Chapter 1
Rain ceased to exist nearly two centuries ago. The poisoned atmosphere had long since lost the strength to weep.
Instead, ash drifted endlessly through the sky, coating the towering chrome skyscrapers of Eryndor City in a dull silver sheen.
Neon advertisements pierced the perpetual twilight, flickering across the dense layers of elevated highways that wound between buildings like glowing veins.
Thousands of autonomous drones glided silently overhead, while millions of immortal citizens continued their lives below without fear, urgency... or purpose.
Death had disappeared. Crime had nearly vanished with it. And so had the police.
After all, there wasn't any requirement for the police in this civilization.
Captain Lyra Voss stood alone beneath the holographic emblem hanging over Precinct Zero.
The massive shield rotated slowly in the darkness before glitching for half a second. The words beneath it remained unchanged.
HUMAN CIVIL PROTECTION DIVISION
ACTIVE OFFICERS: 1
Lyra stared at the number without emotion.
One. Always one.
Twenty years ago there had been hundreds. A century ago there had been millions.
Now… Only her.
The badge clipped against her black trench coat felt heavier with each passing year.
She often wondered why she still wore it.
Most people no longer remembered what police officers were supposed to do.
Arguments ended with memory therapy.
Violence was corrected through emotional recalibration.
Every injury could be repaired. Every disease cured. Every traumatic experience erased.
Even murder had become nearly impossible.
Not because people had become kinder… But because humanity had learned to repair everything.
Everything except the human mind.
A soft chime echoed inside her neural implant.
PRIORITY TRANSMISSION RECEIVED.
LEVEL OMEGA.
Her grey eyes narrowed.
Omega requests almost never happened anymore.
The projection unfolded before her. “Captain Voss.”
The synthetic voice belonged to the Central Administration. “A homicide has been reported.”
For several seconds she simply stared. “...Repeat.”
“A homicide.”
The word sounded almost foreign.
Her fingers unconsciously tightened around the edge of her coat.
Someone… Had actually died.
The medical tower pierced through the clouds like a blade of black glass.
Emergency drones hovered around its upper levels while holographic barricades sealed the entrance.
Engineers. Researchers. Medical officials.
Everyone stood outside whispering.
No one entered. No one dared.
As Lyra crossed the security barrier, conversations abruptly stopped.
People watched her with open curiosity.
“Is that…” Some younger researchers even pointed. “A police officer?”
“I thought they only existed in museums.”
Lyra ignored them. She was accustomed to being treated like a relic.
Inside, the silence was overwhelming.
The reception hall smelled sterile, but beneath the antiseptic lingered something unfamiliar.
Copper. Blood. Real blood.
It had been years since she'd smelled it.
The elevator carried her to the seventy-second floor.
When its doors slid open, shattered medical drones littered the hallway.
One had been sliced perfectly in half.
Another continuously repeated, “Please remain calm.”
“Please remain calm.”
“Please remain calm.”
…Before short-circuiting into silence.
The reinforced treatment chamber at the end of the corridor hung open.
Its blast door had been torn completely off. Not exploded. Ripped away.
Lyra slowed her pace. Her instincts stirred for the first time in years.
Someone dangerous had been here.
The treatment room looked like a battlefield.
Glass cylinders had burst apart.
Diagnostic screens flickered with corrupted code.
Fragments of white alloy were scattered across the floor, twisted beyond recognition.
Whatever machine had occupied the room had been deliberately destroyed.
Near the center lay a man. Dr. Caelum Arden.
One of humanity's greatest cybernetic scientists.
His silver hair was stained crimson. His breathing had already stopped.
Lyra crouched beside him.
The wound was clean.
One precise strike through the chest. It looked professional, deliberate and there seemed to be no hesitation whoever did this to him.
Her gaze shifted toward the remains of the destroyed machine. “...What happened here?”
A quiet voice answered from behind. “I wish I knew.”
Lyra turned.
The woman standing in the doorway appeared younger than she expected.
Long dark hair framed a pale face exhausted by sleepless nights.
Her white laboratory coat was stained with dried blood. It didn't look like her own.
She held herself remarkably still, though her trembling hands betrayed her composure.
