Corrupted Interface

The privacy glass of Hannah Riven's apartment pulsed faintly with a heartbeat of city light. Neon veins ran through the polymer walls, bleeding cyan and vermilion through the frosted panes. Her apartment was a narrow tower cell, lined with repurposed data terminals, neural jacks, and the twitching filigree of illegal code tattoos stretched across modular surfaces. The constant ambient hum of power conduits was almost comforting—a lullaby of digital life whispering just beneath the surface.

She sat cross-legged on the floor, haloed by the soft stutter of diagnostic lights as her rig ran pre-checks. The surface of her desk was a cluttered landscape of chip mods, stripped-down I/O nodes, and tangled silver wire that shimmered faintly in the neon glow. The scent of ozone and warmed plastic clung to everything.

A holo-display floated before her, humming with anticipation. Her reflection, half-shadow, and neon glint stared back with weary resolve. Unwashed black hair clung to her cheeks. Lips parted but unspeaking. Her eyes, sleepless and sharp, traced the flickering readout one last time.

[NEUREALITY SYSTEMS: FINAL DIVE CONFIRMATION – 06:00 NOST] Subject: Riven, Hannah [Status: SYNC CONFIRMED] Proceed with prep for dive at local site HQ. Consent protocols are locked. Bio-loop isolation will engage upon arrival.

She exhaled breath, fogging the cool blue light of the screen.

A flick of her fingers dismissed the display. The rig shut down in cascading light. The silence afterward was immense.

"Just another dream," she muttered. "But maybe this one will actually mean something."---

Outside, Neo-Ossa groaned to life: the distant shriek of overhead transit, the moan of synthetic gulls circling upper dome towers, and the occasional scream dampened by distance. Far below, streetlights flickered like glitching stars. Hannah slid into her combat-weave bodysuit, a matte black garment with threadbare seams. She didn't care. This wasn't a mission to impress. It was a ritual—half suicide, half escape. As she zipped it up, her fingers lingered on the scar beneath her clavicle—the one shaped like a reboot glyph.

The kitchen smelled of synthetic fruit syrup and protein starch, bright under sunlamps, trying too hard to mimic dawn. Family breakfasts in the Riven household were rare, but they were staged performances of unity. Seraphine Riven, matriarch and one-time neural stylist for posthuman elites floated through the space in a silk robe embedded with flickering gemstone code. Her lips matched her nails: blood-glossed and perfect, her poise immaculate despite the early hour.

Lexi sat cross-legged on the counter, blonde hair in chaotic waves, sucking on a nutrition pipette like it was a flirtation. Her ocular lenses glimmered pink. She wore a crop top that seemed deliberately coded to clash with her otherwise pristine makeup.

"So," Lexi purred, "are we gonna get a live stream of big sis moaning her way through the matrix? Or is it NDA-locked kink?"

Hannah rolled her eyes but smirked.

"Don't make me lock you out of the feed loop. Again.”

Lexi giggled and leaned back against the wall, swinging one leg in lazy arcs.

Micah entered last, quiet and shy, hoodie sleeves swallowing his hands. He lingered at Hannah's side, close but unspeaking. His eyes darted between her and the floor, worry etched in his soft features.

Seraphine sipped her glow coffee and regarded her eldest with feline calm.

"Don't let them own your body," she said softly. "Even if they rent your mind."

Her voice had a distant edge to it as if she were quoting something older, darker.

Micah slipped something into Hannah's pocket—a small charm, hand-etched with an obsolete sigil. It pulsed once with subtle heat.

"For luck," he whispered.

"Thanks, little ghost," Hannah replied, ruffling his hair.

The moment lingered—warm, almost normal. Hannah carried the weight of their eyes with her as she turned away.

Outside, the morning haze of Neo-Ossa sharpened into sterile verticality. The mag-tram whispered along invisible rails, carrying Hannah across sector lines and over the broken sprawl. The city outside blurred by in jagged overlays, advertisements flickering over the glass like hauntings. Her fingers brushed the charm in her pocket. She wasn't superstitious. Not really. But something in the way Micah looked at her made her wonder if she should be.

The tower where Neureality Systems operated stood like a bone-white spike among rusted towers and mirrorglass scars. No windows, only shifting mirror skin that reflected the city's decay like it was dreaming of purity.

Inside, the air was scrubbed too clean, and the staff dressed in bio-neutral grey with smiles too even. Their eyes tracked Hannah without emotion. No one spoke unless spoken to.

Hannah moved through the marble-check corridors with a predator's stillness. No second thoughts. Her boots echoed too loud, and her heartbeat oddly synced with the building's ambient hum.

She signed the consent waiver with a retinal blink. It auto-populated with her heartbeat, sealing her agreement in something more profound than ink. Legal ownership of her sensory map and emotional telemetry temporarily surrendered. The screen glowed red for a moment—warning, witness, farewell—and then flashed green.

She followed a technician's pointed silence to the chamber.

It was too quiet inside. No ceremonial speech. No countdown. Just the sterile hum of the rig warming up around Hannah. The chamber resembled a cradle left behind in an abandoned church—too clean, too reverent, padded like it expected ****. She hesitated only a moment before climbing in, unsure whether to feel comfort or dread. The neural leads flexed like waiting fingers, and the restraints cinched down with unsettling tenderness like something already mourning her.

Then the walls cracked.

A soundless pressure folded inward like the room sucked itself through a pinhole. Hannah didn't scream. There was no time. The cradle imploded—not in flame or shrapnel, but into black.

She thought she died. She felt her breath stop, felt her heart freeze like glass.

And then: breath again. A heartbeat that wasn't hers.

"Jesus," she whispered to nothing. "At least I didn't get hit by a truck."

When sensation returned, she was naked.

The world around her no longer obeyed geometry. A shattered cathedral of obsolete code stretched in impossible directions, its pillars made from collapsed UI scaffolds and floating error glyphs. The very air tasted like static. Blocks of protocol script shimmered like broken glass suspended in zero gravity.

She staggered upright, disoriented. Her skin shimmered with artifacts. A soft wind blew dust made of pixel noise across the fractured floor. Gravity shifted like a mood. A broken sun cast a glyph shadow across her skin.

Her arms burned.

Symbols, recursive and alive, carved themselves into her flesh with silent precision. They pulsed with inner light, matching the rhythm of a heartbeat not her own. She screamed, but it came out inverted, swallowed by the void. The pain was realer than anything in Neo-Ossa.

A voice echoed, familiar yet warped. Lexi's laugh? No, an echo built from fragments. A memory corrupted and recompiled.

"You are not awake," said a second voice, crystalline and vast. "But you are alive.”

It was a name but also a pressure—something heavy and impossible to ignore, like a whisper in the bones. SERA.

She dropped to her knees. Her fingers curled inwards. Her mind, still racing, couldn't orient itself.

She curled into herself. Above, an audience of ghost-AIs flickered into being, hollow-eyed and patient.

They did not move. They simply watched.

Waiting.