Chapter Eighteen: The Resistance Below
The man's name was Roen.
Former Strategist for the Outer Coalition. Rumor had it he once commanded an entire fleet, then vanished when the peace talks turned bloody. Now, he worked in shadows—trading secrets for silence, guiding ghosts like me who didn't fit in the world above.
He led me down a spiral stairwell beneath the market hub, into the gut of Idris Nine. Every step felt like descending into the past. The air grew colder, thicker with the smell of damp stone and fuel. The noise above dimmed until all I could hear was my breathing and the low hum of generators.
Roen walked like someone who expected an ambush at every turn. Maybe that's why I trusted him—he didn't pretend the world was safe.
At the bottom, a metal door slid open with a hiss. Inside was a dimly lit room lined with ancient consoles, wires snaking across the floor, and a single holographic map rotating slowly in the center. Dotted across it were red marks—Architect strongholds, surveillance satellites, black sites hidden in asteroid belts.
This was a war room. And someone had been planning for a long time.
A woman stood at the far end. Mid-thirties, sharp eyes, hair cropped close to the scalp. She turned the moment we stepped in.
"So," she said, eyeing me, "this is the ghost."
Roen nodded. "Kael Riven. The one who walked out of Red Echo."
Her gaze narrowed. "You're either very brave or very stupid."
"I've been both," I said.
She smirked. "Name's Tyra. I run this place."
She waved a hand, and the map zoomed into a quadrant labeled Sector Varnus Delta. I recognized the star pattern—somewhere between abandoned Architect labs and former Coalition ground.
"We've been tracking Architect data leaks for months," she said. "But nothing solid—until your cube showed up."
She gestured toward the encrypted data I'd handed Roen earlier. It now hovered in the air, decrypted and flickering with schematics, lab notes, and surveillance footage.
I saw myself in one of them—standing in Red Echo's mainframe hall, back turned, unaware I was being filmed.
"They recorded everything," I muttered.
Tyra nodded grimly. "They always do."
Another screen lit up beside it. Rows of files with codenames—Project Hollow Echo, Genesis Seed, Prototype 09-R. And in the middle of them: Project RIVEN.
I stared at it. My name, turned into an acronym. I didn't even ask what it stood for.
"Do you know what they wanted from you?" Tyra asked.
"I thought it was control. But now I think it was something worse."
"Originality," she said. "Free will. They can code obedience. But creativity? Emotion? You can't fake that."
She tapped a line of code and looked at me. "You weren't just an accident, Kael. You were a test."
A weight settled on my chest. I had always feared I was broken. Now I realized—I was meant to be broken. Built to unravel something inside their system. A seed of chaos.
"But why let me go?" I asked. "Why give me even a chance?"
Tyra's face darkened. "Because they don't fear chaos anymore. They expect it. And they think they can still control what comes after."
Roen spoke up. "Which is why we need you."
I turned. "To do what?"
"Lead the counter-code," Tyra said. "They've built a fortress of logic. We're going to infect it with the one thing they can't predict."
"Emotion."
"Exactly."
The plan was insane. Suicidal, even. But as she laid it out—system infiltration via a neuro-linked virus keyed to my emotional profile, targeting Architect logic trees from within—it made a dangerous kind of sense.
I would have to go back.
Not just to the network.
But into the mind of the thing that created me.
Mira and Elin met us back at the ship. They'd been gathering parts and laying low.
When I told them the plan, Mira paced for five minutes before finally sitting down.
"I should say no," she muttered. "I should definitely say no."
"But you won't," Elin said, quiet but firm.
"No," Mira said. "Because the minute we let them keep writing the story, we lose the right to be in it."
That night, sleep came in fragments. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw red corridors, cold floors, and the version of myself I left behind.
The one who still whispered the code.
But now… I had a voice too.
And maybe, just maybe, it was finally loud enough to be heard.