The city of Varron-9 lay suspended over an endless green storm, its foundations held aloft by gravity anchors. Elya, a neural cartographer, spent her days mapping the unconscious terrain of colonists to detect latent syndromes.
Today, she scanned a new subject—an off-grid engineer found wandering the storm-walks, claiming the city wasn’t real. As she delved in, she saw Varron-9 flicker, its towering spires collapsing into raw code. Panicked, she disconnected. The engineer stared at her.
“You see it now, don’t you?” he whispered.
Elya stepped to the window, watching the storm churn below. If the city was fabricated, what was outside? Who had made them? The engineer extended his hand.
“We need to wake up.”
For the first time, Elya hesitated. Was the truth worth losing everything? Around her, reality pulsed—unraveling or solidifying—she couldn’t tell.
She took his hand.
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