"Hey. Wake up."
Kiara's voice echoed somewhere distant.
Morning sunlight bled into an orange sky.
Heavy clouds filtered the light like frosted glass.
"Thought you were going to sleep forever."
She let out a low laugh.
Still drowsy, I rubbed my eyes.
The outside world snapped me fully awake.
We were flying over a highway linking southeastern Brasil.
Nanobarriers surrounded São Paulo's borders, preventing the corrosive air from the outskirts from entering.
The Aether Network—the governing militia of Brasil—and the country's three main sponsors:
Sessota, UNITED, and Kokusai—
invested little in smaller cities.
Only capitals mattered.
Other routes across Greater São Paulo were rarely considered pathways.
Destroyed buildings.
Broken scaffolding.
Glass hanging from aging walls.
The dense air carried yellowish particles.
Chemical grains, coarse like sand.
The ground stained with filth.
Mountains of garbage twisted into grotesque sculptures.
Among the debris, enormous rats and surveillance nanodrones fought for space.
The armed groups were worse.
Gas masks.
Painted bodies.
War tattoos.
One group surrounded two men kneeling before a sludge-stained wall.
I swallowed a scream.
Two women raised laser rifles.
The barrels glowed.
Twin beams cut the air.
The bodies fell—no time for sound.
The woman dressed in black lifted her eyes.
Locked onto us at her pace.
Then signaled another.
Their gazes remained on the car, alert, calculating.
"They'll stay in their lane."
Kiara's voice cut through the silence, as if reading my thoughts.
"This car carries a signal."
I swallowed.
"What signal?"
"They're mercenaries under Netheria.
This vehicle indicates 'keep distance.'"
Mercenaries?
My body trembled.
Reality shattered every assumption I had carried.
At one point, my eyes caught a pile of bodies.
Something cracked inside my chest.
I had seen much in my medical career.
Scenes that would fracture the strongest minds.
But this?
This was beyond hypothesis.
Beyond tolerable.
The rawness made me feel exposed.
"W-why is it like this?
What happened?"
"These are the No-Man's Lands.
Mercenaries live here.
Why is it like this?"
She smiled.
Cold.
I waited for more.
Silence stretched.
I pressed further.
"Are you a mercenary?"
Kiara's gaze hardened.
Her lips sealed.
Steel silence.
A vein pulsed at my temple.
Of course.
Another presence withholding answers.
I forced myself to look outward.
The yellow atmosphere faded.
Abandoned houses.
Scattered trees.
Takashi stared at the landscape.
A Una-generation android.
He stored global information—limited, expanding with each access.
Kiara, however, operated at a level beyond my knowledge.
"Takashi tried to trace you.
You appeared as a deactivated android.
Even deactivated units allow data access.
Why was he blocked?"
"Maia disconnected me from the Motherboard.
Restrictions dissolved.
I'm untraceable."
"Any nanospecialist can tell you're extraordinary."
Kiara frowned, shifting the topic.
"You're a doctor?
That could be useful."
Useful how?
We approached a city.
Low, wide buildings.
Rough architecture preserved from older eras.
People in worn clothes unloading boats.
The scent of saltwater seeped into the car.
To the right, brownish waves struck the shore.
The zephyr whispered across the surface.
The car trembled over irregular nanoelectromagnetic waves.
"Where are we?"
"Santos."
Kiara slowed.
"First time seeing the sea?"
"Yes. Only in pictures."
But photographs never captured this—
the vastness, the salt in the air, the endless rhythm of water moving with the world.
"Once we finish what we came for, I can take you to the coast.
It's a preserved area."
She shrugged.
I smiled as we flew.
Port of Santos.
Stacked houses.
Cargo ships and subaquatic vessels lined along the docks.
We stopped before an old blackened concrete house, cracked and weathered.
The smell of decay made me cough.
"Santos is where Maia lived during her childhood.
Right here."
Kiara looked at me.
"Ready?"
My heart pounded.
My lips parted slightly.
Perhaps it was Maia's name.
Perhaps the weight of history embedded in that fractured concrete.
Or perhaps—
the certainty that paths were finally opening.
The first step into her world.
And when I realized—
I was already inside.