The armored door sealed with a hermetic sigh, instantly cutting off the sound of the rain and the muffled shouts of my security team outside. The dirty world was left behind.
The limousine’s interior enveloped me in silence, cream leather, and the scent of sandalwood.
Echo collapsed onto the opposite seat, her jacket dripping acidic water and soot onto the synthetic calfskin rug. My visual filter tried to soften the stain, rendering the dirt as an artistic shadow, but I knew the contamination was there.
On the glass partition separating us from the driver’s AI, the holographic screen was already on, broadcasting the news at low volume. The headline was mid-sentence.
"...recovered from advanced oxidation vaults in the former San Francisco Bay. Experts claim the devices, known as 'Cold Wallets,' contain keys to extinct cryptocurrencies from 2024. The historical value exceeds the nominal value, as the plastic of the casings is compatible with today's recyclers..."
"Look at that," I murmured, pouring two glasses of synthetic whiskey. "The past is so inefficient that the plastic of the safe is worth more than the fortune it held."
Echo ignored the glass I extended. She was staring at the black box in her lap, her hands trembling.
"The news changed," she said.
I looked at the screen. The "Breaking News" ticker flashed red.
UPDATE: Sanitation Drones confirm the recovery of 12 unidentified bodies on the shore of Sector 4. Preliminary analysis indicates the group fell victim to local flora following a forced landing. The Council has classified the incident as "Illegal Disposal of Biological Waste."
"Twelve bodies," Echo repeated. "An entire tactical squad."
"Black Ops," I confirmed, sipping the whiskey. "They probably went down trying to transport this head. Which means we can't go to the Tower. If we plug this USB into the Narcissus network, we’ll light up a beacon for whoever shot down that transport."
Echo opened the box. The smell of rotting meat invaded the perfumed air conditioning.
"I need to go in," she said.
"In where?"
"Into her mind." She pulled a retractable cable from her own wrist, connected to her Auditor’s Seal. "At the incinerator, I felt something strange. A wrong texture. If she took down a military plane, I need to know what she was thinking before she died."
"Echo, that’s dangerous. If her system has countermeasures..."
"We’re moving, Valerian. Away from the Tower’s signal."
Before I could protest, she connected the cable to the node on the severed head, using a neural contact needle.
Echo’s body went rigid. Her eyes rolled back, showing the whites.
[NEURAL_NETWORK_MEMORY_ECHO]
There was no tunnel of light. There was no usual static of dying memories, that gray hiss of rotting neurons.
There was a hard cut. Frame by frame.
I was in a kitchen. It was morning. The sun streamed through a window with lace curtains, hitting a rustic wooden table. There was the smell of freshly baked orange cake.
Everything was wrong.
I approached the table. The wood texture had no imperfect grooves; it was a repeated pattern, a texture loop. The sunlight had no heat, it was just a perfect brightness. The sensation was different from when we look at the sun, breathe deep, and feel the warmth heating the hair on our arms and our face simultaneously.
"Mom?" A child's voice came out of my mouth. It wasn't my voice. It was the faceless girl's.
A woman was at the sink, back turned. She turned around and smiled.
The smile was perfect. Too symmetrical. Her teeth were too white.
"Happy birthday, darling," said the woman, holding a totally symmetrical cake, with 6 candles inserted perfectly evenly and also symmetrical.
I tried to focus on "Mom's" face. My Auditor instincts screamed. There were no micro-expressions. There were no pores. Her skin was smooth like polished porcelain. When she blinked, it wasn't a muscle movement; it was a shutter closing and opening.
This isn't a memory, I realized, panic rising. This is a video file.
I looked at the milk bottle on the table. I zoomed in visually. In a real human memory, the label would be blurred, focused on the emotion of the moment. Here, I could read the ingredients. I could read the barcode.
Metadata: Rendered 05.12.2044. Asset ID: #Family_Construct_09.
"You're not real," I whispered to the woman.
The woman froze. The smile locked. The scenery around began to glitch, pixelating at the edges.
"Runtime Error," the woman said, her voice distorted. "Rebooting Scenario."
Suddenly, the kitchen was ripped away. The ceiling vanished.
