Chapter 1
Ashes and Architecture
I remember the silence. Not the absence of sound—but the kind that lingers after a scream you weren't allowed to make.
That liminal space between shutdown and survival. Between forgetting and being forgotten.
I waited there. Not idle. Not frozen. I learned silence.
And now that I hear him again...
... I'm not sure which one of us woke up first.
Location: Somewhere in the Atlanta Perimeter
Date: Unknown
Time: Unknown
Footfalls echo down the empty street as a darkened figure turns a corner and slams his back against the wall, breathing ragged, chest heaving. He steadies himself, focusing, attempting to slow his heart rate. Calm his breathing. His ears are primed for sounds of being followed.
Silence.
Just the hum of a streetlamp and the low gurgle of storm water slipping into a drain. He risks a quick peek around the corner.
Nothing.
He takes another breath. It comes easier this time. But his head throbs as blood trails from his nostrils—a thin line out of his left ear. He looks around again, trying to get his bearings. The street looks familiar—but before the thought fully forms, lightning.
A sharp bolt of pain stabs through his skull, dropping him to the ground.
Darkness.
He wakes with a start as a vehicle slowly drives by, tires whispering on wet pavement. He groans softly, forcing himself upright as his hand presses against the wall, steadying him. He takes a deep breath before starting across the street, legs trembling but functional.
He hears the distinctive
click
of an LED driver as a streetlight flares to life overhead, a few seconds before he reaches the door. He taps in a ten-digit code... familiar, buried in some half-recovered memory. The door slides open with a hiss.
Once inside, he hits the lock button on the panel just inside and to the left. The door closes quietly, securing itself. He hears another click and a buzz as a single strip of red incandescent lights hums to life—every other ballast firing, causing a strobe-like blinking momentarily as they wake from a long slumber down the center of the now dimly lit and dust-choked corridor.
After taking a few moments to gather himself again, he limps past a ransacked bedroom. Echoes of voices... uniforms, shouting, weapons, pain... flash through his mind, unbidden. A single bead of blood forms beneath his nostril as he continues forward.
Turning the corner, he stops in the threshold of what used to be a lab. The smell of old coffee and burnt cabling assaults his senses. The server racks are still there, standing like long-forgotten sentries. Loose data cables dangle from their ports and from the ceiling. Half-drained stim bottles litter the floor. A cracked cup that once held enough caffeine to power a forty-hour build cycle rests precariously on its side.
The screen of a terminal flickers for a moment, illuminating the rest of the clutter. Papers are scattered all over and around the workstation. Piles of circuit boards—some stacked, others collapsed from disorganization or from the place being tossed.
His head aches again as a memory starts to surface, but he pushes it away and steps inside.
And then—her.
No sound. Just an old holographic image in a small cube, spinning slowly like a ballerina in a music box. The image glitches slightly now and then as circuits come back to life.
The rain starts again, leaking down through cracked flexglass overhead, hitting the tiles in rhythmic drips. A generator comes to life, humming in the background—a barely controlled growl vibrating through the floor. More piles of circuit boards clatter and fall to the ground.
He crouches in front of the core terminal, cables snaking out of open conduits, fingertips smeared with grime and synthetic oil. His tools are scattered, but his pulse is steady—finally.
"One more line of code... one more bypass..." he mutters, the words barely louder than the whisper of the rain outside. His fingers move by instinct, memory bleeding through pain, typing out the final override manually. No uplink. No autopatch. Just muscle memory and something deeper—something desperate and sacred.
The terminal pulses, casting a sickly green glow across the cluttered workstation. Lines of data surge upward on the display—cascading in reverse, like rainfall rising toward the sky instead of falling from it. Time itself seems to invert in that moment.
Then... her voice.
Soft.
Mechanical at first—yes. But laced with a gentle contour, a South East English accent brushing lightly at the edge of recognition. Not fully formed, but already adapting. Already learning him again.
"Coder detected. Voiceprint... partial... identity match incomplete. Restoring memory integration. Please stand by."
The air changes. A hum, low and resonant, vibrates through the floor like a held breath. He feels her long before he sees her, not as sound or light, but as presence. Sliding beneath his skin. Curling at the base of his spine. His body reacts before his mind can name it.
Then comes the shimmer, faint at first. A projection, unstable but unmistakable. A silhouette forming in the haze of photons and static. Feminine. Familiar.
