KLEIO III – Consortium – an excerpt
The bus got bogged down in the dark. Not literally. The wheels were still turning, the engine thrummed beneath the floor, every pothole shot straight up her spine—but the world behind the fogged-up windows had become a thick, black mass, and now and then a dirty light would jump out of it. A sign, half broken, half run over. A pole. A line of fences that existed only as shadows.
Emily felt like her head had gotten off the bus a long time ago. Her body was trailing behind. For hours now there’d been nothing but the smell of cold smoke, plastic, the sweet film of sweat from the man two rows ahead. Over it all, the buzz of the interior lights, lodged in her skull like an old neon tube.
To them, I’m zero.
The thought was there before she could even put into words what it referred to. OBELON. KLEIO. The governance layer. Reyes, leaning over the table with his hands clasped. The agency that had officially waved her through as “outside our jurisdiction,” like a misaddressed package.
The bus braked. The jolt went through her whole body, drove straight into the scar beneath her ear where the implant used to sit. It was gone—her brain knew that. Still, it tingled there, as if someone had slipped an insect under her skin.
She squeezed her eyes shut and took one deep breath. The smell of diesel seeped in through a leak in the AC—sharp and heavy. When she opened her eyes again, she caught the driver in the mirror. Washed out in the yellow light, shadows under his eyes. He flicked a brief look at her, then his gaze drifted farther back, as if he were checking how much human residue was still stuck to the bus.
Up front, above the windshield, the destination blinked: OUTERBACK — ZONE OB-3 / FINAL STOP.
The display flickered, then snapped to an error message: “NO CONNECTION.” Someone had really cut the link—at least out here.
“End of the line!” the driver called into the cabin without getting up. “OB-3! Anyone who wants to go farther, tough luck.”
One of the men got up hesitantly and grabbed a bag that smelled like old food. A woman in a gray coat pushed past Emily, bracing herself briefly on the seatback. The movement sent a dull ache through Emily’s shoulders. When she straightened, something cracked in her neck.
Zero, she thought. An entry nobody needs anymore.
She waited until the others were out. Her legs felt like the bus’s metal frame: overworked, twisted, close to snapping. She reached up for the backpack above her; the strap bit sharply into her fingertips. Nothing valuable inside. A change of clothes, a notebook, a few printouts she still hadn’t burned, even though maybe she should have.
When she stepped outside, the cold air hit her like a punch.
The smell out here was different than on the bus. Oil, yes, but not from the engine. Somewhere nearby there had to be a shop that worked more with cables than with cars. Trash that hadn’t been picked up on time. Cold grease settling into cracks. Underneath it, a damp note—maybe the river, or just a poorly covered canal.
She pulled her coat tighter. The lining was thin; the cold still wormed its way through, as if OBELON even had the weather listed in its catalog of measures.
The bus sat on an improvised lot that might once have been some kind of terminal. Now it was a patch of cracks and faded markings. The lines on the asphalt had lost their color. A few concrete blocks someone had spray-painted: “NO ENTRY FOR KLEIO.” The letters had run, but they were still readable.
On the roof of a one-story building across from her, a neon sign sputtered. Three letters were dead, others blinked irregularly. OB… something. The rest vanished whenever the light cut out.
Beside her stood the woman in the gray coat, hands deep in her pockets, shoulders hunched. She had the face of someone who’d seen every city once without ever arriving anywhere.
“So this is Outerback,” she murmured.
Emily let her gaze roam. Not much of an “is.” A row of low apartment blocks, open gaps between them filled with dumpsters, makeshift fences, abandoned vehicles. In the distance, the dark skeleton of a bridge with no lights burning. Power generators somewhere, a dull thrum in the background. A dog barked—short, clipped.
“To them, we’re the hole behind the statistics,” Emily replied, almost automatically.
The woman shot her a sidelong look, appraising. “You’re the one from the feed,” she said after a moment. Not a question. “The one who trashed the Tower.”
“Didn’t do much good,” Emily said.
