That was the first thing Ari felt.
Not the peaceful kind — but a heavy, digital void where even time seemed frozen.
Then sound returned.
A low-frequency hum… like a distant engine.
Her vision flickered back online.
Red system warnings flashed inside her cyber-optic eye.
Neural Link: Rebooting…
Memory Sync: 78%
External Access Detected.
Ari sucked in a sharp breath and pushed herself up from the wet concrete.
She was still in the alley.
Rain still fell.
The hologram above her had changed — now advertising synthetic lungs.
So only a few seconds had passed.
But something inside her was different.
She could feel it.
Someone had been inside her system.
Not hacking.
Not attacking.
Watching.
She opened her internal console.
No trace.
Clean.
Too clean.
"Damn it…" she whispered.
The name still burned in her mind.
Subject 07 — Leo.
She had no idea who he was.
But she knew one thing — if a system powerful enough to speak inside her neural link existed…
It was connected to something very, very dangerous.
---
Ari moved.
Fast.
She left the open streets and slipped into the Underground — a maze of tunnels, old subway lines, and forgotten infrastructure beneath MegaCity-9.
This was where illegal servers lived.
Where data went to hide.
She reached a door marked with a faded symbol: a broken circle.
Inside, the air was warm and smelled of ozone.
Screens covered the walls.
Cables hung from the ceiling like metal vines.
At the center sat a man with half his head shaved and glowing tattoos crawling across his scalp.
He looked up.
"Didn't expect you tonight, Ari."
"Didn't expect to almost get hijacked either," she replied. "Run a deep scan on my neural feed."
The man frowned.
"That's not something you ask casually."
"Do it."
He connected her to his system.
Lines of code raced across the screens.
His expression slowly changed.
"Someone accessed you," he said.
"I know."
"No," he corrected. "Not accessed. Entered. And left without a trace."
Ari's jaw tightened.
"Who can do that?"
The man hesitated.
Then answered quietly.
"Only two things. Military-level AIs… or experimental humans."
Ari's pulse spiked.
"Humans?"
He nodded.
"Modified ones. The kind corporations don't admit exist."
Her mind flashed back to the name.
Subject 07.
Leo.
---
She left the Underground with a location.
A weak signal trace.
It wasn't precise.
Just a shadow.
A digital footprint leading toward Sector 19 — the lower districts.
The slums.
Where the city dumped its forgotten people.
---
Sector 19 felt different.
The neon lights flickered instead of glowing.
The rain wasn't clean here.
It smelled of oil and rust.
People watched her from doorways, their eyes reflecting in shades of artificial color.
Ari walked deeper.
Her system beeped softly.
Signal detected.
Ahead.
She followed it into a narrow street.
And then she saw him.
A young man sat beneath a broken hologram billboard.
The ad above him glitched endlessly — a smiling family eating synthetic food, flickering between frames.
The boy looked… wrong.
Not broken.
Not damaged.
Just slightly out of sync with the world around him.
Thin glowing lines ran under his skin like soft blue lightning.
His eyes lifted.
He looked directly at her.
Before she said a word, he spoke.
"You shouldn't have followed me."
His voice was calm.
Not threatening.
Not afraid.
Just tired.
Ari stopped.
Rain slid down her face.
"Are you Subject 07?"
He flinched.
Just a little.
Then nodded.
"My name is Leo," he said.
"And if they find me again…"
He looked up at the glowing sky.
"…I won't be me anymore."
End of Chapter 2