Sura stood there, the faint hum of the city filling the silence as Kaius carefully handed her the chip. She took it with a slight frown, rolling it between her fingers as if expecting it to be something more than it appeared. Her sharp eyes glanced over the small piece of tech, unimpressed.
"This is what's been keeping you up at night?" she asked, her tone flat.
Kaius crossed his arms, feeling a bit defensive.
"It's not just any chip. I've been working on it for months—three months, to be exact. The encryption on it was insane. No normal chip should've been that locked down."
Sura's gaze flicked up at him, her eyes narrowing slightly.
"Three months? Just for this?"
Kaius nodded, his frustration bubbling up.
"Yeah, and I was close to cracking it entirely before someone else tried to breach it. It's not just a normal chip, I'm telling you."
Sura shrugged, still turning it over in her hands.
"Looks pretty normal to me."
Kaius sighed
"It's what's inside that matters."
Sura gave him a sideways glance, her lips curling into a small smirk.
"You wouldn't mind if I took it, would you?"
Kaius blinked, caught off guard. "I mean… uh…"
"Great," she interrupted, already slipping the chip into her jacket pocket. "Thanks."
He opened his mouth to protest but stopped. Of course she was going to take it. There was no point arguing. He forced a half-smile instead, hoping to keep things light. "You know, you could've at least asked nicely."
Sura chuckled, giving him a playful shove on the arm.
"Where's the fun in that?"
Kaius rubbed the back of his neck, glancing toward the Gravewalkers.
"So… can I come with you?"
Sura's smile faded, and she shook her head.
"Not yet. You don't have a Scramble Unit."
Kaius raised an eyebrow. "A what?"
"A Scramble Unit," she repeated.
"It's a device that messes with the CyberWatcher surveillance systems, erasing our presence from their monitors. Without it, you'd be a walking beacon for them. And trust me, we don't need that kind of heat."
Kaius frowned
"Right… Well, if you find anything, let me know."
Sura gave a short nod, turning on her heel and motioning for the Gravewalkers to follow.
"Take care, Kaius. Stay safe."
With that, she and the Gravewalkers slipped out of the apartment as silently as they had entered, leaving the room feeling emptier than before. Kaius sighed heavily, the weight of the past few months settling back on his shoulders.
He turned to his father, who remained seated, barely acknowledging the departure of their strange visitors. Kaius shrugged.
"Guess you knew they weren't here to hurt us, huh?"
Gareth said nothing, just kept his usual posture, staring out the window. Kaius forced a smile.
"Yeah… figured you'd know."
Later that evening, after Sura and her team had long gone, Kaius sat back down at the table, the soft glow of the small lamp casting long shadows across the room. He reached for the stack of papers they had been working on earlier that day—notes and calculations about the dream pill, the equations they'd scribbled out together.
But when he flipped through them, his brow furrowed. The pages were blank.
"Wait… what?" Kaius muttered, flipping through the stack again. Blank. Every single one. There was no sign of the formulas, the notes, the research they'd been working on for days.
He looked over at Gareth, who had already retired to his room for the night. Kaius frowned, his mind racing. Had Gareth wiped everything clean? That didn't make sense. His father wasn't the type to erase things like that.
Kaius sat back, staring at the blank sheets, a cold realization creeping in.
"Maybe he used his MindSlate… but why wouldn't he tell me?"
The MindSlate, a cybernetic implant for drawing and writing directly from thought to device, was something they both used occasionally, but Gareth had never been secretive about it before. Kaius shook his head, pushing the thought away. Maybe he was just overthinking things. Maybe he was just tired.
He leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, trying to ignore the gnawing feeling that something was wrong.
The days that followed were a blur. Kaius found himself slipping into a strange routine, his mind heavy with fatigue. The shadows in the streets seemed to press closer, the strings—those flickering threads of energy—becoming more vivid with each passing day.
The red strings, especially, pulsed with a kind of urgency, a warning that felt almost tangible. But it wasn't just the red strings anymore. The purple ones—the ones he hadn't been able to decipher—were appearing more frequently too. They hovered at the edges of his vision, taunting him, like they held some kind of secret he wasn't ready to unlock.
He tried to ignore them, tried to push through the haze that had settled over his thoughts, but it was getting harder. The fatigue gnawed at him, weighing down his limbs, making every movement feel sluggish. His mind felt scattered, unfocused, as if something was pulling him in a hundred different directions at once.
Three days later, Kaius found himself standing in front of the small mirror in his room, staring at his reflection. Dark circles hung under his eyes, his skin pale and drawn. He looked… wrong. He felt wrong.
The strings danced in the corners of the mirror, flickering in and out of his vision like ghosts. He blinked, trying to shake them away, but they remained, persistent and relentless.
"What… what's happening to me?" Kaius whispered to himself, gripping the edge of the sink as a wave of dizziness washed over him.
His head pounded, and the strings pulsed in response, their colors blurring together—red, purple, grey, green. They surrounded him, engulfing him, until he couldn't tell where the real world ended and the strings began.
And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the vision faded. The strings retreated, disappearing into the shadows of the room, leaving Kaius gasping for breath.
He stumbled back, clutching his head, his heart racing. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.