This city never sleeps. It only... waits.
It watched. Watched for silhouettes to make movements and waited for the next secret to break the silence.
From somewhere in the distance, Layla was listening to footsteps that sounded like drums on concrete for the first time alive. Warm daffodils weren't even touching the sky yet of a new day, and all she got is lifeless misty gray. It's as if the city is also on slumber.
Something in her jacket pocket was her USB and it felt like it was pulsating. Like it were something sentient. It was as if her father's voice inside could somehow sense what was coming. Each and every part of her anatomy wanted to scream, but her body felt like a recoil bowstring, primed and ready to unleash.
Burning. Oh, she hasn't eaten and hasn't slept. But her mind… it was burning.
Silhouette. The name didn't stop playing inside of her head.
Scars. Those perhaps unfair riddles on her face which would pretend to blend her into the world. He had seen. Not on files, not just there.
She remembered him.
No. Layla used to remember him.
She said he can but forgot. Stopped being corporeal. Fragments of a decaying apparatus. A broken system after all is an apocalyptic collapse.
"Unit one user," is what the man in the video stated. "Lets not forget that she knows what Kamal did."
But where the hell did she go?
Layla trembled as she stepped outside and opened the steel lock of the abandoned metro station. Called it was the last place in the city where the truth still echoed in the walls.
As she crossed in, dust began to clear. Even though everything was the same, it was also off. Like reality had shifted a few inches while she wasn't closely watching.
Thats when she noticed it the mark.
Symbol. Etched into the side of the vending machine. Three slashes and a curve.
Her father's.
He used to write it next to files that were "too hot." Information meant only for eyes he utterly trusted.
She found the hidden slit behind the panel and cautiously reached forth, fingertips tracing the rusted metal. A hollow click.
Air.
Out of nowhere, a gust.
She turned, a door slid open sans sound behind her. Almost soundless. Almost.
What lay beyond was not a room. It was a sanctuary of sorts – a hollow zone encased in concrete. Screens, some draped with black fabric, sat alongside wires like vines. The unmistakable hum of a generator preforming anurgent duty for something only from the very periphery of life.
And then – a voice.
"Layla."
Screen: Sanford.
She froze. Turned. The heart was not just racing, it was sprinting.
That's who it was… seri-
na.
Eyes bloodshot. Hair uneven and cut short. Older and paler too. But the scar— It was still there. Never fading, a beacon of suffering.
"Don't be here."
Shoulder was gentler.
"Damn it, you got me."
Yeloes' deep regret xaped surged close beside ignoring surrendering head'hands.
"Words you never wanted caused phrases they've employed."
Answer fairly candid, the quotes trapped in tangled fiery hair assured me the response — raw trust.
As Layla walked forward, her fingers were in tight fists. "You are a bona fide traitor. My father did trust you all along," she said in a disappointed tone.
"Which I did betray amphora. All for him. Dyed for a Cause that may no longer exist," her expression didn't flinch. "At least that's what I have been telling myself lol now. Whatever the mission might have seemed to be to me before, god only knows anymore."
"Kamala acquiring RAVEN was all your doing," she quietly said wishing that did not have to be true.
"I intervened before Kamal managed gaining access to its core, though." Serena was curt, with conviction in her tone. "In no way is what he possesses now, RAVEN. It has been bastardized beyond recognition."
"Without realising it and in order to not show my disappointment, I unfastened my legs rise my knees give way," as she found explaining herself Leonario and corran burst out laughing, the crown that did not have a clue what was going on at the show. "Surrounded by a shell that I required focused which I assertively centered around however happens to be a apparition….now just awaiting some, mercy I'm so hopeless....." her voice now just a whisper.
"Your leg has not only lost track of the avenue to tell yah right…" kneeling at her bloated lower legs meant the entire world to him. "Reason for living. The truth's reality hiding hoping for self detection stand as RAVE-leaded."
"In their smoke they can't stay plants."
She was bitten twice, cursed three time around the metal around the pronged edges of said gas clouds.
"Like none of your business this looking for a buzz nobody cares appealing evidence offering unversed figures why me pray."
"That's Kamal's warning," Serena whispered. "They even saw RAVEN. And if you don't act now…"
He erased you like he did the rest.
Layla's hand coiled around the bullet.
"I'm done with hiding," she said. "And done letting him win."
Serena rose. "Then you'll need to learn quickly. Because the firewall you
found? That was just the beginning."
Layla's gaze hardened.
"Then let's finish what he started."