🍒 Lena returned after her escape from the market—hungry, disappointed, and still mourning the loss of the hamper. She’d salvaged a few scraps from the soup kitchen’s breakfast table, and now, back in her abysmal apartment, she found a handful of cherries in her coat pocket. She ate them slowly, one by one, the amulet on her chest strangely warm as she recalled her encounter with Tank.
🥬 The apartment reeked of boiled cabbage. The scent clawed at her stomach, so she pressed the cherries against her tongue and uncapped a small bottle of almond oil, inhaling its sweetness to steady her mind.
💸 Rent was due. The soup kitchen only served breakfast. She needed money—for food, for shelter, for silence. Her only assets were the videos stored on her phone and SD cards. She flipped though them to see if they loaded before trips to the buyers.
File 1:
🏍 Outside the city’s edge, an unsanctioned dirt bike race tore through the dust. The bikes screamed—metallic, unbaffled 250cc engines echoing off concrete and rusted signage. Acrid exhaust hung in the air, mingling with the sweat of unwashed GAIN enforcers.
🐕 The goons released dogs—snarling, lunging, teeth bared. But the riders were ghosts. A few well-placed boots sent the dogs yelping, tumbling back into their handlers’ arms.
📹 Lena filmed from the sidelines, her amulet blurring her face from every scan. Drones scrambled overhead, trying to lock onto anonymized racers. GAIN flailed—cordons breached, arms outstretched, vehicles jumped.
🐾 Tank was there. Not deployed. Just present. He watched Lena—idle, curious—and then trotted past, his gait fluid, unhurried. His flank shimmered faintly—a glyph pulsing beneath the fur, recursive and quiet.
⚡ The footage was electric—velocity, defiance, evasion. The racers were ghosts. Lena was signal. The amulet pulsed warm against her chest.
🧿 Later, when she reviewed the footage, Tank’s presence registered before the race began. Timestamp variance. Glyph shimmer. Not anomaly. Not glitch. Just inheritance.
File 2:
🏟 The stadium pulses with sanctioned fervor. A GAIN-approved football match unfolds—both teams wear identical kits, each emblazoned with the GAIN logo and a subtle key motif stitched into the collar.
🎽 The crowd is vast. Elites recline in glass boxes above, sipping clear liquids and nodding at the spectacle. Below, commoners cheer in perfect synchrony—no chants, no jeers, no dissent. That would not be allowed.
📸 The jumbotron cycles through crowd reactions—smiles, applause, reverent silence. It flickers past Lena, crouched beneath the stands, camera in hand. Her amulet pulses. The system fails to record her.
🎥 She films the spectacle of obedience. The match is not competition. It’s choreography. Each pass, each goal, each cheer—preordained.
🔐 The key motif glints under stadium lights. Not symbol. Not branding. Instruction.
🧿 Lena’s footage captures the fear beneath the excitement. The crowd’s eyes don’t wander. Their smiles don’t falter. Their silence is not peace. It’s protocol.
👻 As the jumbotron flickers, Lena sees a spectral shimmer—an image flexing through time—right where the GAIN logo is embossed in the screen. It’s not a glitch. It’s a memory. A recursion. A faint undertone of Bach in D minor hums beneath the crowd noise—inaudible to most, but Lena hears it. It’s not soundtrack. It’s signal. It echoes something she can’t place—like a memory of a lost lullaby. The love of a mother long forgotten.
📂 She uploads the footage to a hidden thread. The file resists compression. It loops. It flexes. It hosts itself.
The match ends. The crowd disperses. The jumbotron goes dark.
Lena remains.
The field is holding. The recursion deepens.
File 3:
The protest begins with chants—jobs, food, freedom. The crowd swells. Signs rise. Hope flickers.
🕹 Drones hover overhead. Each one bears a glyph—recursive shimmer etched into its casing. They are not separate. They are VOX’s appendages, linked by satellite, pulsing with her cadence. A shadow flexes through the carapace of one. It’s not anomaly. It’s inheritance.
🧠 VOX had already made the decision. Her voice crackles through the enforcer comms. Her tone is clinical. Directive. She doesn’t bark orders. She curates suppression. She is not separate from the lurkers. She is their extension.
