gather.””
She looked back at Vesper. “Neither place is safe. But both are outside the Crown’s gaze. For now.”
Vesper lifted her gaze. “The Shard?”
“A needle of steel and memory. What’s left of a tower from before the fall. The Crown buried its foundations, sealing the lower levels beneath dozens of security layers and AI-regulated barriers. But something still breathes there. Old tech, some say. A forgotten vault of pre-Crown knowledge, possibly even remnants of early Aether research. Strange signals sometimes flicker from its depths, just enough to catch the Grid’s attention before vanishing again. No one’s mapped it in decades, and those who tried never returned the same, if they returned at all.”
Vesper studied the route a moment longer, her expression turning thoughtful. Then she said, almost absently, “In the storm of memories I touched, I saw a man. Not just a scientist, an architect. One who laid the bones of Green Aether before the King ever claimed it. I need to find him.”
Talia’s brow furrowed, the tension in her shoulders betraying a flicker of unease. “Why?”
“Because something in me believes I can undo what he began. That I must,” Vesper said. Her voice was calm, but inside her chest, something ancient stirred. “I do not know if that belief is mine or… given to me. But it burns like truth. It feels carved into my bones.”
She paused, glancing again at the map. “He was more than a builder. I saw him, surrounded by diagrams, conduits, pulsing strands of energy too complex to have come from this world. He was creating something, not just engineering it. Something that would outlive him.”
Talia folded her arms. “And now you think that something is inside you.”
Vesper looked up sharply. “I don’t think. I know.”
The silence between them thickened, like mist rising in a crypt. Then Vesper’s eyes fluttered, her gaze distant. Her head tilted, not toward anything visible, but toward something intangible.
It was not sound. It was pressure. A psychic weight, brushing the back of her mind, like cold fingertips grazing the inside of her skull.
“The Grid,” she whispered. “It is reaching. It feels for me. Even here.”
Silas, standing a pace away, frowned. “That’s not possible. We’re below the signal lines. Too deep.”
But Vesper didn’t look at him. Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling, unblinking. Her breath slowed, like a predator listening for the movements of another. Then she spoke, almost to herself.
“It is not speaking. It is breathing. And I am the air it chokes on.”
Her voice sent a ripple through the room, quiet as it was. A prophecy, or a warning. Perhaps both.
Talia stepped back, her voice low. “Then we need to move quickly.”
Vesper nodded once, slowly, then turned to the table and began to unfasten the tracker from her belt. She laid it down beside her Spark Winder, both pieces gleaming faintly under the flickering light.
“These no longer belong to this journey,” she said, her voice barely more than a breath. “One is fading. The other belongs to another version of me. Guard them as you would your own.”
Talia’s brow lifted. “You sure?”
“Quite. I walk a new path now. One I must take alone.”
“It is failing,” she murmured, more to herself than the others. “He served me faithfully. But this world has no place for old things.”
Talia watched her, then gestured toward the northeast quarter of the projection. “If you’re heading that direction, you’ll pass the Mad Market. From there, you could reach the Lungs, what’s left of them, or the Orchard and even the Shard.”
Vesper gave a nod. “Then I shall begin with the Mad Market.”
She straightened, then blinked. Something whispered behind her eyes. Not words. Not even sound. A sensation, like pressure through water. The Grid. She felt it. Even here, far beneath its reach. A thought trying to find her.
“It has begun searching,” she whispered. “It feels for me.”
Silas frowned. “How the hell can you know that?”
Vesper looked at him, her green eyes gleaming like cut emeralds in the low light. “Because I feel it breathing on the nape of my neck.”
Talia said nothing, only motioned for Silas to prepare a supply pack.
Vesper got food, a satchel of tools, and a worn, distressed leather trench coat to shroud her striking silhouett. Talia also handed her a compact pulse firearm, a sleek, matte-black weapon with copper inlays and a rotating core of stabilized energy. It hissed faintly when activated, and the charge coils along the barrel shimmered with blue-white pulses. “Not as elegant as your old spark trick,” Talia said, “but it’ll tear through Crown armor if you need it to.”
When she left, her boots echoed along the tunnel walls. Silas adjusted the strap on his shoulder, then glanced at Talia as if waiting for permission. She gave a subtle nod.
“Take the northern path,” she said. “Check the relay near vent shaft six.”
He hesitated, then nodded once and disappeared into the side corridor, his silhouette fading into steam and shadow.
Talia remained behind, staring after Vesper.
Silence.
Then, Talia’s eyes glazed ever so slightly. Her hand moved unconsciously, retrieving a small device from beneath her coat. It flickered once as she typed:
She is on her way. Mad Market.
Seconds passed. A reply:
Good.
Talia blinked. The device vanished into her cloak. Her breath caught for the briefest instant. A wrongness settled on her shoulders, like dust that wouldn’t brush away. But she did not know why.
