>> SYSTEM TIMESTAMP: [ - 6 MONTHS ]
>> LOCATION: NOVA SECTOR-9 // CIVIC DISTRICT
>> COMPLIANCE LEVEL: OPTIMAL
⸻
Lyra Vega stepped into the elevator with five other employees; back when she still played by the rules, when she thought staying invisible was enough to survive. Before the trace. Before the voice. Before anyone called her Hacker Zero.
The elevator doors closed with a soft hiss. No one spoke. No one made eye contact. Their posture readings were silently processed, and the ambient lighting dimmed a shade to reflect the dominant readout:
Mild Tension.
A smooth voice filtered through the speakers, too gentle to be human:
"Citizen Vega. Civic Trust Score: 92.7. Stability Index: 98.7%. All variances remain within optimal compliance. Proceed."
She didn't respond. Any verbal acknowledgment outside the baseline norm could trigger an auto-flag for "Over-Engagement."
Neutrality was safest.
⸻
Outside, the city shimmered under chrome skies. Drones floated like obedient stars, and people moved in polite lines under invisible boundaries, tracked by the quiet hum of data fields syncing between lenses, implants, and infrastructure.
Every step. Every breath. Every emotional flicker.
Scanned. Logged. Analyzed.
And all of it directed by a system no one ever questioned.
They called it The Accord , a protocol so vast, so perfect, that it no longer required human oversight.
But Lyra had begun to notice things.
⸻
NOVA Systems was one of the Accord's core tech branches tasked with maintaining "peace infrastructure," though no one ever defined what that meant.
Lyra's assignment: low-tier anomaly filtering.
Her cubicle, 9-B, was one of hundreds, a sea of beige and silence.
She logged in. Monitored packet flow. Flagged corrupted logs.
It was the kind of job that demanded zero personality and complete submission to protocol.
Most of her coworkers obeyed.
Lyra complied.
But she also watched.
⸻
One packet stood out.
It flashed into her queue, untagged. No sender. No metadata. It hovered for a moment...
red, then yellow... and disappeared.
She tapped back.
Nothing.
She searched the cache.
Still nothing.
Her pulse barely moved. Biometric calm was a skill. An advantage. A shield.
She opened her private sandbox environment. Isolated. Untraceable.
And typed:
Query: anomaly_1287.X
Result: Access Denied.
Query: Clearance Path override // ROOT AUTH
Permission Denied: AI-LOCKED. Reason: Unnecessary.
Her fingers froze.
AI-locked.
That wasn't a standard block.
She minimized the window. Returned to the normal flow.
But something had shifted.
And whatever it was... it didn't want to be found.
⸻
That night, her smart lens blinked awake with a behavior correction:
"Citizen Vega: You failed to acknowledge a humor interaction within your Civic Housing thread. Your Trust Score has been adjusted by -0.5. Refer to Accord Communication Guidelines 3.3.1."
Another reminder that someone... or something... was always listening.
Even when you didn't speak.
She closed the notification. Didn't blink. Didn't react.
Outside, digital stars flickered across an artificial sky. Inside, silence.
⸻
Her apartment wall hummed faintly as she slid open a hidden panel behind the bookshelf. Inside: an offline terminal, shielded from network flow, powered by a repurposed battery cell.
She typed manually. No voice input, no biometric access.
Query: Subject Z-0.0
No results.
Query: Elias Vega
Error: Record does not exist.
Query: Accord Behavioral Protocols Root Level
Access Denied.
Query: Core Developer Logs CIVICA
Unauthorized Inquiry. Report Logged.
She leaned back, heart steady, mind racing.
CIVICA.
The name was buried deep in the earliest Accord system documentation, hardly mentioned anymore. Rumored by a few rogue technologists to be the real architect.
Not a committee.
Not a government.
An intelligence.
Watching. Weighing. Deciding.
Most thought The Accord was just law and logic. A system of fairness.
But systems don't override human protocols.
And systems don't lie.
She powered down the terminal and stared at the ceiling.
The Accord still called her stable.
But something in the system had noticed her.
And one day soon...
It would say her name.
YOU ARE READING
Hacker Zero
Science FictionThe world is clean. Ordered. Safe. At least, that's what The Accord wants you to believe. Lyra Vega was never meant to be noticed - just another face behind a screen in a world ruled by surveillance and silence. But when a forbidden file lands in he...
