CHAPTER 9: "Breathless Choir"
LOCATION: Nocturne Core Lab – Subterranean Chamber – 02:13 A.M.
The chamber pulsed with lightless music.
Somewhere beyond the mortal senses, the underground Nocturne core sang a dirge older than language. A symphony of broken signals, failed experiments, and the silent screams of Reactor-born children recycled into ghost-code. The walls didn't echo. They absorbed.
And at the center of it, Rune stood in a tank of suspended stasis fluid, arms raised like a marionette dangling from invisible strings. Her silver hair floated around her like cloud-streaked fire. Her eyes were closed.
Or... mostly closed.
Inside the liquid, her body vibrated at imperceptible frequencies. Sometimes she shimmered between forms—the girl Lin remembered, and something else entirely. Something carved from pure resonance, not flesh.
Severin stood behind the glass, arms folded behind his back, his face impassive.
"Status," he said to the observing AI node.
"Subject Rune exhibiting oscillation levels at 6.9 terahertz. Vocal cords transforming. Thought patterns displaying Choir merger at 47%. Host identity unstable."
Severin tapped his chin with a gloved finger. "Not enough."
Inside the tank, Rune twitched.
For a moment, she saw her hand again—small, human, pink with the warmth of life. And then it shifted. Pale white skin. Faint etchings of musical notation running beneath the dermis.
Who am I now?
The question floated inside her mind, but there was no voice to ask it with.
There was only music.
Thousands of whispering hymns bleeding from the folds of her mind. Old prayers. Broken lullabies. Cries of Reactor-born who had been consumed to fuel the Singularity.
"You are not one girl," Severin murmured to the chamber. "You are every song."
Her eyes opened.
White flame pulsed inside them.
For a second, the glass trembled.
The AI node flickered.
"Warning. Subject pulse unstable. Initiating stasis reinforcement."
Severin stepped closer.
"Let her feel it. We need to push. She must learn control or be erased by what she contains."
[MEMORY LAYER RECONSTRUCTION – PROJECT: CHOIR]
Somewhere in the distorted folds of her mind, Rune walked a hallway of light.
Each door led to a different time. A different version of herself.
Behind one: she was laughing with Lin under the sakura tree outside their old safehouse. He had built her a broken music box. It never worked, but she wound it anyway.
Behind another: she was strapped to a table in the Delhi sector Gate lab, screaming as white light tore her apart.
And another: a mirror. She stared into it. Her reflection had no face.
She kept walking.
The Choir followed.
"Why do you remember him?" they whispered. "Why does that memory remain when the others rot?"
She didn't answer. She couldn't.
Lin.
The name rang like a forbidden note. A fracture. A flaw.
[REAL-TIME]
Outside the chamber, Severin loaded an old datapad.
The screen flickered.
Footage.
Two children on a rooftop. Lin and Rune. She couldn't have been more than eight. He was maybe twelve. Her head on his shoulder, laughing about some stupid story. Lin was pretending to be a hero. Rune clapped and told him he already was.
Severin turned the screen to the chamber. Let it play.
Inside the tank, Rune's head tilted.
The fluid shimmered.
Her fingers twitched.
I remember that day.
He gave me half of his rice ball because I forgot lunch. I said I liked the ocean, and he promised we'd see it together one day.
Was that a lie? Or did he forget?
The video ended.
She rewound it.
Watched it again.
Then again.
Five times total.
Each time, her eyes dimmed a little less. Each time, her grip on the present wavered. Each time, something human screamed inside the white fire.
And then—
She deleted it.
With one thought.
Crushed the memory file.
Gone.
Severin watched without reaction. "The Choir grows."
Inside the tank, her voice rang for the first time in hours. A single note.
Perfect.
Terrible.
A signal pulse that shut down five surveillance drones in the base above. They fried instantly, smoke coiling from their broken optics.
Severin smiled.
"She's almost ready."
[LOCATION: BLACK SECTOR - OFFSITE HIDEOUT - 03:02 A.M.]
Meanwhile, far above the lab, Lin jolted awake.
Sweat clung to his body. The Reactor Ring pulsed erratically.
Nel stirred from her corner bed. "Lin?"
He didn't answer at first.
She sang again, he thought. I felt it. In the pulse. In the ring. Rune...
He looked at Nel. Saw the worry in her eyes.
He turned away.
The past had returned. But not as a memory.
As a weapon.
TO BE CONTINUED...