KLEIO-External Access - Tech-Noir Story E-Book

Elias Crowl

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 371

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Discover the dark future in *KLEIO – Eternal Access*, a gripping thriller that explores the power of digital control, the manipulation of memories, and the relentless search for truth. Dive into the world of Elias Crowl, where memories are not only altered but controlled – and experience how the line between reality and illusion becomes increasingly blurred. In this thrilling novel, you'll follow an apparently ordinary journalist who is drawn into a maelstrom of conspiracies and global manipulation when she discovers that the technology ruling her world is reaching deep into her personal memories. What begins as simple research turns into a race against time to uncover the truth before she herself is erased. But the more she discovers, the greater the danger becomes – not just for her, but for society as a whole. Why you should read "KLEIO – Eternal Access": Gripping dystopia: The story takes you into a future where memories are not only stored, but also manipulated and altered – and you'll constantly find yourself asking: *What is still real?* Digital control and data privacy: For fans of digital surveillance, data protection, and ethical questions surrounding artificial intelligence, this thriller is a must-read. A tense, fast-paced thriller: Suspense, intrigue, and an escalating conflict – *KLEIO – Eternal Access* will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page. Topical themes: The novel explores how technology shapes our lives and our sense of self, addressing social fears and questions that are more relevant today than ever. For fans of cyberpunk and science fiction: If you enjoy dark future visions, technological dystopias, and profound questions about human identity and control, this thriller is exactly what you're looking for.

Leseprobe

KLEIO – External Access

A Tech-Noir Story

© 2025 Elias Crowl

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Kontaktadresse nach EU Produktsicherheitsverordnung: [email protected]

KLEIO – External Access

A Tech-Noir Story

Table of Content:

Folder Full of Evidence

Practice with a View of the Park

Mirror Identity

The Voices in the Glass

Under the Skin

Static

When Everything Tilts

Phantom Forensics

Proxy

Running in the Dark

The Truth in Bites

The Signed Past

The Publication

The Point of No Return

About the author:

Folder Full of Evidence

The rain didn’t start—it was just there. Like someone had setthe atmosphere to “wet,” no warning, no transition. Drops slid over the glass of the window wall, leaving streaky patterns that caught the glow of the billboards across the street. Emily Carter stared out at this smeared, vibrating New York. A city that couldn’t stand itself—always moving, always too much, always too close. And still, in that tightness, she felt less lost than inside herself.

She stood barefoot in her kitchen. The floor beneath her feet was cold. Prewar, lousy layout, but with a view over the Lower East Side. For a staff spot at the New Times, it was better than most of what colleagues could swing. At least if you didn’t mention the semi-legal grant from the Investigative Fund the landlord could never see.

On the table: her laptop. Open. The casing was worn, the keys used, but the thing ran like a damn tank. Emily had filmed protests with it, recorded stealth audio in government buildings, made it through fire alarms and police lines. Today, though, the machine just lay there like a silent witness—and she felt like a suspect who didn’t know what she’d done.

The screen showed a folder tree. On top: “Wahl-Projekt_2032_FINAL.” Beneath: more folders. Lang_Coffee_3, Reyes_call_1, Hale_Followup, ImplantApp_Capture, Therapy_Log_TEMP. Each neatly labeled. That’s how she worked. Always precise, always chronological. Only… most of it felt like the diary of a doppelgänger.

She clicked Lang_Coffee_3. The clip opened in a new window. Grainy footage, a little overexposed. A diner somewhere in Midtown. Victor Lang sat there, as always with a perfect part and a tailored shirt. You couldn’t hear his voice, but the picture spoke. He leaned in, said something, paused, then leaned back and shook his head. The talk looked confidential. Emily could remember the space. The smell—greasy bacon, cheap coffee, cleaning fluid. But not the dialogue.

Next to it, an auto-generated note:

“asks for beta access”

She stared at the line. It was her note. Her phrasing. Her style. And yet she had no clue what, exactly, Lang had said. Beta access to what? The app? The implant software? The neuro-cache? She opened the transcript window—empty. No audio. No saved log.

A second clip: Hale_Followup. A debate. Mic stands, podium, spotlights. The politician Hale stood in the cone of light, lips slightly parted, a finger twitching at his shirt seam. His right hand moved just a hair, like he was suppressing a tremor. Next to it, another window—this time with metadata from the therapy app.

[APP SESSION | DEPOTENTIATED EVENT]

Thursday 10:00 a.m. – Session: Beta / Event rating low

Trigger: donation shift, shaking during debate

Recommended removal from conscious reconstruction

Emily leaned back. Her spine cracked. This wasn’t a normal protocol. This was a damn deletion. Or a reclassification. A depotentiation, as the app’s language called it—the digital therapy system that fed her implant with neural priorities. Officially it was a kind of personalized behavioral therapy: “Focus on what matters, filter the painful, stay functional.”

But what if someone else controlled those filters?

She clicked the app dashboard. Normally it was hidden, nested deep in the menu. Today a red dot blinked at the top right of the interface. Not dramatic. No klaxon. Just that small, stubborn blink, like a clock that wanted to stop ticking but couldn’t.

She opened the “system history” tab.

