Echoes in the Rain
The rain never stopped in Vasra-7.
It streamed down glass towers like tears from a
sky too tired to hold itself together. The buildings
here weren’t just tall — they were hungry, jutting
up into the smog, devouring space. The streets
below were a labyrinth of concrete arteries, slick
with water and neon reflections, where people
moved like ghosts under the watchful gaze of
surveillance drones.
Down on Level 38, beneath the main sky lanes, a
figure stood in a doorway. Her face was hidden
under a hood made of reflective mesh, masking
her from the ever-present retinal scanners. The
city’s rain drummed softly on her shoulders as she
tapped her finger against a worn data tablet, the
screen flickering with incoming messages.
WE HAVE HER LOCATION. BEACON ACTIVE.
The message made her stomach tighten. She had
been looking for Iri for six months — ever since
the system flagged her as “extracted.” No one
knew exactly what that meant, but the people
who were extracted rarely came back. When they
did, they were different. Their eyes were too still.
Their memories were rearranged like shuffled
cards, edges bent and faces smeared. They didn’t
recognize family, friends, or even themselves.
But Iri was out there, somewhere, and Lina wasn’t
leaving Vasra-7 without her.
The data tablet projected a soft blue arrow into
the air, a guiding line visible only to her. It wound
through the streets, between vending stalls that
offered cheap gene mods, past walls plastered
with propaganda screens flickering with slogans.
“Obedience is Harmony.”
“Upgrade Today, Become Tomorrow.”
“Forget the Past — Embrace the System.”
Lina moved quickly, her footsteps muffled by the
rain and the hum of industrial turbines recycling
air for the lower levels. The further she walked,
the fewer people she saw — just the occasional
shadow, hunched in a corner, whispering to itself
or staring up at the sky like it owed them
something.
The arrow led her into Sector Null, a part of the
city that didn’t officially exist. It was a failed
project, an unfinished vertical district that
developers abandoned when the funding ran out
and the AI that controlled construction glitched
beyond repair. Now it was a vertical graveyard —
half-finished walkways and skeletal towers, wires
hanging like veins.
The beacon signal was stronger now. Lina’s breath
fogged the air as she stepped through a broken
door into a dark corridor, the floor uneven under
her boots.
A faint hum filled the air.
She followed the sound until she saw a shape
sitting against the wall — a figure draped in a
hospital gown, hair clinging to her face, skin pale
in the dim light.
Iri.
Lina dropped to her knees, shaking her sister’s
shoulders. “Iri? It’s me, it’s Lina. Can you hear
me?”
Iri’s eyes fluttered open. For a second, they were
empty — just glass marbles reflecting light. Then
her expression flickered, as if some lost piece of
her memory was trying to resurface.
“Lina?” The word was barely a whisper.
Relief flooded Lina’s chest — until she saw the
small red light embedded just behind Iri’s ear. A
neural implant, blinking in time with a signal Lina
couldn’t hear.
Footsteps echoed down the hall. Lina’s heart
seized. They’d followed the beacon. Extraction
teams. The kind that didn’t bother asking
questions.
Lina pulled Iri to her feet, wrapping her sister’s
arm around her shoulder. “We’re leaving,” she
said firmly.
“Where?” Iri’s voice was thin, broken.
“Anywhere they can’t follow.”
The corridor filled with shadows — figures in
smooth black armor, faces hidden behind
featureless masks. They moved in eerie
synchronization, each step in perfect harmony.
The system’s puppets.
Lina’s hand went to the hilt of a blade strapped to
her back. It was old-fashioned tech — carbon
steel, no circuits, no digital trace. The system
couldn’t override a weapon that wasn’t
connected.
She stepped in front of Iri, the blade catching the
faint neon glow filtering through the cracks in the
walls.
“Come with us,” one of the figures said, voice
flattened into artificial neutrality.
“No.”
“You can’t win.”
Lina smiled, a small, feral thing. “I’m not here to
win. I’m here to take back what’s mine.”
The rain dripped from the ceiling, cold and
constant, as Lina took her first step forward.
The city was watching.
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