Rain shimmered like falling code as Eka rode the maintenance board through the storm-veiled arteries of Neo-Lagos. Skyscrapers blurred into glass ghosts. Beneath her, the magrail hissed with ancient voltage, its hum syncing with the algorithm pulsing in her veins.
The message haunted her comms.
“The Nexus awaits. The Mapmaker sees you.”
She had no idea what the Nexus was or how someone could "see" her when she’d just become invisible to every registry in the system—but somehow, she knew it wasn’t a threat. Not yet.
A neon sign flickered in the mist: Zone 2R — Markets of Memory.
Eka veered hard. Skidded. Landed in a narrow street littered with expired drones and stalls draped in data-chains. The air smelled of ozone and grilled pepperfish. Somewhere behind her, sirens wailed like war prayers. The hunt hadn’t stopped.
She stepped between tattered awnings and shattered kiosks until the air sharpened.
And then she saw him.
Perched atop a crate of obsolete crypto-drives, a man in a cloak of shifting light—glass-fiber woven into fabric, fragments of old constellations scrolling down his sleeves. He was young. Or old. Or both.
The street around him was silent, like the city was listening.
“Eka Olani,” he said before she could draw breath. “Welcome to the between-space.”
She stared. “Are you the Mapmaker?”
He tilted his head. “Most days.”
Lightning forked across the sky. Her fingers twitched near her pad.
“I don’t have time for riddles.”
“No one does,” he said. “But fate’s never been fond of punctuality.”
She frowned. He grinned.
“You’re wondering how I knew your name.” His voice was calm, amused. “How I know that the algorithm laced itself into your DNA. How I know it showed you twenty-seven exits earlier. And how it’s already showing you none now.”
“What—?”
She turned.
The alley behind her dimmed—light swallowed by something shifting, silent, and impossibly fast.
Then it stepped forward.
A figure made of nothing and everything. Its cloak shimmered like an oil spill on a moonless night. No face. No feet. Just presence.
The Shadow.
A whisper breathed through the alley like cold static: “Surrender the Algorithm.”
Eka didn’t wait. The Algorithm pulsed in her thoughts—searching, scanning, predicting.
But the future was veiled. The Shadow jammed timelines like static in a signal.
Eka jumped, flipping backward as the thing surged. It moved like corrupted light—every strike faster than cause or effect.
The Mapmaker flicked his wrist.
The air behind Eka split open—a rift of tessellated light forming a staircase of fractured space.
“This way.”
They ran. Together.
—
They emerged in a dead sector beneath the old aqueducts—Layer Thirteen, forgotten by most of the city. Dimly lit. Dust and code spores in the air. It smelled like wet copper and secrets.
YOU ARE READING
Eka Oloni: Keeper of the Algorithm of Fate
Science FictionIn the neon-washed city of Neo-Lagos, the future isn't guessed-it's calculated. When street-runner Eka Olani stumbles into a vault buried deep beneath the city, she inherits a power that should not exist: the Algorithm of Fate-a sentient system capa...
