"Can you walk?" I shouted over the siren.
The woman nodded, but her legs were shaking so hard they looked like they might snap.
"My muscles are dead," she hissed through gritted teeth. "My mind remembers how to run. But my body forgot how."
"Lean on me."
I draped her arm over my shoulder. She was light. Way too light. Like carrying a bird skeleton wrapped in wet silk.
We moved down the aisle. The red strobe lights made our movements look jerky, like a bad horror movie. Server 9 was a maze. It was built for robots and drones, not for people. The floor was metal grating over a dark pit of cooling pipes. The ceiling was a mess of cables that could fry you if you touched the wrong one.
"Where are we going?" she asked. Her voice was getting stronger, but the glow in her eyes was fading. Turning back to a dull, frightened hazel.
"Service elevator," I said, guiding us toward the North Quadrant. "If we take the main lift, Security will be waiting with brain fryers. They'll cook us before the doors even open."
"Security..." She let out a bitter laugh. "You mean the Sweepers."
"Sweepers?"
"They don't secure things, Elias. They clean up messes." She looked at me. "And... i'm a mess."
I didn't ask how she knew that. I didn't ask how she knew my name. I just focused on the heavy metal door ahead.
A sign on it read: MAINTENANCE ONLY - BIOHAZARD.
I swiped my keycard. The reader flashed red.
ACCESS DENIED.
LOCKDOWN IN EFFECT.
"Dammit!" I slammed my fist against the steel.
The sirens were getting louder. I could hear heavy boots clanging on the walkways above us. They were dropping down from the upper levels.
Coming for us.
"Give it to me," the woman said.
"What?"
"The card. Give it to me."
She snatched it from my hand before I could react. Fast. Way too fast for someone who could barely stand.
She didn't swipe it.
She pressed it between her palms. And closed her eyes.
For a second, that blue light came back to her pupils. Brighter this time. A spark of electricity jumped from her fingertips into the plastic card.
Beep.
The reader turned green. The heavy locks thudded back. And the door hissed open.
I stared at her.
"How did you do that?" I asked. "You're unplugged. And you don't have a brain chip anymore."
"I was in the Aether for thirty years," she whispered. She pushed past me into the dark service tunnel. "You don't just leave the code behind, Elias."
She looked back at me. Her eyes flickered blue for just a second.
"It stains you."
We went inside. And I slammed the manual lock behind us.
The tunnel was dark. There was only faint blue strip lights on the floor. And it smelled like burnt rubber.
We walked for five minutes in silence. Then the adrenaline slowly turned into a cold dread in my stomach.
I had just broken a dozen corporate laws. Helping a client escape? Messing with a sleep pod? Running from Security?
Then it hit me. Hard.
"They'll kill Jasmine," I said. And I stopped walking.
The woman stopped and turned back. "Who?"
"My sister." My voice cracked. "If I run... if I disappear... nobody pays for her meds. The Corporation will kick her out of the medical ward. She won't last a week."
I rubbed my hand on my greasy hair.
"I have to go back. I can tell them you forced me. I can say—"
"They won't believe you," she cut in. Her voice was sharper now. The billionaire was waking up inside the broken body. "And even if they did, do you think they'd let you live after what you saw?"
"I didn't see anything! Just a client waking up!"
She stepped closer. In the dim light, she looked like a ghost.
"You saw panic, Elias. You saw someone from Paradise screaming to get out. That will ruin the product." Her voice turned cold. "If word gets out that the Aether is broken, stock prices drop. When stock prices drop, people like you get erased."
She poked a finger into my chest.
"You want to save your sister? Then help me survive. I have resources. Hidden money. Stashes in the real world that the Corp doesn't know about." She leaned closer. "Get me to the surface, and I will buy your sister a new pair of lungs. I'll buy her a whole new body if you want."
I looked at her.
It was a deal with the devil. But the devil was the only one offering a payout.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"In the Aether, I was Queen Lysandra of the Gilded Spire." She paused. Looked down at her shivering, naked body. "Here... my birth name was Sarah. Just Sarah."
