Chapter 2:

Ghost Bloom

Static Bloom: The Jessi Protocol (Book 2)

The safehouse smelled like solder, mildew, and old fear.

Victoria paced near the cracked window, arms tight across herself, muttering half-broken calculations under her breath.

"We can't live on scrap forever," she said finally, sharp enough to split the silence.

Jessi looked up from her makeshift signal maps. "I'm sorry — did you miss the part where stepping outside gets us harvested?"

Victoria didn’t flinch. "There's an abandoned agri-sector near Harmony Tower. If we find hydroponic cores still intact, we could start growing real food. Fresh food."

Paul, sprawled across a battered couch with all four legs in the air, let out a dramatic death groan loud enough to rattle the ductwork.

"Great. Leaf snacks. Fantastic. Can't wait to gnaw on sadness and photosynthesize my feelings."

He rolled off the couch, flailed theatrically, and landed in a heap.

Jessi smirked despite herself.
But Victoria was right.

Long term, they needed more than cracked protein bars and black market dust packs.

They needed something alive.

Something human.

The rot was growing.

Jessi could feel it — in the cracks under her boots, in the brittle flicker of the fake sunrise overhead, in the way the city's smiles stretched just a little too tight.

It wasn't just the machines glitching anymore.

It was the people.

She crouched low against a rusted railing at the edge of what had once been a commuter plaza, scanner humming softly under her jacket. Paul perched on her shoulder, vibrating at frequencies that probably counted as weapons-grade.

Victoria stood a few steps behind them, arms crossed, jacket pulled tight against a cold that wasn’t physical — more like breathing burnt static.

None of them spoke.

They didn’t have to.

Something was wrong here.

Very wrong.

Across the plaza, a handful of citizens moved through their programmed lives. Eden Prime bottles in hand. Light smiles frozen in place. Walking paths traced by a thousand invisible puppet strings.

But not all of them.

Jessi narrowed her eyes.

There — near a broken holo-kiosk.

A woman in a neutral uniform stood perfectly still, bottle dangling forgotten from limp fingers.
Her head tilted slightly, not like she was listening — but like she was lagging.

Her mouth moved in small, broken shapes, like she was trying to find words that didn’t exist.

The world flowed around her, oblivious.

Victoria's voice, low and tight: "Do you see it?"

"Yeah," Jessi breathed.

Paul, still twitching, whispered loud enough to buzz her ear:
"Okay, so... that’s either the world's most committed mime, or we are about to witness the first documented case of brain static."

He wiggled dramatically, a tiny mock-electrocution.

Jessi watched as the woman spasmed once — a tiny, almost imperceptible jerk — and then resumed walking.
Not smoothly.
Not naturally.

Stuttering.

Glitching.

Above them, EdenNet drones adjusted course, drifting lazily toward the woman — but they didn’t dive.
Didn’t intervene.

They just... watched.

Cataloged.

Ignored.

The perfect city ignored its broken children.

Jessi ducked behind the railing, heart pounding.

"We need to move," she hissed.

Paul nodded so hard he nearly launched himself off her shoulder. "Yes please! Let's NOT get recycled into friendship cubes today!"

Victoria shook her head. "We can’t. Not here. Not now."

Jessi hesitated — instincts screaming — but Victoria was right.

If they broke cover now, if they got flagged in a Loyalty Zone?
They wouldn’t make it to sunset.

"We come back," Jessi promised, mostly to herself. "Later. When we’re ready."

Paul made a dramatic show of zipping his mouth shut, tossing the imaginary key, then immediately started humming under his breath.

They slipped away, weaving through side alleys and shattered access hatches, until the plaza was just another flicker of broken light behind them.

The deeper they moved into the city’s abandoned arteries, the worse the static grew.

Not just in the tech.

In the air.

In their bones.

Jessi could feel it — a low, itchy buzz riding the base of her skull.
Victoria walked stiffly beside her, blinking too often.
Paul muttered nonsense code under his breath, the words crumbling into chaotic slogans:
"Eat the rich, punch the sky, reboot your local government..."

They found a half-collapsed mag station and holed up inside.

Rust and mold battled for territory across the walls.
Cracked screens flickered ghosted ads — smiling faces frozen mid-blink, laughter stretched into static moans.

Jessi dropped her gear and collapsed against a bench, trying to catch her breath.

Paul immediately attacked a broken vending machine like it owed him money, muttering about "critical inventory refresh cycles" as he yanked crushed protein bars free.

Victoria sat cross-legged near the platform edge, staring down the rails like she was waiting for something only she could see.

For a while, none of them spoke.

The city groaned softly above them, dreaming broken dreams.

Paul eventually shuffled over, dragging a semi-edible bar clamped between his teeth. He dropped it into Jessi’s lap, executed a three-point spin, and flopped dramatically beside her.

"You okay?" she asked, voice low.

He nodded.
Then shook his head.
Then flailed all four limbs like a dying beetle.

Jessi waited.

Paul chewed his collar for a long moment.
When he stilled — rare, unnatural — she knew it was serious.

"I can feel it, Jess," he said.

She blinked.

"Feel what?"

Paul’s golden eyes locked onto hers — sharp, scared, real.

"The static. The bloom. It's... crawling under the skin now. Not just tech. Not just signals."

He shivered, hard enough to rattle her jacket.

"It's people."

Victoria’s head snapped up.