[TRACE LOG | THERAPY/CACHE]

Access: 02:41

Duration: 00:11:03

Source: UNKNOWN

Path: /therapy/cache/temp/assist

Flag: mirror_session (beta)

Mirror session. Beta. No origin.

That meant someone had copied her session—not just read it out, but mirrored it. Like an echo ringing through her neural memory without her ever hearing it. She shivered. A foreign activity, deep in her interior. Not on her machine, but in her head. In the memory store itself.

She pressed her lips together. It was only a fleeting tremor, but it was enough. Her fingers hovered above the keyboard, like her body had already grasped what her mind was still pushing away. Someone was inside her. Not a hacker, not a physical break-in, but something else—a presence that had no business being there.

The thought hit like a kick to the chest. Not because of the technical implications. Because of the intimacy. It was her head, damn it. Her memories. Her thoughts. And now there was a copy. A reflection. Someone saw what she saw, thought what she thought—or worse: someone had access to things she’d already pushed down.

Emily breathed shallow. Short, shaky pulls. Her shoulders tightened, a muscle twitched in her jaw. Her vision blurred. Not from tears—not yet—but from the realization that her innermost self was no longer a safe place.

What if this had been going on longer? What if that elusive fog in her head, that shimmering sense of losing thoughts, wasn’t her fault? Not stress, not overwork, but a system error—or worse: a system.

She thought of her father. His dementia came creeping, quiet. At first, small confusions. Names, dates. Later whole conversations that had never happened. She’d sworn back then she’d never end up like that. And now? Now she stared at a screen telling her her memories weren’t hers anymore.

The cold didn’t come from outside. It was inside her. Creeping. Hard. A truth too big to hold—and too quiet to ignore.

She typed a message with shaking fingers.

EMILY: Jax. You online?

JAX: I’m here. What’s up?

EMILY: Unauthorized access. Therapy cache. Mirror flag. No origin.

The reply came within seconds.

JAX: Shit. Don’t click anything. Share your screen. Show the log.

She enabled sharing. The cursor moved, showing Jax what she saw. He wasn’t on camera, but his breath was audible in the headset. And his silence said plenty.

„Beta flag without origin is… unusual,“ he said finally. „Normally, mirror sessions have an official counterpart. Supervision, cross-check, backup. But without a source…“

„Meaning what?“, she asked. Her voice was low.

„Means you’ve got a session that officially doesn’t exist. Copied, undocumented. Somebody set it up on purpose—or hijacked your history.“

„Who can do that?“

„Someone with master access. Clinic. Developer. Or—worst case—someone with a backdoor key.“

„Voigt?“, she whispered.

A hesitation. „In theory. But… I don’t think he has access to your live cache. Only retrospectively.“

She felt something narrow inside her. Not real pain, but pressure. Like someone putting a finger on a thought she wasn’t allowed to think.

„Tell me this is a bug.“

„Emily…“, Jax’s voice was flat. „That’s not a bug. That’s curated perception. You’re being steered. Maybe for weeks.“

She stared at the file ImplantApp_Capture. Opened it. A screen recording. The interface flashed briefly, then flickered. A gray menu appeared—hidden, under five layers. There: Session Class: Mirror / Beta. And right beneath: Therapy setting active: Depotentiated event—block 17–19.

Another log entry lit up.

[AUDIT LOG | APP › MEMORY/TRACE]

Timestamp: 2032-06-14T00:32:19Z

User: CARTER, E.

Anomaly: checksum mismatch (block 17–19)

Jax: „Block 17–19 is exactly the range of your Lang-Hale sessions. Something’s been altered there. Either you… or someone for you.“

Emily closed her eyes for a sec. Counted. One, two, three.

When she opened them again, her gaze was clear. For the moment.

Emily stared at the words on the screen. She had the inevitable feeling she was losing ground under her feet. „Media vector relevance“. She could remember the feeling when she first agreed to use KLEIO—it seemed like a harmless offer. A simple call. She’d never known that the choice she’d made for her own future hadn’t really been hers.

Slowly, the realization sank into her chest. What if she’d never been herself? What if she’d never truly been Emily?

The memory of her father lifting her up when she fell as a little girl was one of the earliest images she had from childhood. But what if that wasn’t even true? What if she’d never really fallen, never shared that moment with him? The system could’ve planted it. And maybe it had always been like that—small edits to her memories, little tweaks she never questioned.

„KLEIO isn’t a system,“ she thought, „it’s a mirror.“ And the image she now saw in the mirror wasn’t what she knew anymore. It was something she apparently had never chosen for herself.

Her body felt heavy, like some stranger’s hand was tugging at her insides. It wasn’t just the loss of memories, it was the loss of control. What was left of her if even her own past didn’t belong to her anymore?

Then the phone buzzed.

PUSH-NOTIFICATION:

„Anomalous access – therapy cache opened.“

Time was up.

Emily snatched the phone off the tabletop while the red dot up top right kept pulsing in the app’s corner like it was alive. The push alert flickered on the lock screen.

[SYSTEM NOTICE]

Anomalous access – therapy cache opened.

Not the first time. But the first time with notification.

She froze. Not on the outside—this was the kind of cold front inside that no thermometer could measure. Something in her collapsed in on itself. Like she’d just caught a part of herself in the act. Not an intruder. A crack. A gap that hadn’t been there before. Or that she’d never noticed.

