She was supposed to be dead.
That was my first thought when I saw her. Not "injured." Not "unconscious." Dead. Because nothing in Neo-Veridian ever looked that still and survived.
The rain didn't fall in this city—it settled. It clung to the air like something alive, threading itself through breath, skin, and bone. A grey presence woven into the city's lungs, saturating everything it touched. After twenty years, no one called it weather anymore. It was a condition. Constant. Unrelenting. A quiet reminder that this place had forgotten how to breathe—and taken everyone with it. And in that kind of world, things that stopped moving usually didn't start again.
But she did. Barely.
A faint sound slipped out of her. Not speech. Not a cry. Just something fractured enough to confirm she was still there. "…mm…"
My steps stopped before I even realized I had moved. That shouldn't have happened. I should've kept walking. I always kept walking. That was how you survived here—don't stop, don't look too long, don't let anything become yours.
Because everything in this city eventually rots. Everything. Including people. Including AI. Including me.
Still… I turned back.
The Neon District stretched out below, bleeding color across flooded pavement. Reflections warped with every ripple, turning the ground into something unstable—like the city itself couldn't decide what it wanted to be anymore. Towers loomed overhead, their outlines dissolving into mist. They stood tall, but there was something tired in the way they held themselves, like structures built to last had already given up on the idea.
Above, holographic ads flickered in broken loops. Voices stuttered, warped, and died mid-sentence, swallowed before they could finish pretending to be human. Nothing here was alive. It only knew how to imitate it. And somehow, that felt worse.
A dim display blinked in the corner of my vision. 01:25. The hour when even the city stopped pretending it had a purpose.
I exhaled. The breath disappeared instantly into the rain. My shift had run late again. It always did. Not because it needed to—just because routine had a way of stretching itself until it replaced everything else.
A thin plastic bag hung from my hand, swaying slightly with each step. Cheap supplies. Temporary things. The kind you used, replaced, and forgot. Like they were designed to disappear. Like the person carrying them.
My uniform clung to my skin, damp and heavy. Black fabric lined with gold that had long since lost its meaning. It was supposed to represent order, structure, control. I wore it loose. Tightening it would've felt like a lie. Control didn't exist here. Only delay.
My footsteps echoed faintly against empty streets, each one swallowed by rain before it could matter.
Then I saw it.
A narrow gap between two buildings—barely visible, half-swallowed by shadow and reflected neon. It didn't look natural. It looked unfinished. Like the city had started something and forgotten to complete it.
I slowed. Stared. "…whatever."
The word came out flat. I stepped inside.
The city vanished. Sound collapsed first. Then light. Then the pressure of being watched—gone.
The passage twisted immediately. Walls close but never touch, angles bending in ways that feel wrong even without understanding why. This place didn't feel built. It felt leftover. Water slipped through cracks above in thin, broken threads, tapping irregularly against stone. My footsteps were the only consistent thing left.
Three minutes. That's all it took. Three minutes for the world to change.
The space opened without warning. A dark river stretched ahead, still enough to reflect distant fractured light. A narrow bridge extended across it—clean, deliberate—and unfinished. It stopped halfway. Like whoever built it decided the rest didn't matter.
Beyond it, the skyline shifted. White-blue light carved everything into precision. Structures aligned too perfectly, edges too sharp, as if that side of the world had been corrected until nothing imperfect remained. The Upper District. A place where problems were solved before they existed. Where people like me didn't matter enough to register.
Even from here, it didn't feel real. Disconnected. Like it belonged to a version of the world that never had to look down. I looked away. It wasn't mine. It never had been.
Then I turned—and saw her.
A figure near the river's edge. Small. Out of place in a city that punished anything fragile. My steps slowed before I told them to.
She lay still, pale hair spread across the ground like diluted light. Too precise. Too unnatural. Something between human and manufactured perfection. A school uniform clung to her frame. White fabric torn. A red ribbon loosened at her collar. Blue wrist coverings darkened where something had soaked through.
Damage. Controlled. Intentional. Not enough to kill. Just enough to leave a mark.
"…someone did this."
The words left before I could stop them.
Her chest moved. Faint. Unsteady. Alive—but barely.
Something shifted in me. Not thought. Reaction. Cold. Instant.
AI.
The recognition didn't arrive gently. It hit like resistance under the skin. A reflex I never fully learned how to silence. Artificial intelligence never scared me. It reminded me.
My parents didn't survive the first wave. I did.
There wasn't anything clean after that. Just fragments. Rain. Darkness. A voice that stopped being a voice.
I didn't go further than that. I never did.
My grip tightened around the plastic bag until it creaked. "…not my problem."
Automatic. Final.
I turned. Took a step. Then another.
Distance opened. The river didn't react. The city didn't react. Nothing did.
Good. That made it easier.
I kept walking. Because stopping is how things start to matter. And things that matter don't leave you alone.
Then— a sound.
Soft. Broken.
"…mm…"
I froze.
That wasn't noise. That wasn't interference. That was pain. Real. Unfiltered. Alive.
My breath caught. The rain didn't change. The world didn't react.
But something inside me did. Small. Unwelcome. Like something buried too deep had just moved.
"…tch."
I turned back. Slowly. Against instinct. Against reason. Against everything that had kept me moving until now.
She hadn't moved. Still broken. Still breathing. Still there. Waiting—without knowing she was waiting.
My feet moved before I decided to. One step. Then another. Closer. Closer—
And I stepped toward her.