The estimate failed, and the room became silent once again.
Darian gazed in the direction that his brother's face had wavered in mere seconds back. His heartbeat was like battle drums in his chest. That voice. The face. Saying his name with Casen. It wasn't a lie. It wasn't deepfake software or AI delusion.
Casen was living when this audio was recorded.
He was honest.
And that truth was buried somewhere within this cube.
Elira spoke softly, shattering the silence. "I thought your brother died in the Nulldust Rebellion. That you said there was. nothing left to bury."
There wasn't." Darian rubbed his hands across his face. "He was on an ops team attempting to destroy a Ministry surveillance base. The facility was destroyed in a controlled burn. Officially, they claimed it was an accident. Casen was never found."
She hesitated. "And now he's. warning you. From the dead."
Darian laughed harshly. "No. Worse. He's warning me from the other side of the truth.
He rose to his feet and paced. The cube glowed softly still, throwing shadows on the broken concrete walls of his hideout.
Elira gazed at it once more. "If he left you that message, then he had to have known you'd end up here. That The Hollow would pursue you down."
Darian halted. "Unless he did want them to."
"What?
"What if this isn't a warning? What if Casen rigged up this whole setup to make someone like me stumble upon it?"
"Why would he do that?"
He didn't respond immediately. Instead, he went to his terminal and inserted the cube into a secure port. Lights flashed as the connection synchronized.
"Because Casen always knew how to manipulate people. Even me."
Lines of code started streaming across the screen—encrypted strings, quantum-sealed files, memory shards.
Elira leaned over his shoulder. "How much of that can you read?"
"None of it. Not until I crack the outer key. It's sealed with something older than standard encryption."
He hesitated, cocking his head.
"Elira. this isn't Ministry tech. It's. Hollow-designed. Or worse."
"Worse than the Hollow?"
Darian typed furiously, cross-referencing the coding language.
Yes. This architecture is the same as was discovered in the Vault of Origin—those ancient AI servers hidden under Old Vanta, the ones nobody could decode for two decades. Whatever's in here, Casen constructed it with forbidden tech."
Elira took a breath. "That means this box isn't just full of secrets. It might be dangerous enough to bring the whole system down."
Darian's gaze met hers.
"That's most likely exactly what he planned.
They labored for hours.
Piece by piece, Darian stripped away the cube's digital defenses. Elira dug through archived reports for any reference to Casen's team, attempting to recreate his last days before the Rebellion fell silent.
And in the moments of quiet between hacking and research, something started to change between them.
A look that hung in the air. A touch of hands going for the same instrument. The pressure of hidden facts hanging between them like charge.
By sunrise, the cube yielded its first secret.
Darian deciphered a graphic file—a remembrance recording encoded into the matrix.
He opened it.
The image flickered into life, showing Casen in what looked like an underground bunker, pale light casting shadows across his face. His hair was shorter, his eyes sunken.
"They deceived us, Darian. All of them. The Ministry used us as chess pieces to follow the Hollow's web. When we drew too close to the source, they gave the order to burn. I survived. Barely. But I saw what was truly in the core server. A registry of names. Transactions. Experiments."
Casen poised forward, shaking with voice.
"They're creating something. Not merely control, not merely surveillance. Something ancient. Something alive."
The video ended.
Elira stared aghast. "Alive?"
Darian's thoughts were already racing. "He's referring to Project Echelon. A Ministry-funded project rumored to be combining pre-AI awareness with quantum code. But that project was allegedly closed down after Phase Zero killed 14 test subjects."
"But if Casen discovered evidence it never ceased.
"Then he's got the key to revealing the Ministry. And the Hollow wants it in order to use leverage for control. Perhaps even total control of whatever this 'alive' business is."
He reclined in his chair.
"This isn't about a power grab anymore. This is a war for supremacy. Whoever owns that tech gets everything."
Later that afternoon, a message was received.
It was contained in a shadownet dropbox, incinerating after five seconds.
"Tick-tock, Darian. Twenty hours until sundown. Bring the cube to Point 13. Solo. No games. Or else we catch up with you."
Darian's eyes flickered as the screen turned dark. The words lingered before erasing to black.
Elira folded her arms. "We're not giving it up."
"I don't disagree."
"So what are we going to do?"
"We're going to Point 13," he declared, getting to his feet. "But to use for bait, not deliver."
Her furrowed brow questioned, "Bait?
He picked up a pulse charger from the workbench and started preparing a backup rig.
"If I arrive with a replica—something that resembles the cube—they'll open the door to me. They won't be anticipating an ambush."
"You're going to ambush The Hollow? You're crazy.
Not an ambush. A diversion. Just long enough to get to their server hub. If I can get in, I can upload Casen's encrypted memories directly into the central data stream."
"You'll bring down their whole network."
"Yep. And possibly get us both killed."
Elira stepped in front of him, her hands settling lightly on his chest. "You can't do this by yourself."
"I have to.
No, you don't," she said, voice shaking now. "That's what you always assume. That if you do it yourself, no one else gets hurt."
She took a step forward.
"But you're mistaken. Because whether you like to believe it or not. I'm already involved with you."
Darian stared at her, and for the first time, he allowed himself hope.
Hope that perhaps this wasn't merely survival. That perhaps redemption did not need to be self-imposed loneliness.
He swept the curve of her cheek against his palm.
"I don't want to lose you, Elira."
"You won't," she breathed. "If I survive this, we will finish it together."
By evening, the strategy was set.
A fake cube emerged. An embedded uplink transmitter hidden within Darian's jacket. A backdoor entry portal into the Hollow's secret fortress.
And a storm brewing on the horizon of the skyline—mirroring the one within Darian's chest.
He gazed out over the city from the roof of the safehouse, Elira beside him.
Tomorrow, all would change.
One way or another.