The emptiness had a hum. A low, synthetic drone that vibrated from the floor, through the soles of her boots, and settled in the hollow space where a soul should be. It was the same frequency as the crimson light flooding the carriage, a relentless wash of colour designed not to illuminate, but to scrub the world clean. On the bulkhead, a digital clock glowed a serene, indifferent green: 4:20 AM. Not a time. A scar.
A name should be here. A reason. There was only a clean, surgical void. The leather jacket and pants she wore felt less like clothes and more like a uniform for a ghost. She was a product, a successful case study of the Soma procedure, en route to a quiet, manufactured life in Crimson City. This journey was the final buffer, the system’s last chance to ensure the wipe was complete.
But there were errors in the code.
Her gaze snagged on the window, on the graffiti etched into the glass like scars on skin. A smirking frog. A diamond lattice. Meaningless symbols… yet they snagged on something deep inside the void, like a fishhook in a phantom limb.
And then, the name.
SOMA WAS HERE.
The irony was a physical blow, a crack in the sterile calm. The procedure. They had named the cure after the disease. Soma. The name wasn’t just a ghost on her tongue; it was the ghost. Her partner. The architect. The man they had ripped from her world and then, with exquisite cruelty, from her mind.
The green numbers of the clock seemed to brighten. 4:20 AM. It wasn’t just a scar; it was a key. A memory didn’t just flicker; it crashed the system. Ozone. Screams. The blue-white flash of overloaded servers. A terminal flashing a single, damning timestamp before going dark: 4:20 AM. The moment their revolution died. The moment they took him.
The guilt of surviving had been a poison. The Soma procedure was supposed to be the antidote.
Her eyes dropped to the lower frame, to the three words she’d overlooked. Not a memory. A root command. A dormant line of code jolted to life by the system crash.
FIRE WALK WITH ME.
It hit her like a thousand volts. The void wasn’t empty anymore; it was filled with the roaring vacuum of his absence. The promise they’d made wasn’t about love or shared grief. It was a protocol. A vow that if one of them fell, the other would become the fire that consumed their enemies. It was the weapon they had forged together.
The automated voice, smooth and soulless, sliced through the air. “Next stop: Crimson City. A new life awaits.”
A lie, she thought.
The face in the glass wasn’t a stranger anymore. It was a weapon waiting to be aimed. The embers in her eyes were gone, replaced by the cold, clear light of a coming firestorm.
The Soma procedure hadn’t created a ghost. It had forged a fury.
She stood, the leather whispering a promise of its own. Her first stop wasn’t a new apartment.
It was the clinic that had built her cage.
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