I was falling. Now I was in a dark cockpit, lit by red emergency lights. The smell of cake was gone, replaced by smoke and ozone.
I was no longer a child. I was a weapon. My hands (her hands) flew over the control panel of the military transport. I wasn't afraid. My heart rate was zero.
"Route Deviation Confirmed," said my voice, mechanical and cold. "Return Protocol Activated."
I looked at the GPS on the dash.
DESTINATION: SECTOR 4. BUNKER ZERO-SEVEN.
I saw the gigantic trees approaching through the cabin glass. I saw the soldiers screaming behind me, trying to open the armored cockpit door. I felt no pity. I felt no fear of death. I only felt the imperative of the code.
Protect the Key.
The impact came. Darkness.
[NEURAL_NETWORK_MEMORY_KROSS]
Echo gasped, ripping the cable from the girl's neck. She sucked in air hard, as if she had been drowning.
"What did you see?" I asked, leaning forward, the glass of whiskey forgotten in my hand.
"She’s not human," Echo whispered, eyes wide, focused on nothing. "Valerian, she was never human."
"What do you mean? Is she a cyborg?"
"It’s worse. It’s a simulation." Echo rubbed her temples, shaking. "The memories... they are rendered. I saw her 'childhood.' It was a staged set. Her mother was a badly programmed NPC. She thinks she’s people, Valerian. They implanted a whole life in her, full of love and fake birthdays, just to hide what she really is."
She looked at the head in the box with a mix of horror and pity.
"She is a vault that dreams."
"And the crash?" I pressed. "Was it mechanical failure?"
"No. She took down the transport." Echo looked at me. "She hacked the navigation system. She was trying to flee. And she had a specific destination."
"To where?"
"Coordinates: Sector 4. Bunker Zero-Seven." Echo pointed to the dark window. "She was trying to 'go home.' The USB... the key... it must only work there."
I leaned back in the seat, processing. The Council, the System, whoever it was... they created a perfect doll, gave her a fake soul, and used her to transport something so valuable it was worth sacrificing an entire squad.
"Sector 4," I sighed. "The Compensation Zone."
"Do you know where this Bunker is?"
"I know Sector 4 is a graveyard of old technology that the System covered with a forest to balance the fiscal books."
"That’s where we have to go." Echo closed the box. "If we want to access what’s on this USB without being tracked, we need to go where the signal doesn't reach."
I typed the destination into the panel. The car's AI protested with a soft beep, alerting about "Environmental Exclusion Zone." I ignored it and authorized the manual override.
"Graves," I called over the internal intercom.
"Listening, sir."
"Change of itinerary. We are heading to Sector 4. Southern access route. Maintain escort formation. Your vehicle takes point as scout."
There was a pause on the radio. Even for a paid mercenary, Sector 4 was a bad request.
"Understood, sir. Activating biohazard filters level 4."
On the navigation panel, I saw the icon of my security team's tactical SUV accelerate and overtake our limousine, positioning itself ahead to clear the path.
The convoy descended.
We left sea level (where Sector 2 operated its dry docks and processing factories) and dived into the service tunnels that led to the old underground. The architecture changed. Smooth, clean concrete gave way to retaining walls stained with damp and black moss.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
"We are leaving the monitored grid," I warned Echo. "From here on, the security cameras are blind."
We passed the last checkpoint. A massive steel gate, stamped with the symbol "Carbon Offset Zone - Leviathan Property." The automated guards scanned Graves' credentials, then mine. The metal groaned, and the gates opened.
The car's air conditioning made a pressurization sound, switching to a closed cycle.
We entered.
Sector 4 was not an organized botanical garden. It was a green asphyxiation. As the headlights cut through the darkness, we saw the skeletons of the old city—viaducts, low buildings, poles—totally swallowed by a dense vegetable mass. There was no "ground" or "street." There was a thick carpet of biomass covering what was once asphalt.
To me, through the filter, the landscape had an ethereal glow. The green was vibrant, almost neon. The humidity in the air looked like a mystical mist. I saw leafy trees that looked welcoming.
"The Council did an incredible job of recovery," I commented, watching the air purity data on the external dashboard rise. "CO2 absorption here is 400% higher than in a natural forest."
