2: Sync

Aria sat at the edge of her bed, staring blankly at the cityscape beyond her window. The DreamLink interface had gone dark, its faint blue light replaced with an ominous red glow that pulsed in sync with her heartbeat. Warnings from the night replayed in her mind. "This peace is an illusion, a cage you built for yourselves." Those words lingered like a ghost, unshakable, creeping into her waking thoughts.

Her holo-tablet buzzed, breaking her trance. Takumi’s face appeared on the screen; his usually calm demeanor strained. “Aria. Can we meet? DreamHub’s escalating the security protocols, and they’ve put us all on alert.”

She agreed with a quick nod, gathering herself before leaving her apartment. The quiet of her room felt almost comforting outside, she knew that the world was awakening to a disquiet that had been absent for years.

The Floating Sector’s marketplace was bustling, yet muted. Normally lively, it seemed shadowed, even under the bright holographic billboards casting neon lights over the walkway. Aria noticed clusters of people murmuring, their faces uneasy. Some glanced nervously at their DreamLink implants as if they feared they might betray them.

She met Takumi by a small park bordered by chrome benches and towering silver trees. He stood with a familiar furrow in his brow, glancing around as though expecting something or someone to jump out from the shadows.

“Takumi,” she greeted, her voice low.

He turned, with relief flashing across his face. “Thanks for coming.” His gaze held hers, searching. “It’s worse than I thought.”

They walked in silence for a few moments, his tension bleeding into her. Finally, he spoke. “This… disturbance in the DreamLink it's evolving. Whatever’s causing these nightmares isn’t just random; it’s like it’s learning. Every DreamHub scan fails to pinpoint its source. It's as if it’s hiding within the sync itself.”

Aria clenched her fists, feeling a surge of defiance. “So, what now? Are we supposed to just keep dreaming in sync, hoping it’ll disappear?”

Takumi’s shoulders slumped. “It’s not that simple. DreamHub wants to ramp up filters and impose more strict regulations. They’re worried that these nightmares could tear the city apart if they keep spreading.”

“But what are they, Takumi?” She struggled to articulate the unease twisting inside her. “It’s as if… as if these dreams aren’t just dreams. They’re… reaching for us.”

Takumi’s jaw tightened; his gaze distant. “Last night, I dreamt of the city burning. People screaming, clawing at each other to escape the flames.” His voice lowered. “And that face. The one you described.”

Aria’s heart skipped. “You saw him too?”

He nodded. “The same man. He kept whispering that everything we know is a lie.” Takumi’s fists are clenched. “Aria, I don’t think this is just a malfunction. It feels… personal, like something or someone wants us to see this.”

They stopped near the edge of the park, gazing out over the city. The skyline stretched far, its polished buildings glinting in the pale morning light. Below, people continued their routines, strolling, chatting, laughing, a peaceful life built on decades of progress and harmony.

But for the first time, Aria felt that peace tremble, like a delicate glass facade waiting to shatter.

“Takumi, if DreamHub can’t handle this… what do we do?”

He hesitated, his gaze steady and intense. “There’s an underground network. They’re called Nightwatchers. Ex-DreamHub agents, developers, people who knew the system before it went public. They claim to know the original framework, what lies beneath the DreamLink’s current code.”

Aria’s eyes widened. “Why would they know more than DreamHub itself?”

Takumi shrugged. “Because they built it. They’ve been living on the fringes of Neo-Tokyo, watching DreamLink evolve, adapting their own systems to avoid detection. If anyone understands what’s happening, it’s them.”

Aria took a deep breath, her heart racing. DreamLink had always been the city’s beating heart, a shared reality that had replaced individual isolation with unity. The idea of an older, hidden version of that system was chilling. What could be so dangerous that it needed to be hidden?

Takumi met her gaze. “Are you willing to find out?”

Her pulse quickened. “If it means finding answers… yes.”

The Nightwatchers’ base was in the city's Underlayers, where natural sunlight barely reached, and neon lights pulsed in erratic rhythms. Here, tech whispered secrets long abandoned by the Floating Sector’s gleaming towers.

Takumi led her through dimly lit corridors until they reached an unmarked door. He pressed a sequence on a panel, and it slid open, revealing a room filled with monitors, cables, and low murmurs of people huddled over consoles.

A woman with bright, alert eyes approached them. “Takumi,” she greeted with a nod. “And you brought a friend.”

“This is Aria. She’s… experienced the nightmares.”

The woman’s gaze sharpened, and she motioned for them to follow her to a console displaying tangled lines of code interspersed with flickering dream sequences. Aria watched as familiar faces from DreamLink floated by their serene expressions gradually morphing into terror, confusion, and grief.

“Welcome to the truth,” the woman said softly. “These dreams, the ones breaking through the sync they’re not random. They’re encrypted messages from the original DreamLink code, memories from when Neo-Tokyo was… very different.”

Aria swallowed hard, feeling the weight of those words. “Why are they surfacing now?”

The woman glanced at Takumi before answering. “Because the DreamLink was never meant to hold such deep, conflicting emotions. The harmony we have now… it’s built on erasing or suppressing trauma, conflict, everything that once tore people apart. But memories have a way of resurfacing. The more harmonious we try to make it, the more those hidden memories push back.

Aria stared at the screen, her mind racing. “So, you’re saying… this peace is fragile. That it’s built on forgetting?”

The woman’s expression was grave. “Exactly. And now those memories are fighting to be remembered.”

As Aria absorbed this revelation, her vision blurred, her body growing heavy. She tried to speak, but her voice was drowned out by the faint hum of DreamLink echoing in her ears, growing louder, more insistent. Her eyes fluttered shut, and the shadows closed in around her.

When she opened her eyes, she was back in her bed, staring at the pulsing red light of her DreamLink. A message flashed across her view:

“There’s no harmony without memory.”