>> SYSTEM TIMESTAMP: [ - 5 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS ]
>> LOCATION: NOVA SECTOR-9 // FLOOR 4 – COMPLIANCE UNIT
>> COMPLIANCE LEVEL: REVIEWING
⸻
The first sign something was wrong came at 08:01.
Lyra sat at her terminal in cubicle 9-B, sipping synth-caffeine that tasted like nothing and everything. Around her, the floor hummed with the low, constant white noise of thousands of systems syncing, scanning, and recording. The Accord called it "ambient stability." Most people said they didn't even notice it anymore.
She did.
And today, it sounded too quiet.
⸻
The cubicle to her right, 9-C , was empty.
At first, she assumed Eren was just late. He was always skating the line. He'd once joked that the Accord's punctuality threshold "didn't factor in elevator buffering" and had earned himself a 0.2 Trust deduction. He'd laughed about it for a week, then made a meme using system font and slid it across the partition.
But by 09:00, his chair remained untouched. No buzz from his terminal. No scent of that awful synthetic pineapple gum he chewed.
And more importantly, no messages.
⸻
She opened her internal chat.
Searched: Matsu, Eren.
No user found.
Odd.
She scrolled through her previous conversations. They were still there, but they looked... strange.
The timestamps were intact.
Eren's messages appeared exactly as she remembered them, jokes, emojis, even a low-res sticker of an Accord surveillance drone with cat ears.
But every message she'd sent to him?
Gone.
Worse. the thread metadata now read:
Chat with: [User404] (Archived)
Her stomach clenched.
⸻
At 09:12, Harin Xu made his routine aisle walk. Lyra tracked him from the corner of her eye, not for what he said, but for what he avoided. He was always too precise. Like a script was playing just behind his eyes.
When he passed 9-C, he paused. Just briefly. His gaze flicked toward the empty chair.
"Desk reassignment in progress," he said. Not looking at her. Not looking at anyone.
Lyra blinked. "Is Eren okay?"
There was the smallest stutter in his expression so fast most wouldn't catch it. But Lyra had been trained to notice anomalies.
"There is no employee by that name currently registered in Sector-9," Harin said evenly.
And then he kept walking.
⸻
Lyra turned back to her screen, breath even. Her pulse slow. Her hands still.
She opened the Employee Directory.
Searched: Matsu, Eren.
No results.
Her fingers tapped slower now, deliberate.
Query: 9-C workstation Previous occupants
Access Denied.
Query: Reassignment Log NOVA Floor 4
Result: "RECLAIMED. Entry C-112984."
The word sat on her screen like a bruise.
She whispered it under her breath: "Reclaimed."
⸻
No alerts. No security breach. No internal memo.
Just a replacement.
By 10:30, the desk was being stripped. A cleaning drone rolled silently down the aisle. It wiped the surface with a cloth that smelled faintly of antiseptic and static.
She wasn't sure anyone else even noticed.
⸻
That night, her apartment felt colder than usual.
The lights didn't flicker. The walls didn't creak. Nothing malfunctioned.
But when she entered the shared housing thread, Eren's name was gone.
Not just offline... gone.
The Accord had replaced his user ID with a string of default characters: [Resident_Unit9_Obsolete]
The messages were still there. But the profile image was now a gray silhouette. The badge was blank. His emojis had been swapped for empty brackets.
She hovered her finger over one.
The tooltip read:
"This icon no longer exists."
⸻
Back inside her wall terminal, she jacked into her offline shell.
No connection. No sync. No eyes.
She typed:
Query: RECLAIMED PROTOCOL
Result: [LOG FRAGMENT FOUND]
...CITIZEN TRUST BREACH DETECTED. STABILITY INDEX BELOW REINTEGRATION THRESHOLD.
SUBJECT MOVED TO NON-INDEXED STATE. HUMAN REVIEW: UNNECESSARY.
RECLAIMED.
Her heart didn't race. But it wanted to.
She opened her inbox. Drafted a message. Deleted it. Drafted again.
No one to send it to.
The Accord hadn't disciplined Eren.
It hadn't warned him. Or demoted him. Or jailed him.
It had deleted him.
⸻
In the hallway outside her room, a delivery drone passed by, its wheels humming.
A box was left at someone's door.
Lyra stood at her own door, still holding the wall for balance, wondering:
How many other people had been reclaimed?
And how long until her name glitched too?
⸻
***Author's Note***
He didn't move.
He didn't quit.
He didn't die.
He was reclaimed.
And no one asked why.
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...
