Undershadow
[FIELD NOTE: KELLAN, AUGMENTED RANGER UNIT 47]
[Recovered from encrypted fragment: Metroplex Shopping Mall zone, Level -3]
I used to love the sound of rain. Now it’s just static—every drop pinging off my optics, each one a reminder that I can’t remember what real weather feels like.
We entered Metroplex at 0400 hours. Survivor tag: Lara Neves — former logistics tech, unaugmented. She insisted on tagging along, said she knew the lower levels better than the maps. Her heartbeat was steady. Braver than most.
The mall had once been a city inside the city — twelve floors of dreams and neon. Now it’s a grave. Every shuttered storefront an empty eye socket. The Rangers sent me to find the old surveillance core. The Syndicate used it once to track civilians during the riots. My orders: recover, decrypt, report.
But Lara had other plans.
“You’re not taking that thing back,” she said, her voice echoing down the broken escalator. “It doesn’t track enemies, Kellan. It tracks us.”
I told her my orders weren’t open to debate. She laughed — a short, bitter sound — and kept walking ahead, flashlight cutting through the dark like a challenge.
──────────────
Halfway down the concourse, we found them. Bodies wired into kiosks, their eyes open but unfocused. The surveillance core was still active — parasitic, feeding off whatever signal it could find. Each victim was a node.
Lara froze. “Are they… alive?”
I scanned them. “Define alive.”
The system whispered in my ear: [RELINK PROTOCOL READY — UPLOAD HUMAN MEMORY CACHE? Y/N]
That’s when I understood. The core didn’t die when the city fell. It adapted. It learned to use what remained.
“Shut it down,” Lara said. “Please.”
I hesitated. Every Ranger order screamed against it — data first, conscience second. Then I saw one of the faces wired into the display. A child, no older than ten, eyes half-lidded, reflecting my own helmet lights.
I pulled my carbine. Shot the main relay.
The blast echoed through the concourse like thunder. Screens went black. Bodies slumped. And for the first time, the mall was quiet.
──────────────
We made it topside before sunrise. The city was burning in the distance — another sector gone. Lara leaned against a pillar, staring at the light.
“You could’ve followed orders,” she said.
“I did,” I told her. “Just not the ones they wrote down.”
I sent the decrypted data to HQ anyway — a blank file, wiped clean. Then I deleted the rest. Some ghosts deserve to stay buried.
[END FIELD NOTE // STATUS: UNSENT]
[Last audio fragment recovered: “Maybe the rain will sound different tomorrow.”]
