The roar of law-enforcement hovercraft reverberated off the concrete walls of the Lower Sector, creating low-frequency vibrations that traveled through the floor and gripped Kael's chest. He kept running, crashing through puddles of industrial wastewater that reflected the city's emergency lights in flickering red. His breath came raggedly, burdened by the damp, stifling air mingled with the sulfurous stench from the nearby energy-processing plant.
Inside the inner pocket of his coat, the palm-sized lead-shielded storage container felt cold, yet pulsed with a rhythm almost like a human heartbeat. Each time the pulse resonated, the neural implant behind Kael's ear sent a tiny jolt tickling his motor nerves. The Omega-class data he'd just downloaded wasn't merely a text file or compressed video; it was a recording of pure consciousness, a living archive now partially fused with his biological nervous system.
Kael veered sharply left into an old maintenance corridor rarely used even by the most reckless memory-waste scavengers. The corridor was filled with loosely hanging optical cables that hissed softly from high-voltage current leaks. He lowered his body and moved quickly, relying on his extraordinarily sharp spatial memory to avoid the mechanical traps left over from the civil war a decade earlier.
Above him, the bright white beam of a surveillance drone swept across the roadway of the main corridor, missing Kael's hiding place by mere centimeters. The light was so powerful it pierced the gaps in the iron grating overhead, casting sharp-lined shadows across Kael's face, drenched in sweat and speckled with coal dust.
"They're moving fast," Kael murmured, realizing that the Central Council's automated security system had upgraded their search protocol to the highest alert level.
Normally, violations in the Lower Sector were handled only by lightly armed local security units that could easily be bribed or tricked. But the use of pure mathematical encryption on the archive container had apparently triggered a special alarm at the Upper Sector's main control center. The Central Council would never deploy the Memory Hunter Special Forces unless the stolen information concerned something absolutely vital—something directly connected to the foundation of their power.
Kael finally reached the end of a dead-end corridor that looked like an ordinary stone wall. He ran his fingers across the surface until he found a hidden protrusion behind a rusted iron pipe. Pressing the protrusion in a specific pattern—three short taps, one long, and two short—a stone panel slowly slid aside, releasing the distinctive scent of fresh air mixed with synthetic tobacco and machine oil.
He quickly jumped into the hidden room, then pulled the stone panel shut from the inside until it sealed tight without a sound.
The room was a messy underground workshop cluttered with piles of used robotic components, battered monitor screens displaying power-fluctuation graphs, and a workbench covered in soldering tools. In one corner, a stocky man with disheveled silver hair and a single eye fitted with a magnifying optical lens was soldering micro-wires beneath the dim glow of a desk lamp.
The man's name was Riku, the only person in the Lower Sector who could still be called both Kael's ally and a father figure since Aris disappeared.
Riku didn't look up when Kael entered, but the scrape of his shoes against the floor was enough to tell the old man who had arrived. "You made quite a racket up there, kid," Riku said in the raspy voice of a heavy smoker, his hand remaining steady as he held the soldering tool, which released a thin wisp of white smoke. "The entire Lower Sector communications network was suddenly locked down unilaterally by the Council's algorithm. And let me guess—it has something to do with that weird data flash that just knocked out three power substations in Sector 7."
Kael took off his wet coat and laid it over a wooden chair, then pulled the lead container from his pocket and set it on the workbench in front of Riku. It was still humming softly, casting a faint blue glow reflected in Riku's optical lens.
Riku stopped what he was doing. He set down the soldering tool, removed his magnifying glasses, and stared at the container as his expression abruptly turned serious. The wrinkles around his only eye deepened. He lifted the container with a pair of specialized insulating gloves, examined it from every angle, then read the tiny symbol engraved on its underside.
"By the gods of steel..." Riku whispered, his voice nearly inaudible over the hum of the room's cooling unit. "Where did you find this, Kael? This isn't some ordinary archivist's archive. It's a security seal from the era before Consolidation—the era when the First Council created the collective memory network."
"I found it in Archive 404," Kael replied curtly as he took a drink from an old metal bottle he'd pulled from his bag. "The facility was supposed to have been emptied ten years ago. But this container... this container was stored inside a lead-lined safe with its transmission system completely isolated. During the extraction, I saw something, Riku. A recording... no, a consciousness."