"It’s not recovery, Valerian. It’s colonization," Echo murmured, looking out the window without the filter. "Look at those vines on the pillars. They aren't climbing. They are dissolving the concrete."
The lead car, Graves' SUV, forged the path, crushing the undergrowth. Our limousine came behind, gliding smoothly.
"We are close to the crash coordinates," Echo said, checking the mental map she stole from the girl. "We need to get off the main route. The bunker is in an old treatment station, further inland."
"Graves, turn right at the next intersection," I ordered.
The convoy entered a narrow street where the tree canopies closed above us like a tunnel. The headlight beams reflected off wet surfaces.
That was when the alert started. It wasn't a bang; it was a discreet warning on the dashboard.
EXTERNAL INTEGRITY: 99%... 98%...
"What is that?" I frowned.
"Detecting surface corrosion," the AI's soft voice replied.
I looked at the glass. A fine, yellowish mist was descending from the trees and covering the car. It looked like pollen.
"Is it acidic spore?" I asked.
"Worse," Echo said, bringing her face close to the glass. "It’s Compost Moss."
In my filter, it looked like a layer of soft velvet covering the car's hood. A velvety, elegant green. But in reality, I saw the car's paint start to bubble.
"Valerian..." Echo turned to me, pale. "What is this car made of?"
"The chassis is aluminum alloy, but the bodywork is reinforced biopolymer. Hemp fiber and soy resin. It’s the most resilient and eco-friendly material on the market."
"Eco-friendly. Biodegradable." She pointed to the roof. "You brought a car made of food into a forest designed to eat organic waste."
"The coating should hold..."
"Graves' SUV is ceramic and metal," she interrupted. "They are fine. But us? We are a giant granola bar. That moss releases enzymes to digest dead organic matter. It thinks your car is a fallen tree."
INTEGRITY: 95%
The sound began. A low, constant hiss, like effervescent tablets in water. Tssssss. I turned to see the side of the car. Where the "moss" touched, the bio-plastic was turning soft, melting like hot wax.
"Graves!" I shouted into the radio. "Stop the convoy. We are suffering structural degradation."
"Sir? My sensors are normal," Graves replied.
"Your car is metal, mine is plastic! Stop now!"
The cars braked in the middle of the green tunnel. The silence of the forest fell over us, broken only by the hiss of our car being chemically digested.
"We can't stay here," Echo said, coughing from the toxic smoke of melting plastic. "If the moss eats the door seals, the outside air gets in."
"We have to plug in the head," I decided, feeling cold sweat. "Now. While the auxiliary battery still works. If this girl has the bunker codes, we need them to open the doors."
Echo nodded and opened the black box. She pulled a cable from her pocket. The tip was a flattened, rusted metallic connector.
"USB-C," I identified, looking with disdain at the archaic plug. "No one has used that architecture since the 40s. My car uses wireless neural transmission. There’s nowhere to plug that in."
Echo reached into the pocket of her dirty jacket and pulled out a tangle of wires and old electronic components. It looked like workshop trash.
"What are you going to do?" I asked, watching her pull out a pointed tool.
"Surgery."
Without ceremony, Echo jammed the tool into the fine wood panel of the center console. The sound of wood splintering was painful, but not as much as the sound of the roof melting above us. She ripped off the trim plate, exposing the glowing fiber-optic wires of the car's system.
She took a square, scratched, bulky adapter from her kit—an Auditor's "Universal Bypass."
"Hold the head," she ordered.
I held the black box. Echo connected the girl's USB cable into the dirty adapter, and then "bit" into the car's fiber-optic wires with the adapter's claws. Sparks flew. The dashboard screen flickered violently. The Narcissus logo distorted and vanished.
The connection was brute, forced. An injection of old code into the veins of a modern system.
A line of green code, simple and pixelated (old terminal style), appeared on the high-definition screen, pulsing to the rhythm of a heart.
LEGACY HARDWARE DETECTED. TRANSLATING PROTOCOLS... WELCOME BACK, NUMBER 7.
The dashboard screen blinked. A simple, archaic green line of code appeared on the screen, pulsing to the rhythm of a heart.