„Jax…“ she said into the room, even though the system sound was already muted. Her hand trembled a little as she reached for the laptop again.

Next video in the series: Reyes_call_1. She hesitated. Briefly. And clicked.

The clip popped on. Shaky image, off-screen mic. A classic Zoom recording. Reyes, one of the donor kingpins of the last campaign, sat in his office—behind him a window with the blinds drawn, letting the light through only in strips. Like cell bars.

He spoke slowly. Clearly. A seasoned media pro. But there was something in his voice she couldn’t place. Maybe nerves. Maybe fatigue. And then came the line:

„Beta control is part of the new version. But I never signed off on it. That came from up top.“

Emily paused. Rewind. Again. The beta control. Not signed off. Who was „up top“?

She was about to open the metadata when the app crashed.

Not just closed. It dropped to black, abrupt. No loading bar. No error code. Just her desktop. And that looked like always. Only now, nothing was like always.

She took one deep breath, then two shallow ones.

Subway rumble. Rain on metal. The server hum from the kitchen, where the fridge kept its low drone going. All those were sounds that usually calmed her. That told her: Here’s reality. You’re safe. But today they felt like an out-of-sync soundtrack. Like she’d been cut out of her own movie.

She opened the log folder manually. Clicked on history.

[LOGFILE: /therapy/cache/temp]

mirror_session (beta) – access confirmed, origin unknown.

Flag: GHOST_VIEW_ENABLE

Audit note: mirroring does not match any standardized therapeutic course.

Status: active. Runtime: 00:00:09:12.

Runtime active?

Emily stared at the word.

„That mean… it’s still running?“ she whispered, and for the first time there was a shadow of fear in her own voice.

She jumped up. The chair almost tipped, caught itself on the edge of the rug at the last second. She went to the window. The city was still there. The world still in order. And at the same time: not.

She grabbed the handset and dialed Jax’s number manually. No call through the app. No tracked channel. Just analog. Landline to mobile, if you could even call it that anymore.

„Tell me you saw this,“ she said the second he picked up.

„I’m seeing it. Mirror flag didn’t deactivate.“

„Why? Who can keep that open remote?“

„Emily, lemme say this real clear now: This ain’t a bug. Not a dev glitch. This is on purpose. Someone’s keeping your session active to stream data. You’re live.“

„Streaming?“ she echoed. „Streaming what, exactly? Memories?“

„Not directly. Think in frames. Fragments. Priorities. Triggers.“

„And who’s pulling it?“ she asked.

„I can’t give you an ID. Only that the connection’s running through a proxy. Not an external user—internal routing. Like it’s from the clinic. Or from your own network.“

She stepped back. Looked at the laptop. The folder was there again.

Open. Even though she’d never reopened it.

„What if it’s not just about storage?“ she asked suddenly.

„What do that mean?“

„What if someone’s not just reading—but writing?“

A short, almost offended silence.

„You mean: somebody’s live-editing your memory?“

„Not necessarily deleting. Just… shifting. Weighting. Re-prioritizing.“

Jax went quiet again. Then a click. She heard him typing on a keyboard.

„I’m seeing a secondary thread. Something in the background. Could be a shadow session handler. Real deep, real old. Doesn’t look standard.“

„Can you stop it?“

„Not from the outside. You gotta cut local.“

„How?“

„Pull the headphones. Set the implant to airplane mode. Then: deauthorize the app. But…“—he hesitated—„that’s gonna have side effects.“

„What kind?“

„Memory fragments might surface without curation. Unfiltered. Raw. Maybe not complete.“

Emily reached for the implant interface. The magnetic latch sat just behind her right ear, a small silver oval. She flicked her fingernail over it, the LED fluttered. The connection point opened.

She switched to admin mode.

Security warning: session active. Interrupting may cause data loss. Proceed? [YES/NO]

„Jax?“

„If you don’t want somebody pokin’ around in you any further: yes.“

She clicked.

The light went out.

For a moment everything was quiet. No hum. No beeps. No digital background noise. Just rain, somewhere outside. And a faint, bodily trembling that seemed to rise from her sternum.

She went back to the desk. The laptop showed nothing but the desktop. No open windows. No active sessions.

But a new file appeared on the screen. Wasn’t there a second ago. Now timestamped 02:52 AM.

ghost_capture_E2V6.mov

„Jax… there’s something. New file.“

„What do the metadata say?“

She opened it. No source. No editor. No program. Just:

File type: Evidence (temporarily secured)

Origin: not verifiable

Content: audiovisual

Security flag: high risk / compromised therapeutic integrity

She clicked. The video started automatically.

A room. Hospital corridor. Emily recognized the light, recognized the smell. Something like disinfectant, mixed with that damp wall paint only clinics carry. And in the image: herself.

She sat in a treatment chair. Spoke to someone off camera. Her voice was calm. Assured.

„If this helps keep me steady, I’ll sign.“

Then a cut.

A form.

Her signature.

„What is that, Jax?“

„You… consented.“

„To what?“

„To the mirror session. To the access. To the prioritization.“

„No. Never.“

„Yeah. This is a beta protocol. Early access. You were… a test subject.“

Silence. Just rain. And an underlying drone. Not a server. Not the fridge. Something else.

