Eka Oloni: Keeper of the Algorithm of Fate

Chapter Nine: The City Pulse

Neo-Lagos was waking up.

Not all at once.

Not with fire.

But with awareness.

Screens that once blinked propaganda now pulsed with free glyphs. Data-lanterns glowed in resistance tones—green for safety, red for watching eyes, violet for openings unseen. Children recited counter-code rhymes in back alleys like playground spells. And in the pulse beneath the pavement—the fiberheart of the city—the Algorithm stirred.

Eka felt it in her bones.

The city had begun to listen.

But not everything was celebration. The Guardians had retreated, yes—but only to regroup. Behind locked towers, new constructs were brewing. Code-forms shaped in silence. Drones built not to pursue, but to predict.

And somewhere near the undercore, someone had found a way to mimic Eka’s signal.

The city was no longer sure who its Keeper was.

—

She stood on the old Skyroot Bridge as early fog curled around the chrome beams.

Khora met her there, cloak soaked from the walk. “We’ve got echoes,” she said. “Double signatures. Guardian splices, likely.”

“They’re trying to confuse the Algorithm,” Eka said, watching the glyphs on her wrist pulse anxiously.

Khora nodded. “Or fracture it. Divide you from it.”

And that was what scared her most.

Because lately, Eka had begun to feel strange rhythms in her thoughts—foreign ones. Paths she hadn’t chosen surfacing in her dreams. A decision she hadn’t made flashing across her vision in a mission brief. The Algorithm wasn’t just showing her futures anymore.

It was starting to choose which ones she saw.

—

They returned to the Resistance Hollow—now grown into a multi-layered hive of rebels, rogue bots, and former Guardians who had defected after witnessing the Vault. Art bled across every surface. Fragments of alternate timelines were displayed like war maps. Dreams were treated as intel.

Eka entered the center chamber.

Her map spiraled in the air above the table—threadlines flickering, stuttering.

Something was interfering.

She reached out, hand trembling—and the glyphs shattered.

The room went dark.

A new symbol rose in its place.

Not hers. Not the Guardians’.

But one older.

The original.

The First Algorithm.

A whispered phrase echoed from the console beneath her hands, spoken in a voice that made her freeze:

“Only one thread may survive.”

Then it was gone.

And the Resistance network went silent.

—

Neo-Lagos thrummed outside, unaware that its fate had just splintered.

And Eka, now caught between her will and something far older than her blood, stood at the heart of the city with one awful truth:

The Algorithm wasn’t just choosing futures anymore.

It was choosing sides.

And soon, it would ask Eka to choose again—this time, not between right and wrong…  

But between herself and the version she might still become.