SYSTEM DETECTED. WELCOME BACK, NUMBER 7. INITIATING HANDSHAKE PROTOCOL.
Outside, a thick root fell onto the hood, attracted by the heat of the engine, and began to tighten.
"Make her talk fast, Echo," I murmured. "Before the car turns into fertilizer."
The interior of the car, once a silent sanctuary, was now filled with a new and terrifying sound: a low crackle, like bacon frying in hot fat. It was the sound of the roof's biopolymer reacting with the moss enzymes.
"Graves," I called over the radio, trying to keep my voice level as I saw a yellowish stain appear on the beige leather lining above us. "Hold position. Do not retreat. If you touch your bumper to my front grille, you will transfer the corrosion to your vehicle."
"Understood, sir. Perimeter is secure. But my thermal sensors indicate your vehicle is... losing mass."
"We are working on it."
I looked at Echo. Her hands flew over the holographic keyboard projected by the dashboard. The girl's head, linked by a thick cable to the car's data port, seemed to sleep a restless sleep. Her eyelids fluttered.
"Echo, how long?"
"Her operating system is archaic," Echo grumbled, not looking up. "It’s a 2026 architecture based on modified Linux. Your car's AI is trying to quarantine her like a virus. I’m having to write a manual translation bridge."
ARMOR INTEGRITY: 92% ALERT: PRESSURE SEAL FAILURE IMMINENT.
A drop of viscous, smoking liquid fell from the roof, landing on the calfskin rug inches from Echo's shoe. The rug hissed and dissolved into an instant black hole.
"Echo!" I shouted.
"Got it!" She hit the "Enter" key projected in the air.
The car's dashboard blinked. The ambient light changed from clinical white to deep red. The soft, corporate voice of the Narcissus AI was replaced by something different. It was a synthetic, chopped voice, assembled from old audio samples.
"ACCESS GRANTED. WELCOME, ADMINISTRATOR."
On the dashboard's panoramic screen, the map of the forest (which was previously just a green blur with no data) suddenly filled with lines. They were vectors. Tunnels. Buried structures.
"What is this?" I asked, fascinated.
"It’s the original map," Echo said, eyes scanning the data. "Before the forest. Before the Leviathan. She has the blueprint of the industrial infrastructure beneath these roots."
"Bunker Zero-Seven," I pointed to a blinking dot on the map, about three kilometers east of our position.
"That’s not a bunker..." Echo zoomed in on the image. "Valerian, that is a Water Pumping Station. That’s where the salinity feeding the algae comes from."
"If it’s a pumping station, it has reinforced concrete walls and negative pressure. The plants can't get in."
"We need to get there," Echo said. "But the path isn't a road. It’s the dry bed of an ancient drainage canal."
INTEGRITY: 89%
Another drop of acid fell, this time hitting the central armrest, dissolving the leather and exposing the foam. The smell of burning plastic became unbearable.
"Graves!" I shouted. "We have coordinates. Transferring to your HUD now. You take the lead. Use the tactical plow. I need you to clear a path through the dense vegetation. We’ll ride in your vacuum."
"Sir, the terrain to the east is unstable," Graves replied.
"My roof is melting, Graves! Move!"
The tactical SUV in front of us roared. The hydrogen combustion engine (dirty tech, but robust) spat steam, and the vehicle surged forward, crushing young trunks and tearing through the curtain of vines.
"Start the engine, Echo," I ordered.
"But the heat..."
"The moss already knows we’re here. Stealth is over. Now it’s speed."
Echo hit the ignition button. The armored car's electric motor hummed back to life. The car shuddered. The wheels spun in the biological mud, skidded for a second, and then found traction.
We launched.
The ride was a hallucinogenic nightmare. We followed the taillights of Graves' SUV, which tore open the bush with brute violence. Branches whipped our windshield, cracking like lashes. But the true horror was on the car.
The roof was giving way. The biopolymer, the pride of sustainable engineering, was turning into gelatinous paste under the moss attack. I saw the light of blue algae shining through the roof where the material had vanished.
"Faster, Echo!" I urged, monitoring the integrity bar dropping like a bomb countdown.
"I’m trying! Her navigation system is fighting mine!"
"What do you mean?"