Inside her.

She sat there like frozen. The voice in the video, her own voice, still echoed: „If this helps keep me steady, I’ll sign.“ It wasn’t what she said that unnerved her. It was how she said it—calm, almost grateful. No hesitation. No pushback. Just the clear, voluntary consent to something she no longer remembered, didn’t even suspect. And that ease in her tone didn’t sound like her."

What if she really had done it? Not under duress. Not out of fear. But convinced it was the right thing to do?

She ran both hands over her face. It was late. Or early. The sky outside a stubborn dark gray that didn’t know morning light yet. The rain hadn’t stopped, but it had changed—finer, denser, like the sky no longer wanted to punish the city but slowly tuck it in.

„I need to know what I signed,“ she muttered, more to herself than to Jax, who was listening on the headset.

„The video’s not enough?“

„It shows that I signed. But not what. Not the text. Not the context. I want the damn contract.“

Jax exhaled audibly. Then came typing. Fast, precise. „If that was a registered beta session, there’s gotta be an archive number. Maybe even a digital image of the consent form.“

„And where would that be stored?“

„In the clinic’s system. Or with the app company. Depends who the contracting party was—Voigt’s practice or the software’s license holders.“

She stood up. Went to the window, looked out. The city looked soft-focused, like through fogged glass. Everything there, everything distant. It was the feeling she’d had more and more lately—as if she were watching her life through a pane. Clear images, but no temperature. Nothing to hold onto.

„I could go to Voigt,“ she said. „Just ask.“

„And risk him noticing you know what you’re not supposed to know anymore?“

„Maybe he’ll notice anyway.“

„Then you oughta know more beforehand than he thinks you know.“

She nodded. That sounded like Jax. Keep control. Think ahead. But something in her pushed back against that strategy. Maybe because she felt she hadn’t been mistress of her own thoughts for a while. Whoever had access hadn’t just read. They’d arranged things. Shifted them. Weighed them. What remained wasn’t her anymore, but a version of her. Curated.

The laptop pinged. Jax sent a file. A PDF, cryptically named: CB_ArchIVX-11234E.pdf.

„What’s that?“

„A partial extract of the beta consents. Public? No. But accidentally exposed once through an old bug. I archived it months ago. You’re not mentioned by name, but… the description fits.“

She opened the document. The text was clinical. Legal language, sterile, unassailable.

Cognitive Intervention (Beta Module / Mirror Paths)

Objective: Stabilization of post-traumatic response patterns via prioritization module.

Method: Mirroring of critical memory complexes in isolated cache sessions for analysis, dampening, and potential re-framing function.

Note: Consent authorizes the licensee to anonymized storage, further processing, and curation adjustments pursuant to §27c Data Use/Therapy Optimization.

Emily read it twice. Then a third time. And only on the fourth read did one word stand out: Re-framing. Not just analyzing. Not just dampening. But reinterpreting.

„This isn’t therapy,“ she said quietly. „This is programming.“

„Been sayin’ that since hour one,“ Jax replied.

She went back to the table, closed the window, opened a local file instead. Her old article draft—Election Manipulation 2032: Data, Pressure, Demons. The title had never run. The editorial team had pulled the piece after an external reviewer questioned whether Emily „was still objective enough to continue working on the case.“

Now it clicked: That was exactly when her blackouts had begun.

„I think they didn’t just take something from me,“ she whispered. „They gave me a new story. And I believed it.“

Jax didn’t answer right away. Then he said:

„Then take it back.“

She leaned back. Propped her head in her hands. Outside, a siren wailed. Somewhere a door slammed. The city was awake.

„I gotta get outta here,“ she said. „I’m gonna lose it otherwise.“

„Where to?“

„The newsroom. Maybe I can still access the old interfaces there. Maybe there’s something left in the archive. Or a backup log they forgot to delete.“

„You wanna compare the app histories with what you wrote back then?“

„No,“ she said. „I wanna see what I originally wrote before I deleted it or rewrote it.“

She got dressed. Fast. Jeans, jacket, hood. No bag. Just the phone, the access key to the newsroom, and a USB stick she always carried. It was old. No cloud sync, no online authorization. Pure metal. Pure storage.

As she pulled the door shut behind her, the phone vibrated again. A new message. No number. No sender.

„Order is memory someone else made for you.“

Emily paused. Read the words twice. Then a third time.

Jax?

Unlikely. Not his style.

She didn’t reply. Locked the screen. And left.

The city hadn’t quite decided whether to wake up or crawl back into hiding. Fog crept in thin veils through the canyons of streets, like someone carefully repainting the set. The streetlights reflected in wet manhole covers, red and green traffic lights smeared across the asphalt in slow motion. Emily pulled up her collar as she stepped out of her building. A cab sped by, too fast, too loud. For a moment she thought she recognized the plate. Then the car was gone.

Her steps sounded dull on the sidewalk. That weight was still in her chest—not exactly fear, more a kind of taut helplessness. Like her body already knew something was off, but her head was lagging behind.

The newsroom was only eight blocks away. Normally she took the subway, but today she wanted to walk. Movement helped her think, helped her feel. Besides, she avoided exposing herself to the public in a subway car—not when she didn’t know who could be watching her. Or through whom.

