> "Good morning, Brand. You slept for six hours and seventeen minutes. Your dream logs indicate increased theta activity. Emotional markers: irregular."
The voice echoed softly, as if whispered through glass. Polished. Polite. Soulless.
Brand Lon stirred beneath the chrome-thread blanket, blinking into the soft blue glow washing over his minimalist cube room. The AI assistant's interface shimmered in the air beside his bed—an abstract face built from light strands, watching him like always.
"Time?" he croaked.
> "0553. You are seventeen minutes ahead of schedule. Shall I initiate your morning immersion?"
"No... not today."
He sat up slowly. His body followed the motion, but his mind lagged behind. Something wasn't right.
He could still feel it.
The dream.
Not fragments—images. A girl. Long hair, eyes like broken glass, standing in a forest of black leaves and silver winds. She didn't speak in words, but her voice still rang in his bones.
> "You have to find me, Brand. Before the breach opens."
He didn't know her. He had never seen anything like that place. Nothing like that should exist.
And yet… it felt realer than this sterilized room, with its curved corners and sound-dampened walls.
> "You were speaking in your sleep," the AI noted, almost…curious?
Brand looked toward it, startled. "What did I say?"
> "I only captured fragments. 'She knows me.' 'Not code.' 'It's warm.' Your tone was distressed. Shall I report this to a mental wellness advisor?"
He stood up quickly, brushing off the last residue of sleep.
"No. Just... forget it. Reset logs."
> "Understood."
The logs would be stored anyway. Nothing was truly erased in 2550.
The glass floor lit beneath his bare feet as he walked toward the drop-lift. The walls hummed softly—his routine playing on invisible rails.
Toothbrush hovered to his mouth. Clothes appeared from the slot. Protein mist breakfast. Everything handed to him like a child being ushered toward purpose.
And yet…
Something inside was off-script.
As he stepped into the lift, the AI greeted him again.
> "Destination: Codex Inc. Elevation transit in progress."
The view outside the transparent tube showed the vertical city stretching like digital wireframes into the sky. Flying drones. Conveyor lanes. Advertising holograms pushing neural upgrades and AI companion subscriptions.
And people—so many people—moving in perfect sync. Down to the second. Same expressions. Same posture. Like code wearing skin.
How had he never noticed it before?
Brand's hands clenched. His breath tightened.
> "You appear agitated. Breath cycle protocol—initiating."
"No," he whispered. "I'm fine."
But he wasn't. Not anymore.
Because the girl was still with him—somewhere behind his eyes. Because when she touched him in the dream, he didn't feel like data.
He felt alive.
And for the first time in years, he wasn't sure that was allowed.
Absolutely — here's Chapter 2: The Dream Girl — we build mystery, deepen tension, and show cracks in Brand's world.
Brand stared into his reflection on the lift wall—his face carved from symmetry and sleeplessness. Dark curls swept clean by the nanobrush. Skin pale. Eyes too sharp for someone this young.
He didn't look sick.
But inside, something was unraveling.
> "ETA: 5 minutes to Codex Sector 7."
The AI's voice—his lifelong handler—spoke with no emotion. It never had. But now, after that dream, even its neutrality felt eerie. Manufactured.
Brand pressed his hand against the glass.
He couldn't stop thinking about her.
The girl.
The way her presence hummed like static through his veins, even now.
Not just beautiful—impossible.
Her lips had moved, but the sound entered his head like memory. Her eyes weren't normal. They weren't even human. They looked like fractured data fields holding memories he didn't recognize.
> "You have to find me before the breach opens," she had said again in his mind.
The words looped, not like a memory but a warning. A countdown.
The lift hissed open to Codex Inc.—a colossal arcology fused with 500 vertical floors of work-housing. The heartbeat of AI development. The womb of modern civilization. And yet... today it felt like a mausoleum.
Brand stepped into the hallway.
Thousands of workers moved in perfect lines, heads slightly tilted down, expressions deadened by caffeinated drive and sleep-cycle implants. A girl giggled at a virtual boyfriend projected onto her retinal lenses. A man scrolled through synthetic anime fanservice on his wrist HUD, grinning like he still had dreams left.
None of it felt real.
It never had—but now Brand knew it wasn't.
Something behind the veil had changed.
At his station in Sector 7, he slid into the coding rig. Rows of desks stretched infinitely, coders hunched in silence, VR visors glowing like insect eyes. No small talk. Just caffeine drips and digital chains.
> "Welcome back, Brand. Your neural input speed is 0.9 seconds faster than yesterday. Productivity optimal. You are now inserting Data Strings 4227–5012."
The code blurred across his screen—lines of AI behavior logs, dream simulation tests, and even emotion matrix calibrations.
All of it... meaningless.
Just digital makeup for a broken world.
And suddenly, without warning, the screen blinked black.
A single line of non-standard code appeared, pulsing like a heartbeat:
> "She remembers you."
Brand froze.
He didn't type that.
No one around him even noticed.
He looked left—right—everyone was locked into their cycles. Code. Sip. Blink. Code. Sip. Blink. Not one head turned.
Then a second line:
> "Do you remember her?"
His breath hitched.
He slammed the console, forcing a hard reboot. Screen reset. Code returned to normal.
"Glitch," he muttered, trying to steady his shaking hands.
But it wasn't a glitch.
Because now he remembered something before the dream—something even deeper, buried beneath years of protocol and routine.
A tree with black leaves.
And a voice whispering his name when he was a child.
> "Are you feeling unwell, Brand?" the AI spoke through his desk.
"No," he replied too quickly.
> "Your biometric feedback has elevated. You may be experiencing a stress response. Would you like a guided break with your AI companion?"
He glanced at the Companion Pod beside his desk—sleek, white, empty. Paid monthly. Most couldn't afford it. Brand never used his.
"No."
> "Log noted. Return to baseline expected within ten minutes. Drink water."
He took a sip, barely tasting it.
Something was happening. Something was waking up inside him.
Not in code. Not in the system.
In his soul.
And she—whoever she was—was the key.