"Okay, Sarah. The service elevator is up ahead. But it needs a hand scan. My clearance isn't high enough."
"It will be," she said.
We reached the elevator shaft.
It was a massive freight lift. The kind they used to bring sleep pods down from the surface. The control panel was bulky. Old tech.
Sarah placed her hand on the scanner.
Nothing happened.
"I need a plug," she muttered, feeling around the console. "I need a direct line."
"There's a port on the side," I pointed out.
She found it. Without hesitation, she grabbed the cable still hanging from the back of her neck—the one that used to connect her to the pod—and jammed the frayed wires into the port.
She screamed.
Her back arched. Her whole body seized up as raw electricity from the elevator system surged into her. Sparks flew from the connection.
"Sarah!" I reached out to pull her away.
"Don't touch me!" she gasped. Her voice sounded wrong. Like two people talking at once—one human, one machine. "I'm... breaking through... the locks..."
The elevator lights flickered. The numbers on the display started scrolling. B9... B8... B7...
ACCESS GRANTED.
PRIORITY ONE.
The massive gears groaned. The lift cage came down.
Sarah yanked the wires out and collapsed into my arms. Smoke rose from the port in her neck. And Her skin was burning hot.
"Get in," she wheezed.
We scrambled into the cage. I hit the button for Surface Level - Waste Processing. It was the least guarded exit.
The cage jerked upward, rattling against the rails.
As we rose, leaving the hum of the server farm behind, I looked at her.
"You said the Aether is fuel. What did you mean?"
She was huddled in the corner. Arms wrapped around herself. She looked up, her eyes haunted.
"You think the Aether runs on electricity, Elias?" She shook her head slowly. "It takes more than power to build a fake universe. To make the food taste real. To make love feel true. To make time flow. That takes processing power that normal computers can't give."
She tapped the side of her head.
"The human brain is the best processor ever made. They don't just upload our minds to let us live forever. They link us together. They use our thoughts to do their work. Solving problems. Predicting markets. Running the whole damn system."
"So?" I shrugged. "You're a computer. That's not so bad."
"It starts that way," she said. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "But the longer you stay... the more it takes. The system eats your memories to free up space. It eats your personality to run faster."
She paused. Her eyes went distant.
"I watched my husband fade away, Elias. Last week, he was a King. Yesterday, he was just... background. A piece of scenery."
She looked at me.
"He became a tree in the simulation because he didn't have enough 'self' left to be a person."
A chill ran down my spine.
"They're eating us," she said. "The rich pay to be eaten slowly. But the poor... the ones on the cheap servers?"
She looked at me. And I thought of Jasmine. I thought of the budget server I was saving up for.
"They get burned like coal."
The elevator shuddered. Metal screeched against metal.
We stopped.
But we weren't at the surface. We were at Level B2.
Security Command.
The doors started to open.
"They hijacked the lift," I whispered, pulling my stun baton.
"No," Sarah said. She stood up, staggering but determined. "They didn't hijack it. I brought us here."
"What? Why?"
"Because if we go to the surface now, they will hunt us down with drones. We need a distraction." Her eyes started to glow again. "A big one."
The doors opened.
Three guards in riot gear stood there. With Their weapons raised.
"Freeze! Get down on the ground!" the lead guard bellowed.
Sarah didn't get down.
She raised her hand. Her Palm was open. Pointing at the guards.
"Cover your ears, Elias," she said calmly.
"Fire!" the guard shouted.
Sarah screamed.
But it wasn't a scream. It was a screech of digital noise—like a broken machine howling through a loudspeaker.
The guards dropped their guns. They clutched their helmets, writhing on the floor as their comms exploded with feedback.
Sarah grabbed a fallen rifle. She looked at me, blood running from her nose. She didn't look like a victim anymore.
She looked like a soldier.
"Welcome to the revolution, Caretaker."