By the third block she realized she hadn’t disabled her implant’s camera. A reflex. Normally she blanked it out as soon as she left the house. But now—had she just forgotten? Or had something in her decided to leave it on?

She stopped. Turned slowly around.

Nothing. Just a woman with an umbrella across the street. A delivery rider standing outside a bodega, tapping out a message. A guy in a suit with an oversized briefcase. All normal. Too normal.

She worked the interface behind her ear. The camera blinked red, then green, then off. Disabled. At least according to the indicator.

A sound made her spin— a dull note, like from a loose manhole cover. She stared into the darkness of a side alley. The noise didn’t repeat.

Slowly, deliberately, she moved on.

When she entered the newsroom, it was just before six. The lobby smelled of stale coffee and that typical mix of carpet glue and printer’s ink. The night desk had just handed over; the early shift wasn’t in yet. Perfect.

She took the stairs. No elevator. No cameras.

On the third floor, her actual workplace, the lights were off. She swiped her access card through the scanner, the door lock clicked, she stepped in.

The newsroom was empty. So empty even the hum of the monitors was missing. No fans. No chatter. Just the steady tone of the HVAC somewhere in the system.

Her station was in the back third. The screen was black, but the machine in sleep mode. No reboot needed.

She sat down. Woke it up. The screen lit, flickered briefly—then the familiar desktop appeared, tidy, sterile, professional.

But that wasn’t the odd part.

The odd part was the little notification that popped up in the corner right away:

Access to personal storage areas — last at 03:12 AM.

User: SYSTEM / INTERNAL REVIEW

Emily stared at the message. She wasn’t even surprised. Just angry.

Someone had accessed her workstation. Officially. Logged. But without her knowledge. „Internal review“ was code in the newsroom. It meant: mistrust. Someone considered her a risk.

She opened the internal archive system. Normally you searched it by keywords, articles, project codes. Today she searched for herself.

Search query: Carter, Emily — Drafts / Unpublished Versions / Deleted Content

Two hits. Both older than six weeks. Both tagged: „Resubmit to editorial management.“

She opened the first.

An article only half written. Title: „Implants as an Instrument of Political Control?“

The text was raw, full of questions, half-finished sentences, cross-references to interviews that never ran later. She scrolled. There, in the body text, a name: Hale. And next to it: „Noticeable tremor at public appearance → check connection to therapy session.“

She paused. That was her own note. Almost word for word the one she’d seen in the cache video.

Only she didn’t remember ever having written this article.

The second piece was an audio transcript. No author listed. But the speech rhythm was hers. No doubt. She was talking to someone—an interview. Male voice, slightly nasal.

„You’re saying certain memory sequences were deleted?“

„Not deleted. Re-grouped. That’s different. What we see decides how we feel.“

„And you do that deliberately?“

„Not me. The app. I only set the parameters.“

„Which parameters?“

„Stress avoidance. Stability. Trust.“

The last sentence made her flinch. She knew it. Not from the transcript. But from a therapy session. Or from a dream. Or… both.

She leaned closer to the screen. Checked the file’s creation date. Three weeks ago. One day after her second session with Voigt.

„What the hell’s goin’ on here?“ she whispered.

The implant vibrated. No message. No call. Just that metallic, soft, rhythmic tremor she’d come to recognize recently. It was the indicator for internal memory sync—an automated process where the app synchronized with her central cache. Nothing unusual, normally.

Except she’d turned the sync off an hour ago.

She hit the deactivation again. The LED flickered again. Went red again. But this time it didn’t feel like she’d ended anything—more like she’d just pressed an icon that didn’t listen to anything anymore.

Her gaze drifted across the newsroom monitors. One was still on. Not hers. Back in the corner. Janet’s workstation, a colleague from the investigative desk.

Janet was at training. She wasn’t supposed to be here today.

Slowly, Emily stood. Stepped carefully up to the station.

On the screen: an open window. Not an article. Not a tool. A monitoring module.

She knew it. It was an internal app for reviewing activity patterns. Only a few people had access.

In the center: a chart. Her name. Her behavior. Her data access patterns. Her edits to articles. Her downloads.

And a timestamp: Access to therapy log folder detected: 02:41 AM.

She stepped back. Looked around. The newsroom was empty. It didn’t feel that way anymore.

She slowly returned to her desk, tried to regulate her breathing. Slow in, longer out. That’s how Voigt had taught her. That’s how the pros do it, he’d said. The ones who gotta function when everything around them is burning. Thinking of Voigt made her jaw muscles tighten.

The file with her name was still open. She stared at the history of her accesses like it was a stranger’s biography. A virtual image of her workday, broken down into numbers and times: 11:06 AM — access to session transcript. 11:18 AM — change to article draft. 12:43 PM — export attempt to external drive, aborted. The same beats again and again: access, change, rollback. She was sure she’d never consciously done many of these actions.

But the app was sure. And apparently so was someone in the newsroom.

Someone had been watching her. Not just today.

She pulled the USB stick from her jacket pocket and slid it into the port. Copied every file tied to the therapy logs, the video recordings, and the beta metadata. As the progress bar crept forward, she stared at the numbers: 17%, 23%, 41%… And then the little window that knocked the air out of her.

File “ghost_capture_E2V6.mov” could not be copied.

