The crickets were loud tonight.
Too loud.
Their chirping grated against my ears like nails on a chalkboard as I trudged down the empty street. My tie hung loose around my neck, strangling me even though I'd already torn the top button open. The company logo stitched onto my suit jacket—a golden helix encircling a dollar sign—felt like a brand now. A mark of failure.
Redundant. That's what they'd called me.
Redundant, like a faulty cog in a machine that had already built a better cog.
I crumpled the termination letter in my fist, the paper crackling like dry bones. Twenty-three years old, and my entire career had just been outsourced to an algorithm. The same algorithm I'd trained, feeding it spreadsheets and workflows until it learned to chew through payroll faster than I ever could. Ironic, wasn't it? I'd automated myself into obsolescence.
The park bench greeted me with its usual rusted indifference. I slumped onto it, the cold metal biting through my slacks, and pulled out my phone. The screen glared back, a smug rectangle of light in the dark.
"Hey Siri," I muttered, my breath fogging in the chill. "What do you do when the job market's a dumpster fire and your entire skillset's been digitized?"
The AI's voice chirped, saccharine and useless: "Consider updating your resume or exploring freelance opportunities!"
I snorted. Even the machine couldn't fix this.
The vending machine across the path hummed like a mechanical vulture, its neon glow painting the sidewalk in sickly blue. I fumbled for my wallet, my fingers brushing against the corporate credit card—useless now, just like me.
Clink. A bottle rolled out: cherry cola, syrupy and too sweet. The kind of drink Alden, my college roommate, used to chug during all-nighters. I hadn't thought about him in years.
"Hand it over."
The voice was shaky but sharp, a serrated edge of desperation. I turned slowly. The man's knife glinted under the streetlight, his eyes wide and wild, darting between me and the vending machine. His shoes were duct-taped together.
I tossed him the card. "Knock yourself out."
He caught it, his grime-caked fingers trembling. For a second, I almost pitied him—another human relic, outcompeted by the world. Then I opened the banking app and killed the card's permissions. One tap. Easy.
The machine beeped red. DECLINED.
The man whirled, his face contorting. "You think you're smarter than me?"
The knife plunged.
It didn't hurt at first. Just pressure, like a fist shoving into my chest. Then warmth bloomed, soaking through my shirt, dripping onto the pavement. The man rifled through my pockets, his breath ragged, and sprinted off with my phone, my wallet, my keys.
I sagged against the vending machine, the cola bottle rolling away into the dark. My vision blurred at the edges, the crickets' chirps fading into static.
Pathetic, I thought, as the cold crept in. Fired by a robot, killed by a homeless man, bleeding out over a spilled soda. No last words. No meaning. Just…
Redundant.
***
The world dissolved.
Cold.
Not the sharp bite of winter, but a marrow-deep chill that seeped into the space between atoms. My body—did I still have a body?—floated in a void without light, sound, or direction. Time dissolved here, stretched thin as smoke. I might've lingered for seconds or centuries.
Then came the chains.
They coiled out of the darkness, serpentine and impossibly heavy. Not iron—starlight and shadow, crystalline links that hummed with a mechanical whir, like gears grinding in some celestial engine. They clamped around my wrists, ankles, throat, searing my skin with frostbite fire. When I screamed, the void swallowed the sound.
"Lucien Graves."
The voice wasn't a voice. It was the creak of a gallows rope, the click of a guillotine, and the sterile whir of a server farm—all fused into one. It came from everywhere and nowhere.
"A soul fractured by reliance on hollow minds. Unworthy of life. Unworthy of death."
A flicker of light cut through the void. A flame, luminous and cruel, hovering just beyond the chains. Its glow pulsed like a heartbeat, searing ice into my veins.
"Yet you will serve."
The chains jerked taut. I lurched forward, phantom limbs straining, as the flame expanded into a towering sigil—a serpent devouring its own tail, etched in fire.
"What is broken must be bound. What is bound must endure."
Memories surged—not mine: A man in gilded armor collapsing under a storm of shadows. A sword clattering to blood-soaked earth. A woman's scream. Alden, a name whispered like prayer and curse.
The chains yanked harder.
"You will bear his echoes. You will mend what he shattered."
"No!" I rasped, throat raw. "I don't want this!"
"Want?" The flame dimmed, coldly amused. "You are a hollow thing. A vessel. Your wants died with your carcass."
The sigil erupted. Light devoured me, scouring away fear, anger, self. I fought, clawing at the chains until my fingers split—
Crash.
Stone. Rot. Air thick with grave-dust.
I gasped, lungs burning.
And awoke.