Embers of Discontent

Liora’s POV

They didn’t realize they’d been followed.

The moment Liora heard the eighth bootstep outside the back hallway—when there should’ve only been seven—she knew. Someone had tracked them through the old maintenance tunnels beneath the diner. And whoever it was wasn’t on their side.

She didn't speak. Just raised two fingers to Torian, who nodded and slid silently into the darkness behind a half-collapsed shelf.

Echo froze mid-step, wide-eyed. She squeezed his arm gently, a silent reminder: breathe later. Move now.

Aldren had gone to secure a new signal hub in Sector G. That meant if this went wrong, no backup. Just the three of them. The transmitters they’d risked everything to activate still looping rebellion across the skies. But if the Council found them—if they captured Echo—they wouldn’t just kill the broadcast.

They’d weaponize the boy.

Liora pressed her ear against the rusted pipe, tracking the breaths behind the wall. Too measured. Too calm. Not a patrol.

A hunter.

She hated how familiar that type of silence had become.

Torian motioned for her to keep moving. They followed the corridor down past the old utility junctions, turning right at a rust-warped sign that read CLEARANCE ACCESS ONLY. The deeper they moved, the colder it got, until even their exhalations looked like smoke.

“This route goes under the communications bank,” Torian whispered. “If they’re after us, it’s because of what’s there.”

She didn’t respond. She already knew.

The data Echo had retrieved from the dockyard wasn’t just surveillance footage or troop deployments. Hidden inside a corrupted data shard was something older—a voiceprint file from the earliest years of the Council’s formation. A voice that had been erased from public record.

A woman.

Speaking of fracture, of election rigging, of the day the Council stopped being a government and became a machine.

She’d listened to it in fragments. Static-drenched, patched together, barely coherent—but real. And if the public ever heard it…

They turned a final corner. The server room loomed ahead, blinking with red and amber lights like an artificial heartbeat.

That’s when the power cut.

Every bulb died.

The hallway flooded with darkness. Not silence—breathing.

From the shadows came a slow, mechanical voice.

“Echo… is not yours to use.”

Liora spun around, pistol drawn. A figure stepped forward, gloved hand outstretched, voice disguised through some kind of scrambler.

Torian moved to intercept—but the figure moved faster.

One shot. Silent. A dart. Torian dropped with a grunt, writhing in sudden paralysis.

“NO!” Echo screamed, breaking from Liora’s grasp.

She fired twice, but the figure ducked effortlessly, vanishing into the shadows.

Echo’s scream echoed off the walls.

Liora rushed to Torian, fingers pressing into his neck. Pulse, but shallow. Whatever toxin they used, it was designed to incapacitate without killing. Yet.

And then she heard it.

The server behind her had turned on by itself.

Monitors flickered, one by one, displaying old Council archives—names, arrests, blacklists. All tagged with a blinking label:
“DECOMMISSIONED.”

The voice came again, now clearer, like it was speaking from inside the servers:

“This is not your revolution. It was never yours to start.”

A final monitor came online. Liora’s blood froze.

It was her.

The woman from the corrupted data shard.

Not in a file. Not in a recording.

Live.

Face half-shadowed, hair streaked with grey, eyes like burning ice.

“Liora Vale. You’ve been chasing ghosts. But the one you need... is still breathing.”

The monitor glitched—and then revealed a location marker.

Sector H.

The dead zone.
The Council’s first failed cleansing.

The screen cut to black.

The sound of a heavy door slammed behind her.

She spun.

Echo was gone.