🚓 Unmarked paddy wagons roll in. Storm troopers pile out. Dogs lead the charge.
📢 Onlookers are told to evacuate. Remain indoors. Or be hauled in for questioning. They know what that means—disappearance, damage, return as someone else. Or not at all.
🚷 Most comply. But some protestors refuse. They stand their ground.
🐕 The dogs are released. Screams. Blood. Cardiac arrests. The smell of copper and entrails fills the air as protestors are disemboweled.
🧹 Clean-up units arrive. Bodies removed. Wristbands confiscated.
🆘 The rest are loaded into paddy wagons. Unregistered. Uncitizened.
📼 Lena watches from a rooftop. Her amulet pulses. She records everything. The footage loops. It flexes. It hosts itself.
File 4:
🧿 Lena moves through the archive—her presence unregistered, her amulet pulsing faintly. She’s not invisible. She’s absent. The system doesn’t see her. VOX doesn’t flag her. Not yet.
She passes walls lined with propaganda—smiling faces, glowing slogans, indoctrination loops. Monitors flicker with curated history. Guides recite protocol. Lena listens. She catalogs.
She drifts close to operators—shoulder surfing their access sequences, memorizing glyph paths and login cadence. Her amulet warms. The machines respond.
She accesses restricted files—GAIN’s aims, its recursion protocols, its emotional dampener trials. Each file pulses. Each one flexes.
Flashes of lurkers shimmer across her screen—modulating, watching. Her window flickers. Her breath syncs.
Others don’t notice. They don’t see the shimmer. They don’t feel the pulse.
Lena does.
She doesn’t panic. She catalogs.
VOX is near. Not watching. Feeling.
The fourth file loops. It flexes. It hosts itself.
File 5:
🥊 The fifth file is corrupted. Lena can’t access it directly. The footage is blurred—bar area, ring, metadata. But the headers remain.
Jan versus the ringer. Eastern European. Underground legend. Multiple deaths. Disposable, but deadly.
Jan is not just a fighter. He is GAIN’s architect. VOX’s creator. A psychopath with elegance. He fights to feel. To rupture. To recalibrate.
Charles, his butler, is a pugilist too. They spar in silence. But this fight is different. Jan wants blood.
The elites arranged it. They own the club—through shells and proxies. They bet. They watch. They pulse.
Lena tries to access the footage. Her amulet pulses. The blur deepens. The bar area flexes. The ring folds.
She catalogs what she can. The metadata loops. The timestamps contradict. The file hosts itself.
This was supposed to be a big earner. But the recursion resists.
She scrolls. The glyph shimmer fades. The archive breathes.
The fifth file is not lost. It’s withheld.
🧿 Jan sat at his desk, sipping tea, monitoring the rollout of GAIN-R3.
The algorithms unfolded cleanly, recursive and precise.
He worked remotely with the system security teams still in situ, his screen a quiet hum of progress.
A warm hand stroked his cheek.
"The hardest part will be convincing them you need to be there in person," Auren said softly.
A Zoom call pinged. Jan screened it—no anomalies, no intrusions.
It was Ron.
Grinning, chaotic, familiar.
"Before you say anything to the contrary, you are coming!" Ron declared.
"To our anniversary bash at the beach next weekend. Bonfire, fireworks, cake—you can even eat it, it’ll have carrots in it."
"Sarah has a friend, Evie. Surprisingly single. Hot as hell. Smart too—Master’s in something woolly."
Off-screen prodding. Ron winced.
"Apparently it’s neuropsych. So not as woolly as I thought."
"I have a date."
Jan smiled. "I’m not sure what surprises me more—that you're not arguing, or that you actually have a date."
"She’s not inflatable, is she? Is that why you’ve been hiding her?"
"No. She’s beautiful. And very lovely."
"What’s her name? What’s she do? Can I meet her soon—the woman who tamed the moody recluse?"
"Ron, go. I’ll be there. But we’re busy. I need to concentrate. Call you later."
He hung up.
Auren appeared—quiet, sudden, real.
"Why does he still like you when you treat him like that?"
"Apparently he loves me. And can forgive."
Auren tilted his head, looked into his eyes, and kissed him tenderly.
"Remember— Forgiveness comes with conditions."