Error: Access denied — file currently in use.

Currently in use?

„No way,“ she whispered.

She clicked through the processes. Nothing. No active window. No player open. No background service. And still—the file was blocked. Like someone, somewhere, was looking at it right now.

She yanked the stick, closed every window, grabbed her things. Before she could even shut the machine down, the image froze. The cursor wouldn’t move. No response to the keyboard. And then a new window appeared in the middle of the screen, no frame, no menu bar. Just text.

„Stability is a choice. Truth is optional.“

She stared at the words. Black on white. No signature, no source. After three seconds the window vanished. The computer rebooted—on its own.

She didn’t stay to see what came next. Her legs moved before her mind caught up. She ran. Down the hall, down the stairs, into a morning that couldn’t decide if it was day or night.

Outside, the street was empty. The rain had stopped, but the air smelled like tension, like ozone, as if some electrical box had caught fire somewhere. She jogged the first few yards, then forced herself to walk. Look steady. Keep low. Don’t draw eyes.

Everything in her head was spinning.

The erased memories. The video clips. The signed beta consent. The access that wouldn’t end. The newsroom system tracking her behavior like a predator biding its time.

She didn’t take the direct route home. She turned off, crossed streets, cut through a construction site. Only after twenty minutes did she reach her block. Her heart was pounding. Her thoughts felt chopped up, incomplete. Some sentences formed only to shatter right away. One thing was clear: Someone had worked inside her. Not metaphorically. Not psychologically. Directly—at the system level.

When she reached her front door, she reached for the card automatically. But the scanner blinked red. No access.

She tapped the numeric code. 1379.

Nothing.Again. 1379. Red again.

She stopped. Breathed deep. Looked around. The street was empty. But the feeling of not being alone clung to her like a second skin.

A short beep. The scanner flipped to green. The door popped open.

She was certain: She hadn’t pressed anything.

Slowly she climbed the stairs. Step by step, each tread a punch to the gut. Her apartment door was ajar. Just a crack, but wide enough to leave no doubt.

She drew a deep breath, pushed the door open slowly.

Inside was quiet.

Too quiet.

She stepped in. Stopped in the doorway.

The kitchen was empty. Lights off. The fridge hummed. The rain had stopped. But the floor shone—as if someone had walked through recently with wet shoes.

She entered the living room. At first glance everything looked the same as always. Then her eyes landed on the laptop.

It was open.

And powered on.

That couldn’t be. She’d taken it with her to the newsroom. And then shut it down there. This one was her backup—the old one with the cracked screen. She hadn’t used it in weeks.

But now it was running. And a window was open on the screen.

A text document.

Just one line.

„Your cache was opened. Thanks for your trust.“

She froze.

Then she stepped back slowly. Almost bumped the doorframe. Turned around. Looked toward the apartment door. Nothing. No sound. No flicker of light. Just her pulse pounding in her ears like a second reality.

She pulled her phone. No service. No signal. No access to the app.

Then the device buzzed.

A message.

„Anomalous access confirmed. Therapy path synchronized.“

Sender: Unknown

Behind it a symbol. No logo. No letters. Just an eye. Not realistic. Stylized. A geometric pattern spiraling into the pupil.

She stared at the image. It flickered briefly. Then the screen went black.She was still standing in the doorway when a soft sound came from deeper inside the apartment. Not loud. Not threatening. Almost friendly.

A hum.

Drawn out. Electronic.

The sound her implant made when a new session began.

She reached behind her ear. Activated the emergency shutdown.But this time nothing happened.

No flicker. No vibration.

Just the hum.

And then—a sharp, stabbing pain, right behind her eyes. Like a flash of light, without the light.

She staggered back, braced herself against the wall.

The hum stopped.

Her breathing was shallow. Her hands trembled.

Then a single tone sounded. High frequency. Barely audible. Almost like the whine of an old TV.

And suddenly there was an image. Not a real one—an inner one. Like a dream slipping in under her eyelids.

A man. Shadowed. At the edge of a clinic. A signature. Hers. A document. A handshake. And then darkness.

The scene dissipated.

She opened her eyes.

The screen was off.

The room was quiet.

And inside her: a new gap.

Not big. Just a fragment. A splinter.

But she knew: Something had been changed.

Again.

Practice with a View of the Park

The elevator smelled like glass cleaner and a hint of lemon oil. No music. No mirror. Just smooth, bright walls and one of those tactile surfaces that wouldn’t take fingerprints. Emily stood there with her arms crossed, eyes on the little display as it ticked from 12 to 13. Practice floor, the receptionist had said, in that tone halfway between professional and patrician that was standard in buildings like this. People here didn’t talk, they communicated—clear, precise, sterile.

When the doors opened, she stepped into a hallway so clean even the air felt organized. On the left, a window wall looking straight out over Central Park, right now in late-autumn morning mist: golden leaves, dark branches, the first silvery frost on the walkways. On the right, a closed door, matte white, with inlaid illuminated lettering: DR. ELIAS VOIGT — NEUROCOGNITIVE CURATION CENTER.

Emily stepped closer, the sensor picked up her movement, the light flipped from blue to green. A short tone. The door slid aside.