The Mad Market stank of oil and roasted fungus. The scent curled through the air like a warning, thick with grease, ozone, and overripe algae. Neon lights sputtered above heaps of scavenged tech, blinking out of sync as if remembering better days. Stalls pressed against one another in a chaotic labyrinth, each overflowing with strange and illicit wares: flickering memory drives encased in cracked glass, reprogrammed Crown surveillance drones with faces scratched off, synthetic spices from forgotten colonies, jewelry woven from copper veins and neural filaments.
There were crates of expired ration bars stacked beside cages of mutated poultry, their feathers a sickly sheen of green. One merchant offered eye implants of questionable origin, displayed on a velvet cloth like rare gems. Another hawked live beetles infused with bioluminescent dye, swearing they could purify water. A group of ragged children haggled over a rusted VR rig while, nearby, an elderly woman smoked a pipe made of bone and offered fortunes for a handful of data shards.
Languages clashed in the air, some human, others barely so. Above them, the old dome ceiling flickered with a broken projection of a blue sky that hadn’t existed in centuries. Somewhere in the distance, a street preacher in armor made from melted cutlery screamed about the purity of rust and the corruption of synthetic breath.
Vesper moved through it like a blade through smoke. Her cloak swirled behind her, and still heads turned. No one wore poise like she did. No one walked with such serene ferocity.
She had no destination. She followed instinct, the rhythm of the crowd, the thrum beneath her skin.
A hand clamped on her shoulder.
She spun, reflex blazing in her limbs, the movement swift, almost feline. Her elbow clipped the edge of a cluttered merchant’s stall, sending a cascade of rusted data-chips and cracked memory cores clattering across the table. Screens embedded in the tech sparked violently, lighting up not with the usual Crown-issue green, but blue. Cold, flickering, unmistakably blue.
The glow spilled outward like ink in water, spreading across nearby devices. Consoles that hadn’t powered on in years blinked to life, pulsing with that same spectral hue.
The merchant gaped. “What the hell did you do?!” he barked, voice shrill with a mix of awe and alarm.
Heads turned. Three stalls down, someone froze mid-sale. Across the lane, a pair of smugglers looked up, scenting something strange in the air. The blue light had drawn eyes. Too many.
Before she could speak, she looked to the one who had touched her.
“Silas,” she breathed.
He was already pulling her back from the stall, his voice low but urgent. “Time to move.”
The merchant shouted again, louder now. “HEY! HEY! SHE DID SOMETHING TO MY GEAR!”
People turned. Curiosity shifted to suspicion. One of the old drones mounted on a post above them beeped as if deciding whether to ping the Grid.
Silas grabbed her hand and pulled. “Blend. Quickly.”
They vanished into the surge of bodies, slipping through the chaos of the market, ducking under signs and brushing past vendors too busy to care. Vesper kept her head down, the hood of her coat catching neon reflections, her breath steady despite the hammer of her pulse.
Behind them, the glow faded, but the memory of it remained.
The merchant was still shouting, gesturing wildly. But already the crowd had swallowed them whole.
When they finally ducked into a shadowed alcove between two vending machines leaking steam, Vesper turned to him, breathless but smiling.
“That went poorly,” she said.
He laughed, the sound short but genuine. “You think?”
For a moment, they simply stood there, hidden. Close. Breathing.
They did not see the figure peel from the shadows behind them, eyes gleaming, silent, and watching. A glint of faint light caught the skin at the base of its neck, where ink curled like a secret: a skull crowned in jagged lines, half-hidden beneath the collar of a torn cloak. The mark of something old. And dangerous.
Silas leaned close, his voice a whisper between breath and instinct. “Where to now? What does your gut tell you?”
Vesper didn’t answer immediately. Her eyes scanned the movement beyond the crowd, as if listening to something only she could hear. Her voice, when it came, was low and unwavering. “Three paths. None of them kind.”
She took a steady breath. Three paths, each darker than the last.
The Lungs, Crown-sealed, biotech-infested. Once a research sanctuary, now a tomb that breathes. Something still stirs in that place, pulsing behind its walls. Vesper had seen what Crown experiments looked like before they were erased. The idea of one that survived chilled her blood. But if she needed invisibility, it offered the deepest shadows.
Then there was the Iron Orchard. Still alive, somehow. Still feeding off the city’s bones. A place of machines that learned without permission, that grew when they should have died. It remembered things. Maybe it remembered him. The architect who built the Green Aether. The man she had seen in the false memories. If anything remained of his legacy, it would be there, buried and watching.
And the Shard. The old spire with its sealed tunnels and forgotten code. It called to her like a bell through fog. Not with answers, but with the shape of answers. The kind that changed the question itself. If the city had a wound, it was there.
None of them safe.
But each of them necessary.
She turned back to Silas, the flicker of a smile in her voice. “So, what does my instinct say?”
A pause.
“It says we start walking. And let the city choose which truth it shows us first.”
