The previous chapter: Kaelen's emotions exploded in the archive room, leading him to accuse Aira of being nothing more than a "thief's vessel" for Mira's memories. Wounded by the accusation, Aira left the group. At the same time, the security alarm at Sector Three Facility sounded—Soma Corp had officially locked down the entire city.
Aethelgard was no longer merely cold; tonight, the city stopped breathing.
Within minutes of the emergency sirens screaming, every gigantic neon advertisement dominating the skyline of the megacity Aethelgard went dark at once. The faces selling bio-cosmetics, offers for lung credit, and Vektor Vane's sweet smile vanished.
In their place, thousands of OLED screens shifted to a blazing red, displaying two pairs of coldly glowing eyes: a blurry photograph of Kaelen Vance and Aira-9's biometric imprint.
*“LEVEL-ONE EMERGENCY ORDER,”* the synthetic voice from the city's loudspeakers echoed, bouncing between concrete walls and underground tunnels. *“TRANSPORTATION ACCESS SUSPENDED. AIR FILTERS FROM SECTOR THREE THROUGH SECTOR EIGHT REDUCED TO MINIMUM LEVELS. ALL CITIZENS ARE ADVISED TO REMAIN INSIDE THEIR RESIDENCES.”*
Beneath the streets, steel barricade gates were forcibly lowered. Access between sectors was severed. The smell of ozone and riot-control poison gas seeped from the ventilation grilles, making lower-class residents cough inside their slum corridors.
Soma Corp wasn't searching for fugitives—they were freezing all of Aethelgard until not a single pulse could move without permission.
Inside the isolation room of the underground Dead-Bytes clinic, a tense atmosphere enveloped the remaining members of the group.
Mara Quell slammed a network navigation map onto the table. Her hands trembled with anger. "The drainage corridor is completely sealed! Soma has planted military barricades at every sector border. We're trapped underground, and Aira's out there alone with no communications route!"
Kaelen stood silent in the corner of the room. His primary hand gripped the data wafer containing Mira's copy, which now felt unbearably heavy. His empty gaze rested on the cold concrete floor.
Regret was pain that came too late. The cruel words he'd thrown at Aira in the archive room kept looping through his head like a broken tape. *Vessel. Shell. Thief.*
"You have to find her, Kaelen," Ivo Renn said softly from behind his treatment bed. Ivo's bullet-riddled thigh was tightly bandaged, but the old doctor's face was deathly pale.
Kaelen looked up, staring at Ivo with red-rimmed eyes heavy with exhaustion. "She doesn't want to be found, Ivo. I just made it clear to her that her existence was nothing but a wound to me."
"Then prove yourself wrong!" Mara snapped, pointing a finger at Kaelen's face. "That girl leaped over a hunter drone and took a bullet for you on top of a train! She rejected her own assassination protocol to save your ass! If that isn't a human being making a choice, then what is?"
Kaelen squeezed his eyes shut. Guilt crushed his chest until it was hard to breathe.
Someone slid open the sheet-metal door to the isolation room. Nix Calder entered hurriedly, wiping cold sweat from his neck. The digital lens in his left eye blinked rapidly in a wild red rhythm.
"I managed to hack into Soma's scanner frequency for thirty seconds," Nix said, his voice hoarse. "I've got two pieces of news. Bad and very bad."
"Start with the bad," Mara said coldly.
"Soma has deployed the Red Shield tactical unit into the Under-Grid," Nix replied. "They're not just sweeping the main streets. They're checking every medical sample in the back-alley clinics. They know Aira's injured, and they're tracking traces of her organic bodily fluids."
Nix stopped speaking, then looked at Ivo with an unreadable expression.
"And the very bad news?" Kaelen pressed.
Nix swallowed, shifting his gaze to the floor. "The Soma scanner signal that locked down Sector Three earlier... came from an old medical registration. The registration used to supply initial organic tissue samples to Soma's laboratories ten years ago."
Nix pointed toward Ivo. "That supplier authorization number... is registered under the name Dr. Ivo Renn."
The room instantly fell silent as a grave.
Kaelen froze. His eyes slowly shifted toward Ivo. "Ivo... what does this mean?"
Ivo didn't deny it. The old doctor lowered his gaze, tears slowly spilling from his wrinkled eyes and soaking his bloodstained medical apron.
"I didn't know... I swear to God, Kaelen, I didn't know the samples belonged to Mira," Ivo sobbed, his voice choked by searing regret. "Ten years ago... my son was struck by chronic lung disease from Aethelgard's pollution. The Soma clinic refused to treat him unless I paid an unaffordable deposit."
Ivo clenched his trembling hands atop the bedsheet.
"A Soma intermediary came to me," Ivo continued, gasping for breath. "He promised to provide my son's medicine if I helped transfer several nerve-tissue and blood samples from comatose patients at a civilian hospital... I forged the shipping documents, Kaelen. I was the one who signed the tissue-transfer authorization... without knowing that one of the children on that list was Mira."
Kaelen stepped toward Ivo's bed. His footsteps were heavy, striking the floor with a hard clatter. His primary hand seized Ivo by the collar and clenched tight.
"You..." Kaelen whispered, his voice shaking violently with rage and despair. "You opened the door for them to take my daughter?"
"My son died two years later anyway, Kaelen!" Ivo screamed, staring at Kaelen with irreparably shattered grief. "Soma gave me fake medicine! I paid for another person's child's life with a lie! And ever since that day, I've been hiding in the lower city... trying to atone for my sin by treating poor people for free!"
Ivo clutched the hand gripping his shirt. "Kill me if that'll bring Mira back, Kaelen... kill me. But don't let Aira fall into their hands!"
Kaelen stared at the old doctor's utterly broken face before him. Anger burned in his chest, yet in the cold silence of Aethelgard, Kaelen realized one horrifying fact: in this city, everyone was both victim and perpetrator, forced to bargain with a devil named Soma Corp.
Ivo had committed a great sin to save his son. Kaelen had falsified his own records out of fear. Nix had sold information to survive. And Aira... Aira bore the full consequences of all their sins.
Kaelen slowly released his grip on Ivo's collar.
"I'm not going to kill you, Ivo," Kaelen said, his voice turning icy but clear. "Because your death won't solve anything."
Kaelen turned to face Mara and Nix.
"How long before the Red Shield forces reach this sector?" Kaelen asked.
"Fifteen minutes at most," Nix replied. "The city is locked down, but Aira... Aira is moving toward the outer sector. Her organic pulse signal is weakening. If she passes out in the street, Soma's scanners will find her within seconds."
Kaelen drew his Kinetic-7 pistol and checked how much ammunition remained in the magazine. Then he tightly strapped his dead left arm against his chest with a leather belt so it wouldn't interfere with his movements.
"Mara," Kaelen said, looking at the leader of Dead-Bytes. "Use every secret communications route you have. Spread a message to every corner of the lower city."
"What message?" Mara asked.
Kaelen stared at the exit leading into the darkness of the locked-down city.
"Tell Aira... her Investigator is coming. And this time, I'm not looking for my daughter's memories—I'm looking for my friend."