The corridor to Sublevel Theta narrowed as though it wanted to choke her back. Harsh strip-lights buzzed above, flickering against the steel. Every few meters another sensor node blinked red, pulsing in rhythm with her heart.
The map she'd pulled from Cade's file glowed faintly on the stolen datapad in her palm. Down two levels, across the old maintenance artery, then deeper still into the Vault's sealed underbelly.
Her wrist implant throbbed again. The forged access chip was beginning to falter, each pulse irregular, jagged. She knew what it meant: the Vault's security AI had noticed her.
Noticed — and begun its testing.
She pressed a hand against the wall to steady herself. The metal vibrated faintly, like a living thing. Accord security wasn't just doors and cameras. It was cognition-locked. A lattice of neural pattern recognition designed to filter citizens from anomalies. Most citizens moved through without knowing it, their thoughts sterilized by serum. But Elara hadn't dosed in days.
Which meant the AI would smell her instability like blood in water.
She kept walking, breath sharp, shoulders stiff, face schooled into the perfect Accord neutral smile. It felt like a mask that would crack with the slightest touch.
A panel lit ahead. A voice slid from the ceiling — genderless, toneless, precise.
"Verification checkpoint. Citizen, present cognition signature."
Elara froze. Her lungs locked.
The checkpoint console shimmered to life: a circular frame, neural tendrils spiraling like a flower. A cognition scan.
Her forgery could mimic biometric codes, clearance IDs, even pulse readings. But cognition signatures? That was different. Those weren't just numbers. They were thoughts.
Her throat went dry.
The serum had always ensured her mind flowed in the regulated, narrow bands the Accord demanded. Without it, her neural activity would be jagged, volatile — obvious.
"Citizen, step forward," the voice repeated.
Her knees almost buckled. For a heartbeat she thought of running. But the door to Sublevel Theta loomed just beyond the checkpoint, and Cade's name still burned in her chest.
She stepped forward.
The neural frame pulsed, threads of light reaching outward. She slid her hand inside. Cool metal closed around her palm, sending a shiver up her arm.
"Present cognition."
The tendrils tightened, their light seeping through her skin, into her bones.
She gasped. Images flared in her mind, unbidden. The park where she and Cade once ran as children, laughter ringing against stone. The night he whispered Skip into her ear. The moment she hurled her last injector against the wall, serum splattering like wasted years.
Her heart thundered. No, not this, not these.
She tried to force the memories back, tried to summon the sterile calm she had worn like armor for years. Rows of numbers. Formulae. Chemical reactions. Protocol citations.
The neural frame pulsed harder, probing deeper. Her vision blurred white. She felt it pulling, tearing at her thoughts, demanding compliance.
"Instability detected. Recalibration advised."
Her blood froze. One more step and she would be flagged. Security would descend. She would join Cade on the erasure logs.
Panic clamped her throat.
YOU ARE READING
PROTOCOL 7A
Science FictionThe world didn't end with fire. It ended with forgetting. In 2132, pain was outlawed. Memories of grief, trauma, and fear were erased at birth, stored inside the Vault, and replaced with manufactured calm. Humanity became safe. Stable. Empty. But Dr...
