The Council's Shadow
The sterile, recycled air of the Enforcer barracks felt like a lie. Lyra stood under the sonic shower, the vibrations failing to scrub away the feeling of the Old Quarter's damp grime or the chilling weight of Aris Thorne's words. The city is a living entity. Every ordered corridor, every humming transit pod, every obedient citizen—were they all just cells in a captive body? Was her entire life spent policing a prison?
She dressed mechanically, her uniform feeling less like a badge of honor and more like a warden's costume. Her wrist-comm buzzed. A priority summons. Director Stavos, head of the Peace Directorate, wanted a debrief on the "energy spike."
Her blood ran cold.
The Director's office was a monument to control, perched high in the Spire with a panoramic view of the perfectly managed cityscape. Director Stavos was a man carved from granite and cold calculation, his eyes missing nothing.
"Lieutenant Valerius," he began, steepling his fingers. "Your report on the Archive anomaly was… intriguing. A faulty capacitor, you said?"
Lyra kept her posture rigid, her gaze fixed on a point just past his shoulder. "The initial reading suggested a power surge from aging infrastructure, sir. A full diagnostic revealed a minor fluctuation in a sub-level transformer. It's been logged for maintenance." The lie tasted like ash.
Stavos was silent for a long moment, the only sound the faint hum of the city below. "Is that so?" He picked up a data-slate. "Our own… broader spectrum sensors detected a brief but significant chronometric event in that exact sector at the same time. An event your standard-issue scanner is not calibrated to detect."
Lyra's heart hammered against her ribs. They had been monitoring her. Of course they had. The Council's oversight was absolute.
"Chronometric, sir? I… I saw no evidence of that." She forced her voice to remain level.
"Perhaps not." Stavos put the slate down. "But it is a curious coincidence. A ghost from the past, and my most promising new Lieutenant, all in the same forgotten room." He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that was more threatening than any shout. "The Council's peace is fragile, Lieutenant. Built on a foundation that must not be questioned. There are elements… dissidents… who would see it all torn down. They spin fanciful tales. They see ghosts in machines. Do not go looking for phantoms, Lyra. It is a path that leads only to oblivion."
The warning was clear. They knew something had happened. They didn't know what, but they were watching. She was now a person of interest.
Dismissed, she walked out of the office, her skin crawling. Stavos hadn't asked about Kael. Either they didn't know about him yet, or they were waiting to see what he would lead her to.
She found Kael where they'd agreed—a noisy, crowded public commissary in the Mid-Levels, a place where their conversation would be lost in the din.
"They know," she said quietly, sliding into the seat opposite him. She recounted the meeting with Stavos.
Kael listened, his face grim. "They're scared. They don't know what we found, but the chronometric spike scared them. That means Thorne was telling the truth. The Ascension Protocol is their crown jewel, and we just found a crack in it." He leaned in. "We need to move faster. If they're watching you, they'll find me soon."
"The next conduit is in the Genetic Archives," Lyra said, pulling up the map on a discreet screen. "The most secure facility outside the Spire itself. My clearance will get us to the door. Nothing more. Their security is autonomous, bio-keyed to senior geneticists only."
A slow, wicked grin spread across Kael's face. It was an expression she'd never seen on him—a flash of the brilliant, rule-breaking code-slinger he truly was. "Then it's a good thing I'm not a geneticist."
He pulled out a small, non-descript case. Inside, nestled in foam, was a delicate-looking tool with a needle-fine tip. "A bio-mimetic sampler. It can lift a DNA signature from a surface and replicate it. We just need to get close to someone with the right access."
Lyra stared at the device, a tool of espionage and crime. Everything in her training screamed against it. But she looked at the countdown on her own stolen data-slate: 68:14:09.
She met his gaze, her decision made. "There's a gala tonight. For the head of the Genetic Archives, Dr. Evander Soren. He'll be there."
The Enforcer and the Code-Sweeper were no longer just investigating a mystery. They were now active insurgents, stealing fire from the gods who thought they controlled everything. The Council's shadow was long, but they were about to dive into the deepest darkness they could find.
Chapter 5:
The Gala and the Sampler
The Aethelburg Elite Gala was a spectacle of controlled opulence. Held in the Spire's Grand Atrium, it was a sea of shimmering synth-silk, polished chrome, and carefully curated laughter. For Lyra, in her formal Enforcer dress uniform, it was familiar territory—a network of power and influence she was trained to navigate. For Kael, stuffed into a borrowed server-tech’s formal wear, it was a hostile ecosystem.
He stood near a towering ice sculpture, trying to look inconspicuous as his eyes scanned the crowd.“I feel like a glitch in the source code,” he muttered into the tiny comm-piece Lyra had given him.
“Just stay focused,” her voice came back, calm and clear in his ear. She was across the room, a glass of sparkling water in her hand, engaged in a conversation with a Council member.“Soren is by the central fountain. The man in the deep blue robe.”
Kael spotted him. Dr. Evander Soren was a tall, gaunt man with a carefully cultivated air of intellectual superiority. He was shaking hands, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. Perfect.
“I need a DNA vector,” Kael said.“A glass, a utensil, anything he touches.”
“He’s not eating. And he’s using a servitor to hold his drink,” Lyra observed.“He’s cautious.”
