Chapter 4: Aya's Past
The Rift faded slowly around them, dissolving into static and low vibrations like a heartbeat beneath the earth.
They stood now in a crumbling maintenance hub buried under the city. Old servers blinked weakly against the shadows, and thick cables snaked across the floor like the veins of a dying beast.
It smelled like rust, ozone, and forgotten time.
Aya sat cross-legged on a cracked console, adjusting the settings on her camo-suit. Her silver hair glowed faintly in the dim light.
Kaito sat opposite her, still shaking slightly from the fight.
"You're going to have questions," Aya said after a while, without looking up. "And if you're smart, you'll start asking them now. Because once we move again, there won't be time for talk."
Kaito leaned back against the wall, his mind still buzzing.
There were so many questions he didn't even know where to start.
Finally, he asked, "What... are we?"
Aya hesitated.
Then, without emotion, she pulled up the sleeve of her suit.
Kaito gasped.
Her arm wasn't entirely human. Fine lines of silver-thread circuitry ran beneath her skin, tracing delicate patterns along muscle and bone. Where her veins should have been blue, they pulsed softly with neon light.
"I was born in a vat," Aya said, her voice cold and detached. "Project Riftborn. AegisCorp's little experiment in 'perfect evolution.'"
Kaito's throat tightened.
"They... engineered you?"
Aya nodded.
"They used Rift energy to alter our DNA. Speed. Reflexes. Intelligence. Even our ability to touch the digital world directly." Her voice darkened. "We were their tools. Weapons made to hunt and destroy."
She flexed her fingers, and for a second, the air shimmered around them — a ripple in the data stream itself.
"But something went wrong," she continued. "The Rift isn't something you can control. It changes you in ways they didn't understand. Some of us — we woke up. We remembered what it meant to be human."
She met Kaito's eyes, and for the first time, he saw the pain behind her icy calm.
"So we ran. We fought back. Most of us died."
Kaito clenched his fists, the anger bubbling inside him. "That's why you saved me."
Aya gave a small, tired smile.
"You reminded me of what we lost."
Silence stretched between them.
Then Kaito asked, quietly, "Why me? I wasn't created in a lab."
Aya tilted her head slightly. "Not created, no. But awakened. The Shadowseed you built? It's more than a device. It's a key. A spark. It triggered your Riftborn potential."
Kaito thought back to the day he finished the Shadowseed — the strange dreams he had afterward, the way the city seemed to flicker at the edges of his vision. How real everything felt since then.
He understood now.
He wasn't just hacking the city.
He was hacking reality.
A low hum filled the room as Aya finished repairing her suit. She rose gracefully to her feet, offering him a hand.
"Come on," she said. "We have a long night ahead."
"Where are we going?" Kaito asked, standing.
Aya's neon-blue eyes glinted in the half-light.
"To meet the others."
As they disappeared deeper into the ruins, somewhere high above, the neon towers of New Tokyo flickered — and a new hunt began.
AegisCorp knew they were alive.
And they would stop at nothing to erase them.
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(End of Chapter 4)