‘My name is Dr. Mira Arden.” Her voice cracked only slightly. “He was my father.”
Lyra rose slowly. “I'm sorry.”
“No worries.” Silence stretched between them.
Mira looked toward the broken machine. “That…” she whispered, “...was MEDIS-7.”
“The prototype?”
Mira nodded. “My father's greatest achievement.”
Lyra walked closer.
The android's torso had been pulverized beyond repair.
Its synthetic skull had been crushed from the inside outward.
Whoever destroyed it had wanted to erase every trace of its memory core.
Not simply disable it. They wanted to destroy it, erase it and make sure it didn't exist anymore.
Interesting. Very interesting.
Several minutes later they sat inside a private observation room overlooking the city.
Neither woman touched the tea that had been placed before them.
Mira finally spoke. “My father specialized in cognitive reconstruction.”
“I know.” Lyra slowly nodded.
“He believed memories defined humanity more than biology ever could.”
Lyra remained silent, listening to her, hoping that she could find some clues of whoever did this to him through her words.
“He built MEDIS-7 to treat neurological collapse.”
“A doctor.” Lyra murmured.
“More than that.” Mira managed a weak smile. “It could understand people better than they understood themselves.”
Something about that sentence unsettled Lyra.
Machines weren't supposed to understand people. They were supposed to assist them.
But this civilization had forgotten that.
“What happened today?” Lyra changed the topic.
She couldn't offer Mira comfort but what she could do was to find the culprit.
This was the first time in a while she got such a case and she couldn't let it go.
Mira stared through the glass, parting her lips. “There was a patient.”
“Name?”
“We don't know.” She shook her head, biting her lips.
Lyra looked up. “You don't know?”
“He had no registered identity.”
“Impossible.”
“It should have been.”
The scientist rubbed her forehead. “When Security found him three days ago, every biometric record had been erased.”
No DNA history. No citizenship. No memory archive. No neural signature.
Nothing.
For the first time in over a hundred years… A human existed who couldn't be identified.
“He kept saying strange things.”
“Such as?”
“That everyone was asleep.”
“That history had been rewritten.”
“That humanity had forgotten its creator.”
Lyra listened carefully. “He sounded delusional?”
“That's what we believed.” Mira lowered her eyes. “My father wanted to restore his damaged memories.”
“And today?”
“He insisted on speaking only with MEDIS-7.”
“The android?” Lyra frowned.
“...Yes.”
“What happened after that?”
Mira swallowed. “I don't know. I left to attend a council meeting. When I came back…” Her voice almost disappeared. “...Everything was already like this.”
Lyra watched her carefully. Her grief, shock, confusion nothing appeared to be forced but still… Something didn't fit.
Not yet. There was something strange.
*****
The forensic drones finished scanning the room shortly before midnight.
Every result made less sense than the last.
No fingerprints. No weapon. No surveillance footage.
The hospital's entire internal archive had been erased during a blackout lasting precisely four minutes and twelve seconds.
It wasn’t simply corrupted. It got surgically deleted.
Someone knew exactly what they were doing.
As Lyra prepared to leave, one of the technicians hurried toward her.
“Captain.”
He handed over a fractured memory crystal recovered beneath MEDIS-7's remains.
“It survived the blast.”
“Can it be restored?” Lyra asked, her voice finally hopeful.
He hesitated. “Maybe… But only fragments.”
Lyra slipped it into her evidence case.
Fragments were enough.
Sometimes… Fragments told the truth better than complete memories ever could.
She paused one last time beside Dr. Arden's body.
Immortality had convinced humanity that every ending could be reversed.
Tonight had proven otherwise.
Someone had reminded the world that death still existed.
And whoever had done it wasn't finished.
Far beyond the glowing skyline, hidden somewhere beneath the endless polar night, a solitary figure watched the city lights from the ruins of an abandoned transmission tower.
His face remained concealed behind a cracked respirator.
The wind carried radioactive snow across the frozen wasteland.
In his gloved hand rested a small metallic data chip—the only thing he had taken before escaping the laboratory.
He looked toward the distant city and smiled faintly. “Stupid. They're already following the wrong trail.”
Then he disappeared into the blizzard.