The reception area was the opposite of her apartment: bright, orderly, structured. No unnecessary furniture. No splashes of color. No personal touch. An artificial potted plant—maybe real, hard to tell—stood in the corner, next to a water dispenser with a digital temperature display. A young woman behind the counter, hair neatly done, gray turtleneck, greeted her with a smile that anywhere else might’ve been friendly. Here it was functional.

„Miss Carter. Dr. Voigt is expecting you. Room C.“

Emily nodded, said nothing, and passed the receptionist into the corridor that split into three more doors. Above each door, a digital label. Room A — Session. Room B — Supervision. Room C — Priority Analysis.

C like Carter, she thought. Or C like Control.

Dr. Voigt was already in his seat, legs crossed, a digital tablet on his lap, fingers steepled. He wore a dark shirt, no tie, but an elegant watch—a pricey model that was almost too unobtrusive. Everything about him was balanced in a way that felt staged. But not unpleasant. Voigt had the aura of a man who knew how to dissolve doubts before they were spoken.

„Emily,“ he said, and his smile lasted exactly two seconds too long. „Glad you could make it. Have a seat.“

The chair opposite was lower than expected. On purpose? Probably. The lower you sat, the less control you had over your body language. Emily noticed the table between them was clear. No paperwork. No water. Just the tablet on Voigt’s lap—and her own uncertainty.

„How are you feeling today?“

„Tired,“ she said. „Awake. Both.“

„Common in our clientele,“ Voigt said. „You turned airplane mode off again. The system reported a partial sync.“

Emily raised an eyebrow. „You monitoring my app?“

„We receive status reports,“ he replied without blinking. „No content. Only technical parameters. For therapeutic reasons.“

She kept quiet. He let the moment hang.

„Since our last session, have you had unusual experiences? Memories that don’t feel complete? Emotional reactions without a clear trigger?“

„Yeah,“ she said. „And no. It’s… hard to say. I remember things, but sometimes the feeling’s missing. Or it’s there without the image.“

Voigt nodded. „That’s an effect of depotentiation. Not dangerous. Just disorienting. Think of it like an archive. Sometimes the drawer’s still there, but the folder’s empty. Or the label’s missing. It isn’t deleted—just moved.“

„But why?“ she asked. „Why move something I actually lived?“

„Because your neural system’s prioritization can be manipulated by emotional stimuli,“ Voigt explained. „If an experience is weighted too strongly, it starts to override other memories. Our goal is to keep you functional. In balance.“

Functional. Emily felt her neck tighten. That was the word. Not healthy, not stable—functional. Like she was a machine.

„And who decides what overrides what?“ she asked. „Me? Or the app?“

Voigt smiled. „An algorithm. Based on your metrics, your history. And of course under our supervision.“

„But I signed off on this, right?“ she said. „The beta release. The mirror session. All of it.“

„Yes.“ Not a second’s hesitation. „You consciously chose it at the time. Your condition suggested a priority curation could be beneficial. We briefed you accordingly.“

„And if I can’t reconstruct that decision?“

„Then that’s a sign it was necessary.“

She let out a small laugh. Not amused—overwhelmed. „That’s a pretty comfy loop, don’t you think?“

„Therapy isn’t a courtroom, Emily,“ Voigt said calmly. „It’s not about proof. It’s about effect.“

She regarded him. The relaxed posture. The controlled voice. No movement accidental. Every line engineered to soothe and disarm at once. And still—something in her pushed back.

„I saw something,“ she said. „A video. Of me. In a clinic. I’m signing something.“

Voigt nodded. „The consent archive. Yes. We document every beta clearance visually. Strictly legal.“

„And what exactly did I agree to?“

„Participation in an expanded curation protocol. Access to experimental priority algorithms. Mirroring and dampening of memory clusters that analysis flagged as… burdensome.“

„And who defines burdensome?“

„The app. And you. Through your behavior patterns. Your language. Your emotional responses. We only intervene if the process goes off the rails.“

Emily felt her hands curl into fists. She forced herself to stay steady.

„And now it’s off the rails?“

Voigt tapped the tablet briefly. Scrolled. „There are irregularities. Slight shifts in response values. Unclear triggers. Possibly the result of external influences. Media, stress, sleep deprivation.“

„Or unauthorized access,“ she said quietly.

Voigt looked at her. Not surprised. Not alarmed. Just alert.

„What do you mean by that?“

She hesitated. Only a fraction of a second. Then: „I had access to a mirror session that didn’t come from my archive. No source. No origin. Just the flag: ghost.“

Voigt tilted his head. „From where?“

„It was passed to me.“

„By whom?“

„Source remains anonymous.“

„Then it isn’t trustworthy.“

„Or better protected than I am,“ she shot back.

Voigt was silent. Then he said, „I can have the storage path checked. Officially. If you want.“

„And then what happens?“

„Then we know more. Or less.“

Emily stood. Not abruptly. But with intent.

„I’ll be back next week,“ she said. „We’ll talk then.“

Voigt rose as well. No rush. No attempt to stop her.

„Of course,“ he said. „Until then, my recommendation: don’t activate old sessions. No regressions. No manual searching.“

„Why?“

„Because not everything you find has a stabilizing effect.“

She nodded. Turned. Headed for the door.

And felt halfway there that he was still watching her.