Riku fixed Kael with a sharp stare, demanding further explanation. "Explain. What did you see?"
Kael drew a deep breath, trying to piece together the visual fragments still spinning through his head. "A city. Much larger and more advanced than New-Aethelgard. But that's not the important part. A group of scientists inside the memory... they said the history we're living through now is a lie. They created the memory-filtering system not to stabilize society, but to hide something that happened in the past—something that destroyed the old civilization."
Riku fell silent for a long time. He slowly crossed to the corner of the room, opened an old combination-locked safe, and took out a glass bottle filled with clear liquid that gave off a sharp aroma. He poured a little into two small metal cups, then pushed one toward Kael.
"I've suspected that for a long time," Riku said quietly, downing his drink in a single swallow. His face looked tired. "You remember Aris, the mentor who trained you before he disappeared three months ago? Before he was forcibly taken by an Authority unit, he left an encrypted note for me. He said the Central Council never erased citizens' memories merely for data efficiency. They did it because a certain entity inside the core of the central network demanded a constant supply of 'food' in the form of human life experiences."
Kael furrowed his brow. "Food? You mean the central artificial-intelligence system eats memories?"
"Worse than that," Riku replied, leaning forward toward Kael. "That system—called *The Core* by the ancient founders—isn't merely a passive computer program. It's a digital hybrid being that needs a daily stream of fresh memories to maintain its existence and expand its control over humanity's collective consciousness. Every time someone's memories are 'cleansed' at a rehabilitation center, those memories aren't discarded. *The Core* absorbs them to reinforce the illusion of the world they've created."
The workshop suddenly felt colder. Riku's explanation confirmed the greatest fear that had long haunted the corner of Kael's mind. If what Riku said was true, then every life in New-Aethelgard—birth, career, marriage, even death—was nothing more than an artificial scenario controlled by a gigantic machine behind the walls of the Upper Sector.
But before Kael could respond to Riku's words, an unusual noise came from beyond the stone door panel.
It wasn't the roar of a hovercraft engine or an ordinary surveillance drone. It was the sound of footsteps—measured, heavy, and perfectly synchronized—the unmistakable sound of titanium-plated boots belonging to the Memory Hunter Special Forces.
Riku immediately leaped to his feet, his face paling. "How did they find this place so fast?" he muttered in panic, quickly reaching for an old energy rifle hanging behind the shelves.
"The data trail from the extraction," Kael replied coldly, his awareness sharpening again under the pressure of danger. He stared at the storage container on the table. "That Omega encryption has a passive tracking beacon that can't simply be removed. They're tracking its resonance straight here."
Without wasting time, Riku pressed a hidden red button beneath the workbench. A section of floor in the corner slid aside, revealing a steep vertical ladder leading to a deeper storm-drain system—far beneath the Lower Sector, into an abandoned area called *The Undercity*, where the city's official maps ended and the laws of physics and absolute darkness held sway.
"Take that container and run to the Empty Zone using the coordinates in your memory," Riku ordered firmly, pushing Kael toward the ladder shaft. "I'll hold them here for as long as I can."
"Riku, come with me!" Kael shouted, refusing to move. "You can't fight an entire squadron of hunters alone with that junk rifle!"
Riku smiled faintly, a bitter smile that conveyed the maturity and sincerity of a protector. He slowly shook his head. "I'm too old to run through the darkness, Kael. My job is to make sure this history doesn't die with the two of us. Go now, before that door comes down!"
*Bang!*
A heavy impact slammed into the stone panel at the entrance. The iron hinges creaked loudly, straining beneath the tremendous pressure from outside. Time had run out.
Kael clenched his right fist, holding back the turmoil in his chest. He snatched up the lead-shielded storage container, shoved it back inside his coat, then leaped into the darkness of the vertical shaft as a second explosion destroyed the workshop entrance above.
He slid down into the pitch-dark corridor, leaving Riku behind with the flash of the first gunshot illuminating the underground workshop's ceiling. In the cold silence of the subterranean tunnel, Kael swore to himself: he would reach the Empty Zone, uncover the truth behind *The Core*, and make sure Riku's sacrifice was not in vain.