“They held a tribunal,” the woman said. “That’s more than most people get.”
“And then they stamped ‘acceptable risk’ on it,” Emily said.
The woman shrugged, as if filing the phrase under something she already knew. “My husband disappeared into the refurbishment center,” she said. “They had risk analyses before that, too. I saw the entrance in the feed the next day, with cut flowers out front.”
She pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from her coat pocket. A flyer with the usual promises: “Reintegration,” “Support,” “New opportunities.” Under it, a picture of a smiling man in a white room. The image had bled at the edges from rain.
“I’m headed south,” the woman said. “OB-5. They say there are still jobs there.”
“Good luck,” Emily said.
The woman tucked the flyer away and walked off. Her footsteps sounded hollow on the concrete.
Emily stood there, the backpack heavy on her shoulder, the bus at her back as it slowly shut down its engine. The rumble faded, and with it a layer of noise that had carried her all the way here. What remained was the hum of generators somewhere between the blocks—and the soft hiss of a high-voltage line no one was really keeping an eye on anymore.
She started walking. A sign pointed left: “REINTEGRATION POINT OB-3.” White background, blue logo. Someone had taped a handwritten note beneath it: “DON’T ALL GO THERE.”
The writing was rushed, the letters different sizes. A drop of dark paint had run downward, as if whoever wrote it couldn’t keep their hand steady.
Kids stood on the corner. Three, maybe four—hard to tell in oversized jackets. None of them had an implant at the temple. Instead, two of them held walkie-talkies, old units with worn buttons and antennas that had seen better days.
“Zone clear,” crackled one of the radios. The voice was high, distorted. “Bus is here.”
The kids looked over at her openly. One of them sniffed; a string of snot glinted in the neon. No one grinned, no one waved. She wasn’t a celebrity here—just a new variable.
“You’ve got radio,” Emily said.
The biggest one lifted his walkie-talkie slightly, like he was showing off a talisman. “Implants break more often out here,” he said. “Radio doesn’t.”
“Radio can be shut down,” Emily said.
“Not if you know where to step out,” the boy said. He studied her. “You’ve got something there,” he murmured, pointing at the side of her neck.
She brushed her fingers involuntarily over the scar beneath her ear. The skin was uneven, a thin line that felt colder than the rest. Sometimes people stared at it longer; sometimes they pretended they didn’t see it.
“Old,” she said.
“OB,” the boy said. It sounded like he was talking about a dog that had bitten someone.
She let it drop and kept walking. Up on the higher floors of the blocks, some windows stood open; others were sealed with plastic. From one apartment came the sound of radio music, dull and tinny. No KLEIO interface, no personalized streams—one station for everyone who still had power.
Handwritten notes were taped to a wall. Blurry photos, names, “last seen” underneath. Beside them, other notes: “KLEIO = KEY.” “REINTEGRATION = RESET.” “WE ARE NOT TEST RUNS.”
She stopped and read a few names. Some were familiar. Not as people—just as case numbers from internal documents she’d seen back in the Tower. Here they were in full, with nicknames and “He was always kind” beneath them.
She felt her stomach tighten. The Tower had turned these people into charts—bars and curves. Here they were on thin paper, in scrawled handwriting, held up with tape that was peeling at the corners.
To them, I’m zero.
To the ones on this wall, she was the one who’d made a little light. And then vanished.
She tore her gaze away and kept going. Wind crawled through the alleys, carrying scraps of paper, the asphalt shining in places with old rain. A generator sat in a small square, fenced off with a makeshift barrier. Two men worked on it, oil-smeared, focused. The thing droned—a deep, vibrating noise you could feel in your gut.
“If that goes down, we’re all blind,” one of the men said without looking up.
“Blind is quieter,” the other replied.
Emily rounded the next corner. A lit sign caught her eye. Three letters: R_ESET. Two of the neon tubes were blown. In the glass, the square reflected back, warped. Someone had painted in white across the window: “Time’s broken. So are we.”
The bar.
