The service tunnel was not a place meant for people.
The moment Leo crossed the seam, the world collapsed inward. The dim glow of the dead node shattered into a thousand fragments of light, each one streaking past him like a meteor. There was no ground. No sky. Only a narrow corridor of code, its walls pulsing with unstable patterns that shifted faster than his mind could follow.
The tunnel hummed with an energy that made his form vibrate, as if every line of code that made him him were being tested for structural integrity.
"Okay," Leo muttered, his voice warping as it echoed down the corridor. "This is officially worse than the vending machine."
The system's voice flickered faintly in his mind, distorted by the interference. "Warning. Network instability detected. Data cohesion decreasing."
"I get it," Leo snapped. "Everything is terrible."
He forced himself forward. There was no sensation of walking here—only the act of willing himself ahead. Each movement sent ripples through his form, the edges of his silhouette blurring into the tunnel's shifting walls.
The further he went, the louder the tunnel became.
Not in sound, exactly. In… presence.
Fragments of data drifted through the corridor like debris in low gravity. Half-formed images brushed against him: a flicker of a child's laughter, a smear of red that might have been blood, the echo of a voice calling a name that wasn't his. Each fragment tugged at him, trying to pull pieces of his corrupted memory loose.
His chest tightened.
"Don't panic," he whispered to himself, remembering Maya's words. "Hold onto your name."
"Leo," he said aloud.
The corridor pulsed.
The fragments recoiled, drifting away from him like startled fish.
For a moment, the tunnel steadied.
Then something moved behind him.
A ripple passed through the code, flowing against the direction of the data stream. The tunnel's walls darkened, the patterns resolving into sharp, angular shapes that cut through the glow like knives.
The Data Police had found the service tunnel.
Leo's pulse spiked. He surged forward, pushing himself harder, faster. The corridor narrowed, compressing around him. The walls scraped at his edges, pulling threads of light from his form. He felt… thinner. Less stable.
A memory surfaced unbidden.
Rain. The smell of wet concrete. His sneakers slipping on slick pavement. A shout behind him—his name, sharp with fear.
"Leo!"
The tunnel lurched.
The fragment of memory wrapped around him, trying to take hold. For a terrifying second, he was fourteen again, sprinting through a real street, lungs burning, heart pounding—
"No," he gasped. "That's not now. That's not now."
He forced the memory away, clinging to the thin thread of the present. The corridor brightened slightly as the fragment dissolved back into static.
The Data Police presence grew heavier behind him, the hum of their pursuit vibrating through the tunnel. Thin threads of blue light began to snake through the corridor walls, probing, searching.
Leo didn't look back.
He pushed forward until the tunnel opened abruptly into blinding light.
The world slammed back into shape around him.
He burst out of a cracked streetlight screen in a deserted alley, the neon glow of Neon Spire City washing over him in harsh waves. The alley was narrow and cluttered with holographic trash ads that flickered weakly, their images distorted by age and neglect.
Leo staggered, his form flickering violently as the strain of the tunnel caught up with him. He felt… wrong. Hollow in places he couldn't quite identify.
"Leo!"
Maya's voice cut through the haze. She was crouched at the far end of the alley, her device glowing as she frantically typed. The relief on her face when she saw him was immediate and raw.
"You made it," she breathed.
"Barely," Leo said, his voice thin. "That tunnel is… not a fun place."
She hurried toward him, stopping just short of where his form hovered above the damp pavement. Her eyes scanned him, brow furrowing.
"You're destabilized," she said. "Your edges are glitching."
"I feel… lighter," he admitted. "Like parts of me got left behind."
Maya's jaw tightened. "That's the risk with service tunnels. They're full of residual data. If you brush against the wrong fragment, it can overwrite or strip parts of you."
"That's comforting," Leo said weakly.
Before she could respond, the streetlight behind him flickered violently. The glow pulsed, then split into jagged seams of light.
Maya swore. "They followed you."
The seam widened, and the first Data Police unit began to emerge, its angular form forcing itself through the narrow screen with mechanical precision.
Maya grabbed Leo's arm—or rather, the space where his arm existed. Her hand passed through him, but the intent was clear. "We can't fight them," she said urgently. "We run. Again."
"Where?" Leo asked.
She glanced down the alley, then up at the glowing map projected from her device. "There's another blind spot two blocks over. An old subway entrance with a dead screen network. If we can get you there, I can mask your signature long enough to probe the lab's outer layer."
Leo nodded, forcing himself to focus despite the disorienting lightness in his form. "Lead the way."
They moved.
Maya sprinted through the rain-slick alley, boots splashing through shallow puddles. Leo jumped from screen to screen alongside her—flickering through a shop window, bursting from a cracked transit display, slipping through a malfunctioning street sign.
Behind them, the Data Police tore through the digital fabric of the city, their pursuit leaving jagged scars that sealed themselves seconds later.
As Leo leapt into the cracked subway entrance display, another fragment of memory brushed against him—stronger this time.
A white hallway. The hum of machines. The spiral-eye symbol painted on a door. A man's voice, low and urgent: "You shouldn't be here."
Leo gasped as he emerged into the dim subway node, the memory burning behind his eyes.
"Maya," he said, breathless. "I think… I remember more."
Her eyes snapped to his. "What did you see?"
He swallowed. "The lab. I was inside it."
The Data Police units burst into the alley behind them, their blue gaze locking onto the faint glow of the subway node entrance.
Maya's expression hardened with determination.
"Then we're closer than I thought," she said. "And Forever Cloud is going to try a lot harder to erase you now."
The subway node's lights flickered.
Somewhere in the depths of the network, alarms began to ring.