Sector 01 had not seen real sunlight for three hundred and twelve years.
Instead, above its people hung the "Sky" — a monstrous металлическая сеть of rusted pipes, cracked ventilation ducts, thick bundles of optical cables, and colossal holographic panels broadcasting the Corporation's propaganda day and night. The voices of announcers merged into an endless white noise:
"Corporation cares. Corporation protects. Corporation is life."
The air was heavy here, dense, tasting of burnt plastic, ozone, and cheap synthetic alcohol — "synthetek," poured in the lower bars. Every breath left a metallic residue on the tongue.
Astra sat on the very edge of Platform Level 47, her legs dangling over a bottomless technical shaft. Beneath her, hundreds of meters down, stretched tangled tiers, pipes, and emergency ladders, lit only by dim red warning lights and occasional flashes of welding arcs. Her fingers, stained with black grease and old burns, deftly worked through the insides of a broken cleaning drone. The small machine lay on her lap like a wounded animal.
In this world, you either fix junk — or become it. There was no third option.
"Digging through scrap again, Astra?"
Kai's voice came from the shadows behind her. He spoke quietly, almost in a whisper, as he always did when he feared the System's microphones might be listening.
Astra didn't turn. Her short black hair, smeared with oil, shifted slightly in the rising draft from the shaft.
"This scrap is the only thing that doesn't lie to my face, Kai," she said calmly, prying a charred chip from the drone's корпус.
"The System says we're perfectly safe. Pollution levels are normal. Oxygen reserves stable. But look down."
She nodded toward the abyss. Far below, in Levels 12–18 where the "unfit" lived, the red warning lights blinked more often than usual.
"Radiation levels in the ghetto went up by 4.3 percent overnight. They just shut down the old filters. Again. Then they'll call it 'natural environmental degradation.' And write off a few thousand more as 'resource optimization.'"
Kai sighed heavily and stepped closer. His left leg — a cheap carbon composite prosthetic with hydraulics — emitted a soft, irritating hiss with every step. The calibration had been off for a long time, but he couldn't afford a new one. He stopped two steps from the edge, not daring to get any closer.
"You didn't sleep again, did you?" he asked, studying her face. Dark shadows lay under Astra's eyes, and her pupils seemed too wide, as if she had been staring into darkness for far too long.
Astra lifted her gaze upward, toward where, through the dense web of pipes and advertisement holograms, the "Dead Moon" barely showed — a massive inactive relay satellite frozen in low orbit. Its surface, scarred by micrometeorites, glowed faintly violet due to constant ionospheric interference. Every time Astra looked at it, she felt a strange pressure in her temples. As if, out there in the cold void, something was answering her gaze. Not hostile. Just… watching.
At that moment, a familiar red message flashed across her neuro-interface:
DEFECT
Biological rhythm unstable.
Recommendation: immediate transfer to a Recycling Center for diagnostics and possible processing.
Astra blinked, and the message vanished. But she knew — it would return in a few hours. As always.
"That error again?" Kai crouched beside her, trying not to look down. His voice trembled.
"It's not an error, Kai," she replied quietly. There was calm in her voice, but also steel.
"It's a premonition. Like this whole rusted world is about to crack open… and I'm standing right on the fault line, hearing it spread."
She ran a finger along the cold metal of the platform. Under her nails, black grime mixed with something dark red — maybe blood from an old cut, or just rust.
"Sometimes I wonder… what if I'm not the defect? What if the System is the one breaking? And we're just the first ones to notice?"
Kai glanced around nervously. In the distance, a patrol drone passed along a neighboring platform. Its red eye scanned the space with mechanical precision.
"Lower your voice, Astra. If they hear—"
"Let them," she smirked faintly, though the smile was bitter.
"I'm tired of pretending everything is fine. Every day we fix their machines, breathe their air, eat their synthetic garbage… and they decide who lives and who gets sent to recycling."
She fell silent. The only sounds were the distant hum of ventilators and the occasional crackle of dying lamps.
Deep inside her body, in those very cells the System had long labeled as "genetic waste," something strange began to stir. Something without digital code. Something ancient, hungry… and very, very patient.
It was awakening.
Astra did not know it yet. But the Dead Moon was already watching her more closely than before.
And somewhere deep within the sector, in the lowest levels where even patrol drones did not dare descend, the first real crack in the System had already begun to widen.
The whisper of death had a name.
And soon, it would be spoken aloud.