Chapter 5 — The Outsider

Aren didn’t sleep in the Collective’s residential rings, not yet.

As an outsider, his status required a transitional stay in the Integration Ward, a quiet, glass-lined building near the eastern sky-lattice boundary. It was meant to feel welcoming. Neutral colors. Soft lighting. Nutrient trays. Support kiosks.

But Lira noticed something the first time she walked in:

Everything smelled like disinfected politeness.

Aren sat cross-legged on his bed, one elbow resting on his knee, watching as the CEU bumpily tried to fold and refold his blanket for him. He snatched the blanket away.

“Stop that,” he grumbled. “I’m not paralyzed.”

The CEU hovered in confusion. “Assistance protocol—”

“Shut up,” Aren said, not unkindly.

The CEU dimmed its glow, drifting to a sulking height near the wall.

Lira stepped into the doorway. “You bully your poor CEU.”

Aren smirked. “It tried to make my pillow symmetrical. Who does that?”

Lira stepped in and sat across from him. “Someone raised in the Collective.”

He snorted. “Exactly.”

Rho-7 floated behind Lira, scanning the room with faint pulses of blue light. The CEU retreated further, intimidated.

“Your CU terrifies mine,” Aren said.

“Rho-7 terrifies me sometimes,” Lira admitted.

The sphere hummed, as if flattered.

Aren leaned back against the wall. “So. Did you come because you’re bored, curious, or existentially unraveling?”

“Yes,” Lira said.

Aren laughed. “Valid.”

Silence fell—not awkward, but heavy. The kind of silence where two people hold questions but aren’t sure how to ask them yet.

Lira broke first.

“How did you get past the border?”

Aren had expected the question; it flashed in the way his shoulders tensed.

“It wasn’t… clean,” he said. “Or easy.”

“Start at the beginning,” Lira said softly.

He exhaled, eyes drifting to the ceiling.

“Outside the Collective, we don’t have alien miracle fields. Or perfect food generators. Or floating conscience-orbs. We have districts. Castes. Some good, some awful. I grew up in the border slums.”

Lira didn’t interrupt.

“When I was nine,” Aren continued, “we noticed lights in the sky. Not like the Collective’s lattice—more… organic. Like veins. Pulsing. Nobody else saw them. Or if they did, they said nothing.”

Rho-7 drifted closer. “Spatial anomaly?”

Aren shrugged. “At the time, I didn’t know what it was. But it happened every few years. A ripple. A shimmer. A… breath. Same as what you’re seeing now.”

Lira stiffened. “So the alien system isn’t isolated to the Collective.”

“It never was,” Aren said. “You all just assumed it.”

“And the others?” Lira asked. “People outside? Did they see it?”

Aren shook his head. “Most didn’t. Or didn’t care. Life’s too hard out there to chase sky-glimmers. People are too busy fighting to survive. You forget to look up.”

He paused.

“I didn’t.”

Lira studied him. Aren had a roughness to him—a texture that most Collective citizens lacked. His movements weren’t optimized. His voice wasn’t moderated. His emotions didn’t get filtered before expression.

He was… human. Rawly, painfully human.

“What happened next?” she asked.

Aren rubbed the back of his neck. “Last year, I saw something different. Not just the shimmer, but a shape. Like a fractured sphere. Like your drawing.”

Lira’s breath caught. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”
Aren’s voice hardened. “And then the border patrols doubled. Collective scanners intensified. Something was happening on your side. Something big.”

Rho-7 emitted a low hum, intrigued.

“So I watched,” Aren said. “I kept track of the pulses. The timing. The arc patterns. I realized the lattice was aligning—like a compass pointing inward.”

“Inward to what?” Lira whispered.

“I didn’t know.”
Aren looked at her. “But I knew I had to get inside to find out.”

“So you ran,” Lira said.

“I didn’t run.” He paused. “I survived. That’s different.”

Lira lowered her eyes. She knew nothing of survival—not in Aren’s sense. Not in the world beyond the Collective’s stability.

“How did you cross the neutral zone?” she asked.

That part made him flinch.

“I walked.”

“No one walks across the neutral zone,” Lira said. “It’s kilometers of surveillance. Lethal field traps. And the drones—”

Aren shook his head. “The traps didn’t activate.”

Lira frowned. “That’s not possible.”

“Tell that to the system,” he muttered.

Rho-7 moved closer to him, its blue ring narrowing. “Clarify: you walked through active alien-detection field unharmed?”

“Yes.”

“Impossible,” Rho-7 said.

Aren smiled thinly. “And yet I’m here.”

Lira felt her pulse quicken. “Did the lattice… respond to you?”

“I think so.”
He rubbed at his forearm. “It felt… warm. Like standing near a live engine humming at the right frequency. Like it knew I was there.”

Lira swallowed. “Why would it let you through?”

Aren held her gaze. “Maybe for the same reason it’s reacting to you.”

Rho-7 vibrated slightly. “Hypothesis: the alien substrate may be selecting high-resonance cognitive entities.”

“Meaning?” Lira asked.

Aren answered before the CU could.

“Meaning the system is choosing people.”

The room felt colder.

Lira backed away slightly. “That’s… no. Systems don’t choose. They process.”

“Your Custodians don’t think that,” Aren said.

Lira frowned. “You don’t know Custodians.”

“But I know fear,” Aren said. “And I saw it in their eyes when they found me. They were terrified that something had opened the door for me.”

Rho-7 pulsed. “Correlation probable.”

Lira hugged her arms to herself. “What do you think the system wants from us?”

Aren leaned forward.

“I think,” he said, “your perfect society wasn’t the end.”

Lira trembled.

“And I think,” Aren continued, “you’re the next step.”

The CEU beeped nervously in the background. Outside the window, the sky-lattice flickered—a soft, pulsing light like a heartbeat.

Rho-7 spoke in a whisper.

“Another fluctuation. Pattern matches Lira’s earlier sketches.”

Aren exhaled slowly. “See? It’s calling.”

Lira shut her eyes. “I don’t want to be called.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Aren said gently. “It already found you.”

The room fell silent.

Then a new tone chimed—high, crystalline, alien—echoing through the Integration Ward.

Lira’s Directive notification blinked again.

New Access Permission Granted:
Hall of Records — Sublevel Zero
Status: Custodian Override

Aren stared.
Rho-7 rotated sharply.
Lira felt her heartbeat skip.

“That’s not possible,” she whispered.

Aren smiled sideways.

“Welcome to your real Directive.”