The air in the abandoned metro station was heavy with the smell of rusty oil and musty dampness, but it was free from the "buzzing" of the digital frequencies that filled the Paris sky. Julian sat on a dilapidated wooden bench, watching his right hand pulse with a faint, hidden golden light, as if it were a separate heart trying to escape his body. Before them, Arthur and his men moved swiftly through the shadows, gathering equipment that looked primitive: copper wires, old batteries, and vacuum-tube radios.
"You look at it as if it's an enemy," Arthur said, approaching Julian and pointing to his golden hand. "But in reality, it's just a tool. The problem isn't the scissors; it's the hand that moves them."
"Edward Collins is the one moving it," Julian replied in an exhausted voice. "I feel him in every cell, whispering to me that the world is just a torn fabric that needs to be re-sewn according to his mad vision."
Arthur let out a dry, bitter laugh. "We 'The Forgotten' removed our chips ten years ago. Some of us lost motor memory, some were paralyzed, but we kept one thing The Sand Club failed to understand: analog thinking. We don't think in zeros and ones, but in infinite possibilities. Edward designed the 'Golden Scissors' to be an absolute digital weapon, but he forgot that the human soul cannot be fully programmed."
At that moment, Julian felt a sudden pressure behind his ears. The chip began to ignite. Julian fell to the ground, and Claire screamed, trying to catch him, but Arthur stopped her.
"Don't touch him! He's fighting the 'Sewing Room' battle right now," Arthur said sternly.
Inside Julian's mind, the darkness of the tunnel faded, replaced by a searing, painful whiteness. He stood in an endless room, filled with intersecting golden and blue threads crossing space in every direction. In the middle of the room sat Edward Collins on a wooden chair, holding a piece of black cloth and slowly tearing it.
*"Welcome to my home, Julian,"* Edward said without looking up. *"Did you like the chaos in Paris? Did you see how humans cry when you give them back their memories? The freedom you seek is just tearing the curtains that protect them from the scorching sun of truth."*
"I am not you," Julian shouted, stepping toward Edward. "I am not a tool for your revenge project."
*"You are more me than you think,"* Edward replied, standing up, his features suddenly transforming into an exact likeness of Julian. *"Every time you 'cut' a frequency, you empty a space in your memory for me to fill. Soon, there will be nothing left of Julian the fugitive but an empty shell inhabited by the Weaver."*
Edward extended his hand toward Julian, and Julian felt his will fading. But he remembered Arthur's words: "analog thinking." Instead of fighting Edward with force, Julian imagined a memory that wasn't in the chip's records; he imagined the smell of rain on old grass, and the feeling of warmth he felt when Claire touched his hand for the first time. These were "non-digital" emotions that could not be encrypted.
The sewing room shook and its white walls cracked. Edward screamed in anger as he faded: *"This won't save you forever! The Isolation will choke you before you reach Marseille!"*
Julian woke up in the tunnel, drenched in sweat. Claire was looking at him in terror. "Julian... you stopped breathing for seconds."
"I'm okay... now," Julian said, standing up with difficulty. "But we aren't alone here."
Suddenly, the sound of a muffled explosion echoed at the far entrance of the tunnel. The primitive lamps set by the Forgotten went out, replaced by a flashing, intermittent red light. Thin, tall robotic entities emerged from the shadows, moving with a terrifying silence. Their eyes were thermal and frequency sensing lenses.
"Pulse Hunters!" Arthur shouted. "They've tracked the golden frequency of your hand, Julian! Run toward the cargo tunnel; my men and I will distract them!"
"I won't leave you!" Julian shouted.
He extended his right hand toward the first hunters who approached. He felt the power flowing, but this time he didn't let Edward lead it. Julian directed his energy toward the metal floor of the tunnel. Instead of cutting the hunters, he "cut" the magnetic gravity in the area surrounding them. The machines rose into the air randomly, colliding with each other in mechanical chaos.
"Hurry!" Claire shouted, pulling Julian toward a side tunnel where an old diesel freight train was waiting, its engine roaring loudly.
They boarded the train, and the engine began to roar with a primitive "analog" sound that The Sand Club could not control remotely. As the train moved slowly into the darkness, Julian looked at Arthur, who remained behind with his men to close the heavy iron door.
"Why are you helping us, Arthur?" Julian asked as the train accelerated.
"Because you are the only hope to cut the global fabric," Arthur shouted as he disappeared behind the door. "Remember, Julian... Marseille is only the beginning! Don't let Edward steal your childhood!"
Julian sat in a dark corner of the car, with Claire beside him. Claire felt the coldness of his hand and looked at him to find his gaze had become sharper and more frozen. He said nothing, but he pulled a small mirror shard from his pocket that he had picked up from Notre Dame. He looked at his reflection and didn't see his face clearly; his features looked like a "code" starting to change and reshape itself.
"Claire," he said in a calm, terrifying voice. "I'm starting to forget the name of the street where I was born. Memory fades with every stroke of the scissors."
Claire found no words to comfort him, so she simply squeezed his trembling hand. The train was cutting its way toward the borders of Paris, where the "Red Laser Wall" representing the digital quarantine borders awaited them. The next confrontation would not be with the hunters, but with the "Wall" itself—the true test of Julian's ability to cut reality and escape south.
Chapter Twenty-One ended with Julian staring into the darkness, while Edward's echo in his mind began to sing an old, sad melody—a melody Julian had never heard before, as if it were an obituary for his humanity that had begun to dissolve into the golden fabric.