The first thing you notice in the Deep is the hum.
It's not something you hear—it's was a vibration that rattles your teeth and sits behind your eyes. Imagine ten thousand cooling fans spinning like crazy, or a river of data rushing through cables. Or the sound of rich folks living large while I wipe the sweat off their sleep pods.
"Sector 4 clear," I whisper, my voice scratchy as hell. The air down here's has been recycled so many times it tastes like copper and old socks.
I tap the tablet strapped to my arm. The screen flickers green. Biosigns stable. Nutrient flow normal.
I look at the guy in Pod 712. Mr. Henderson. A real estate big shot from the Old World. He looked peaceful floating in that blue goo, his skin was pale, almost see-through, his muscles was completely wasted away. The man hasn't used those legs in twenty years. Why would he? Inside the Aether, he's probably twenty-five again, flying a dragon over some golden city or partying on a yacht.
Down here, he is just a meat sack I gotta keep from rotting.
"Lucky bastard," I mutter, spitting on the floor. It's against the rules, but nobody watches the cameras in Sector 4 anymore. The higher-ups are too busy fixing the water filters upstairs.
I move to the next pod. Same drill as always.
That's what keeps you sane down here—routine.
Check the seal. Check the goo level. Check the brain plugging. Repeat until your shift ends or you drop dead.
My name is Elias. I'm thirty-two but i look fifty. My left hand shakes from breathing in too much silicate dust during the Great Collapse, and I've got exactly four hundred credits to my name.
I needs five thousand.
I check the clock on the wall. 3:00 AM. Four hours left.
I sit on a supply crate near the vent and pull a protein bar from my pocket. It's Tastes like sawdust mixed with fake cherry, but it beats the stomach cramps. I take a bite and fish out a crumpled photo from my jumpsuit.
Jasmine. My little sister.
She's smiling in the picture, standing under a real sun—must've been one of those rare clear days, maybe ten years back, before the smog swallowed everything. Now her lungs are turning toite. A disease named silicosis. Doctors gave her six months unless I can get her Ascended.
If I scrape together enough cash, I could buy her a cheap spot on a server. Nothing fancy—probably just a crappy simulation of a normal house—but she wouldn't feel pain anymore. Wouldn't cough up blood. She would live forever in the code.
"Just a few more months, kid," I tell the photo. "I'm working on it."
The corridor lights flicker. Happens sometimes. Power surges, grid instability—that the usual here. The generators care way more about the Server Racks than they do about us. If the AC dies, we get sweaty. If the Servers go down, the Ascended might experience a slight inconvenience, and God forbid some billionaire sees a glitch in his digital heaven.
I stand up to finish my rounds.
That's when I hear it.
Thump.
A quiet, wet sound. Like a heavy bag of water hitting concrete.
I freeze. The hum is always ther, a background noise you learn to ignore. But this? This is different. It came from the far end of the aisle.
The Gold Tier section.
"Hello?" I call out, hand already reaching for the stun baton on my belt. We have rats down here—mutated things, big as dogs—but they scatter from the lights.
No answer. Just the endless whir of cooling fans.
I walk slow, boots clanking against the metal grating. Pod 800. Pod 801. Pod 802.
Everything looks normal. The blue glow from the pods throws strange shadows across the rusted walls.
Then I see it.
Pod 815.
The glass isn't cracked. Seal's intact. But the goo... it's moving.
Normally, that stuff sits still—thick like jelly. But inside Pod 815, it's churning. Bubbles rising fast.
I rush over, wiping grime off the display screen.
WARNING: BRAIN STRESS DETECTED.
HEART RATE: 180 BPM.
"Crap," I hiss.
180? That's a heart attack waiting to happen. If a client flatlines on my watch, they'll dock the body's value from my paycheck. And I'd be paying that off until I'm dead and buried.
"System, calm down!" I shout, jabbing at the touchscreen. "Admin override! Sedatives, now!"
ACCESS DENIED.
EXTERNAL TAMPERING DETECTED.
External? What the hell does that mean?
I look at the pod.
The woman inside—Client 815, just another ID number—is thrashing. Her eyes are taped shut, standard procedure, but her mouth is wide open. Screaming silently into the goo. Her fists slam against the glass from the inside.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
She's not twitching. She's awake.
That's impossible.
The Neural Link kills motor function completely. Your mind lives in the Aether while your body stays on life support—a vegetable in a fancy tube. You can't move. Can't feel. You shouldn't even know you have a body anymore.
Unless someone yanked her out.
"Crap, crap, crap—" I reach for the manual release lever.
Opening the pod early means contaminating the preservation gel. Which cost: 500 credits minimum.
I yank the lever anyway.
HISS.
Freezing gas explodes outward. The glass panel slides open. The smell hits me like a truck—ozone and sterile chemicals, strong enough to sting my eyes.
The woman rockets upright, choking, gagging, spitting out mouthfuls of blue goo. She tips over the pod's edge and crashes onto the floor, her whole body seizing. Naked. Skeletal. Skin so pale it almost glows. Wires trail from the port in her neck, snapping loose as she falls.
"Hey! Hey, easy!" I drop to my knees beside her, heart pounding. "Take it slow—you're gonna rip out the interface!"
She rolls onto her side, hacking up fluid, clawing at her face. Her fingers find the tape over her eyes and tear it away.
When her eyes open, I scramble backward so fast I almost fall on my ass.
They're not human.
They're glowing. Not reflecting light—generating it. A faint, flickering glow, like a screen running in the dark.
And deep in her pupils, I swear I can see lines of code scrolling past.
She grabs my wrist before I can get away. Her grip is iron. Way too strong for someone who looks like she'd snap in half if you breathed on her. Her skin is ice cold.
"Where..." Her voice cracks, rusty from years of silence. "Where is... the exit?"
"You're in Server 9," I stammer. "The Deep. Ma'am, you need to calm down. You're having some kind of psychotic break. I'm calling medical—"
I reach for my comm unit.
She crushes my wrist. I scream and drop the radio.
"NO!" she shrieks. "No meds! You don't understand—"
She yanks me close. Those glowing eyes bore into mine. She doesn't look confused.
She looks terrified.
"The disconnects..." she whispers, teeth chattering. "They're not glitches. They're not accidents."
"What are you talking about?" I try to pry her fingers loose, but it's like bending steel.
"The Aether," she gasps. Blood trickles from her nose, mixing with the blue residue on her face. "It's not paradise."
She says my name.
"Elias."
I go still. "How do you know—"
She slumps back against the floor, chest heaving. Her glowing eyes drift up toward the ceiling, toward the miles of cables and conduits snaking through the darkness above us.
"We're not customers," she whispers. A single tear cuts a clean line through the goo on her cheek. "We're fuel."
The alarms scream to life.
BREACH DETECTED.
SECTOR 4.
SECURITY RESPONSE INBOUND.
Red strobe lights explode through the corridor, turning everything into a pulsing nightmare.
The woman looks at me. "Run," she says. "If they find you with me... they'll delete you too."
I stare at her. Then at the exit. Then at the security camera slowly turning toward us.
I have a dying sister. Four hundred credits. And now I've got a naked billionaire telling me Heaven is a scam.
I do the only thing a man in my position can do.
I help her up.