The hum wasn't real.
Not to most people, at least. But Rafe heard it—like a constant buzz sitting just beneath the skin of the world. An invisible vibration threading through the concrete, the air, the bones of buildings. It was the sound of a world plugged in, and he hated it.
It was late. Or early. The kind of hour that bled time, where everything slowed to a drip and the city exhaled in silence.
Rafe sat in the farthest corner of the underground magtrain, back to the wall, eyes forward, like an animal that never stopped scanning for predators. Everyone else was out cold—or at least looked that way. Their bodies were there, slumped in seats, swaying with the motion of the train, but their minds? Gone.
Gone into the Net.
Their eyes glowed faint blue, irises flickering like candle flames, signaling deep immersion. Some wore smiles, others frowns, a few just blank. Faces frozen mid-expression, like statues from a forgotten civilization.
He watched them with a low-grade unease. This was normal now. Expected. Even law. The Net was no longer just a tool—it was the world. Work happened in the Net. Education. Therapy. Commerce. Romance. War. Dreams. Everything worth doing happened in that endless stream of thought and signal.
Except for him.
Rafe's eyes didn't glow. No neural uplink. No mindjack. Just old meat and stubborn brain cells, unplugged and painfully present. That made him a ghost. An anomaly. A glitch.
And in a world where the only crime was disconnection, that made him dangerous.
The train hissed as it slowed into the next station—an empty platform bathed in pale artificial light. A single drone hovered near the ceiling, scanning the crowd. Rafe shifted slightly, tilting his face away without looking like he was. He knew the timing of its sweep, the lazy arc of its scanner. He'd studied it. Counted the seconds. Knew how long he had to stay invisible.
A low voice crackled in his ear.
"Still breathing, Ghostboy?" It was Lexi.
Rafe didn't flinch. Just exhaled softly, like a pressure valve releasing.
"Barely," he murmured.
"You're two stops from the drop. I spiked the grid three minutes ago—should buy you a blind spot for five more. After that, you're cooked."
"Copy."
He pulled his hood lower and stood, careful not to draw attention. Not that it mattered. The passengers were deep under—Netwalking in dreamscapes, simulations, or endless feeds of curated emotion. He might as well be invisible.
But the system wasn't blind. And somewhere, deep in the Net's infrastructure, eyes were always watching.
Lexi's voice dropped a tone. "By the way… got a ping on you. Quiet one. Deep scrape. Someone's looking—but not through the front door."
"Government?" he asked.
"Worse," she said. "Corporate."
Rafe's jaw clenched.
The train doors opened with a soft sigh. He stepped out, boots hitting the platform with a heavy sound, far too real in a world full of phantom footsteps. The air was damp and stale, smelled like rust and ozone.
He walked without rushing, one hand in his coat, fingers brushing the analog radio in his inner pocket. It wasn't much—just static and old jazz channels—but it was his anchor. His lifeline. It was untrackable. Unhackable. Real.
And right now, it was buzzing—irregular, broken, like it had something to say but no words to say it.
"You sure it's corporate?" Rafe asked again, quieter now.
Lexi didn't answer right away. Static hissed. Then:
"Yeah. And they're not just looking. They're hunting."