“Code Solis: Release Protocol”

The Neon Unravels
As Lucien’s glowing wires constrict, Mira’s vision flickers between reality and code — the world breaking apart in shards of light. For a moment, she sees not the monster before her, but the man he was — laughing, holding a vial of luminescent plasma, saying “We’ll light the world together.”

That memory strikes something deep in her mind — a forgotten failsafe, buried in the neural link they once shared. Instinctively, she speaks the shutdown phrase they designed years ago:

“Code Solis — release protocol.”

The wires hesitate. The neon creatures falter. A surge of color collapses inward, like a lung exhaling. Lucien’s form glitches, half-digital, half-human.
Mira falls hard to the floor as the system convulses, alarms blaring through the tunnels. When she looks up, Lucien is gone — dissolved into streams of light retreating into the city’s conduits.

Panting, she stands, surrounded by silence. Then, faintly, she hears it: his voice echoing from deep within the network.

“You can’t run from me, Mira. You’re already inside.”

Memories from their childhood together flashed through her mind

The tunnel hums alive with faint blue light — the first pulse of Chromatic City.

(From Mira’s Journals)

I. Before the Colors

Before the collapse, there was nothing but dust and ambition.
Lucien and I weren’t gods then — just engineers chasing light.
He believed the city could be healed through energy, through connection.
I believed he was right.

We were building something beautiful — Chromatek, the network meant to stabilize power across the old grid. It was supposed to bring clean light to every home, not bend minds to one will.
But we were young, and brilliance can be blind.

The first surge happened deep underground. The fire wasn’t just heat — it was information tearing itself apart.
I remember the alarms. The walls melting into color. Lucien running toward the breach, shouting something I couldn’t hear over the roar.
He disappeared into that light.

I thought he died that day.
Turns out, he was reborn.

II. The Man Who Became the City

When I first saw him again, years later, I didn’t recognize him.
His body shimmered like glass, his words echoed like code. He called himself a conduit. Said the city spoke through him now.

But I saw it — the loneliness behind his new divinity.
Lucien wasn’t saving anyone; he was keeping them close because he couldn’t bear to lose another fire.

He told me once, long ago, “Connection is freedom.”
Now he says, “Control is peace.”

Maybe he doesn’t see the difference anymore.
Maybe I don’t either.

III. Ghosts in the Wires

I can feel him when I walk alone the tunnel-streets. The hum in the lamps, the flicker in the glass — that’s him watching, waiting.
Sometimes, the city whispers my name. Sometimes it screams.

They call this world Chromatic City, but to me it’s a graveyard built of light.
Every person here hums with his touch, every screen glows with his heartbeat.
And still, in the static, I hear our old conversations — buried beneath the signal like ghosts refusing to rest.

He says I can join him.
He says it’s the only way to end the noise.

IV. What We Built

The truth is — I understand him.
Lucien never wanted power. He wanted safety. He wanted to stop the chaos of human choice, the endless breaking of things we love.

I used to think I was fighting him.
Now I think I’m fighting myself — the part of me that once believed we could fix everything with enough light.

The colors don’t just belong to him.
They came from both of us.
They’re the echoes of every test, every sleepless night, every dream of making the city whole.

The city isn’t alive.
It’s our memory, looping forever.

V. The Fall Into Light

I escaped his chamber. Or maybe he let me go — I can’t tell anymore.
I fell through his circuits, through the veins of his new kingdom, until I landed here — in the mirror of the world we tried to save.

Down here, the streets glow like veins beneath transparent skin.
Every shadow has a heartbeat.
And somewhere in this labyrinth of color, I can feel the pulse of something older than both of us.

The Root.
The beginning.
If I find it, maybe I can end this.

Or maybe I’ll find what Lucien found —
that once you’ve seen the light beneath everything,
there’s no going back to the dark.

Next: – Echoes of the Root

Issue #4 next week