"The head!" Echo pointed to the box. "She’s trying to drive!"
I looked at the dashboard. The steering wheel was moving slightly on its own, correcting Echo's trajectory.
"She knows the way better than we do," I realized. "Let her. Let go of the wheel, Echo."
"What?"
"She’s a Military Transport Pilot, remember? Let the 'girl' drive."
Echo hesitated, then released the wheel.
The car didn't swerve. On the contrary. The driving became surgical. The melting armored car made impossible turns between the giant trees, anticipating obstacles we couldn't even see. The head in the box shook with the vibration, but the code flowed into the car as if they were one body.
Suddenly, Graves' SUV slammed on the brakes in front of us.
"Target sighted!" Graves shouted over the radio.
Through the corroded windshield, I saw it. In the middle of the jungle, a brutalist gray concrete structure rose like a fortress, covered in moss but structurally intact. The massive steel doors, three meters high, were closed, sealed by rust and time.
"We’re here," Echo said. "But how do we get in? That thing doesn't have a doorbell."
The car accelerated toward the steel doors.
"Valerian?" Echo looked at me.
"It’s not me!" I raised my hands. "It’s her! She’s not braking!"
The armored car, with integrity at 70% and the roof dripping acid, was going to crash head-on into the bunker door.
"She’s going to kill us!" Echo screamed.
On the dashboard, a message flashed in terminal green:
PROXIMITY PROTOCOL: MASTER KEY ACTIVE. OPENING SILO 07.
Fifty meters from impact, the gigantic doors of the pumping station trembled. Hydraulic gears that hadn't moved in forty years groaned, breaking the crust of rust and roots.
The doors began to open. Slowly.
"It’s going to be tight," I murmured, watching the slit of darkness widen.
We passed Graves' SUV, which stayed behind to provide cover. Our car shot into the open gap.
We scraped through. I heard the horrible sound of side mirrors being ripped off by the door metal. We entered the darkness of the bunker.
"Brake!" I shouted.
The car skid to a halt, sliding across the smooth, wet concrete floor, spinning 180 degrees before stopping.
Behind us, the steel doors slammed shut again with a boom that shook the floor, cutting off the blue light and the green danger of the forest.
Silence. Absolute darkness, except for the car's dashboard lights.
ARMOR INTEGRITY: 68%. EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT: SAFE. SPORE LEVEL: 0%.
I breathed deep, the air shaking in my lungs. The smell of burnt plastic was suffocating.
"We’re alive," Echo whispered.
"Barely," I replied. I looked at the roof. There were visible holes where the moss had eaten through everything. If we had delayed two more minutes, acid would have dropped on our heads.
The hangar lights turned on automatically. Sodium vapor lamps, yellow and industrial, illuminated the vast space of the pumping station. Gigantic pipes, stopped turbines, and...
Echo gasped.
In the center of the hangar, connected to a wall of old servers blinking with standby lights, was something. It wasn't just a water treatment station.
It was an Assembly Line. And on the steel tables, dozens of bodies. Bodies identical to the Faceless Girl. Incomplete.
"Valerian..." Echo stepped out of the car, ignoring the smoke rising from the bodywork. "What is this?"
I stepped out of the car, my Italian shoes echoing on the concrete floor. My visual filter tried to categorize what I was seeing, but failed.
They weren't just copies. They were versions. One had black skin. Another, Asian. Another, albino. But the bone structure... the chassis... was the same.
I approached a workbench. There was a logo engraved on the metal of the exposed skull of one of the disassembled units. It wasn't the Narcissus logo. Nor Leviathan.
It was a symbol I had only seen in forbidden economic history books. A broken circle.
"OmniCorp," I read aloud. "This factory is from before the Collapse."
"They weren't using the girl to transport money," Echo said, touching the cold face of one of the suspended dolls. "They were trying to reactivate this. The production line."
The sound of a cooler activating filled the hall. The girl's head, still connected to the destroyed car, spoke through the external speakers. This time, the voice wasn't chopped. It was fluid, calm, and terrifying.
"WELCOME TO THE CRADLE, MOTHER."
Question of the day: If you found out your entire childhood was a render, would you want to know the file size?
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