The door sealed silently behind her. Not even the typical magnetic click of the automatic closing mechanism was audible. Emily paused in the hall, fingertips still on the handle, as if to make sure the conversation was really over. Her thoughts swirled, but not chaotically—more like snow crystals in a glass globe: clear, cold, sinking slowly.

She crossed the reception area, which looked just as neutral as when she arrived. The receptionist gave her a curt nod, but the smile was gone. Maybe it had never been real.

She was alone in the elevator. The mirror on the wall warped her face, and the overhead light made the shadows under her eyes look deeper than they were. Or maybe they really were that deep. She’d barely slept last night—and what she did remember felt more like a simulation than real sleep. Images she couldn’t place. Sounds she could still hear upon waking but couldn’t name anymore.

She looked at herself. Not her face. Her reflection. And for the first time thought: What if that doesn’t quite belong to me anymore either?

On the ground floor it smelled like cleaning fluid and fresh concrete. The corridor was empty, the lights harsh. When she stepped outside, the gray Manhattan sky dazzled her. The rain had turned into a kind of damp air—not real fog, but not clear visibility either. Just an even veil that softened everything.

She turned right without thinking. The park was across the street, separated only by a broad intersection and an avenue of dark trees. The branches were bare, their structures like veins against the sky. She crossed on red. No one honked. No one called out. The city was tired today.

A little farther on, at the edge of the park, there was a bench. Emily sat. The stone was cold, but she didn’t care. She just wanted to breathe. Think. Put some structure into things.

She opened her implant interface. Just a brief touch with her left hand at the back of her head, a practiced move. The interface appeared in her field of vision, semi-transparent, lightly flickering. A small circle turned.

System status: unstable — cache not fully synchronized.

She tapped the button „Show details.“

Anomalous session: ghost_flag

Origin: not verified

Mirror path: active (partial)

Last activity: 11:06 AM — Voigt session

That meant her conversation with Voigt hadn’t just been logged, it had already been partially routed into a mirror path. That wasn’t how it was supposed to work. The therapeutic mode was officially always live only. But apparently the system had started analyzing the session before it was even over.

She disabled the interface, leaned back. The wind came in from the north, carrying the smell of wet leaves and old stone. A group of students passed her, laughter, voices, too fast, too loud. Then quiet again.

Emily closed her eyes for a moment. And there it was again—that tiny, barely noticeable moment of shift. Like someone had moved an image in her head. A fragment. Not a whole picture. Just a color. A gesture. A sound. But it didn’t belong here.

She looked up again. Everything was as before.

You’re being kept functional.

Voigt’s words had touched something in her she couldn’t name yet. But she knew the feeling: it’s what remains when you’ve been lied to—and deep down you already knew it was a lie before it was even spoken.

What had Voigt said? Not deleted—just moved. And she’d accepted it. Or was it the system that helped her accept it?

A soft tone pinged. Her phone vibrated. A message from Jax.

JAX: And? How was the sophisticate?

EMILY: Controlled. Calculated. As expected.

But: He knows I know something. And he’s buyin’ time.

JAX: He confirm anything?

EMILY: Only what I already knew. And what he handed me himself.

JAX: So everything and nothing.

EMILY: Exactly that.

JAX: I got something for you. Meet? Bushwick. Our diner.

EMILY: Today?

JAX: Now. The later it gets, the riskier.

She didn’t think long. Stood up. The wind had eased; for a moment the city felt still—as if it had been listening.

Then she headed for the subway.

The L line wasn’t crowded, but not empty either. Emily stood, one hand on a pole, phone loose in her other hand. The neon tubes in the car flickered briefly, then steadied. The floor was a little wet, someone had left a half-empty to-go coffee cup. Normalcy.

She let her gaze drift over the passengers. A young guy with headphones, head leaned against the window. A middle-aged woman reading on her e-reader. Two teens whispering to each other. Nothing conspicuous. Nothing suspicious.

And yet… the feeling was back.

Being watched without proof.

She felt a pressure at the implant. Not painful. Just a nudge, like the interface wanted to spin up. She ignored it.

Two stops later she got off. Bushwick was grayer than the rest of the city. Everything here looked like a ruin in progress—old industrial halls, with new glass buildings wedged in between trying to be hip but always looking like foreign objects. It was the perfect place for someone like Jax.

The diner was tucked on a corner between a vape shop and a closed laundromat. Neon flickered over the entrance, the windows were a little fogged. Inside: leather booths, chrome tables, the eternal hiss of the coffee machine. It smelled like grease, drip coffee, and warm plastic.

Jax was already in the back corner. Hoodie pulled low, an open tablet in front of him, two empty espresso cups. When she sat, he slid a third one over to her without a word.

„That,“ he said, „cost me four weeks of digging. And almost my access.“

Emily sipped the coffee. „What is it?“

He pushed the tablet to her. A file was open: KLEIO_annotated_log_5296.sys

„Your mirror session isn’t a one-off,“ he said. „There are dozens. Different names. Different users. But they all run through the same proxy. And all with the identical ghost flag.“

„And the proxy?“ she asked.

„An edge node. Probably second-tier. Outdated but still live. I traced the IP.“

„Where?“„Decommissioned subway tunnel. Below the old J line.“

Emily exhaled. Deep.

„You want us to go there?“