Wakey Wakey

The hum was back.

Not steady—never steady now—but stuttering through the concrete marrow of the tunnels, rasping off rusted rails and corroded conduit like a broken cathedral organ trying to remember hymns it once knew by heart.

Maren paused at an intersection lit only by her lantern and the faint residual glow of the emergency strips the rebels had left behind. The floor tremored—subtle, like a pulse. The air itself seemed to breathe.

Something had fractured.

Not in stone.

Not in the tunnels.

In the world.

Her mind ran in circles trying to catch hold of a memory—or a feeling—that wouldn’t stay put. Silen… maps… rebels… the storm above… then suddenly oceans, diesel fumes, a carrier deck, unfamiliar uniforms, and a sky screaming with aircraft.

She tasted salt on her tongue.

She hadn't been to sea in ages.

The lantern flickered. For a heartbeat its light refracted into shards—one shard showed the tunnel, another a metallic corridor, another an open field, another a room full of screens. Then the world stitched itself back together, wrong but functioning.

Maren steadied herself against the wall, breath sharp and fast.
“What is happening,” she whispered, though she wasn’t sure who she meant—herself, the rebels, or the thing humming beneath existence.

She started walking again, listening.

The hum had cadence now—almost conversational—like a machine thinking aloud. Occasionally, it clipped into higher frequencies and she heard words she wasn’t supposed to hear:

rollback—pending—WWII—branch—merge—identity—conflict—Maren—prime—candidate—disputed

She pressed both palms to her temples—pain bursting like white phosphorus.
“Stop. Just—stop.”

The tunnel complied, falling eerily silent.

For three long seconds the world was hollow.

Then the fracture widened—not physically, but perceptually—and memory cascaded into her from a place no one should have memories from:

San Francisco towers melting into server bays—
Hooded figures editing timelines with gestures—
An obelisk splitting as lightning struck—
Cities collapsing as people cheered for safety—
The founding code being written by hands she could not see—

She stumbled, nearly dropping the lantern.

“Silen,” she gasped, because saying his name grounded her more than reality did.

The hum resumed—less harsh, almost coaxing.

It wanted her to keep moving.

So she did—roaming deeper, down corridors that hadn’t been mapped by rebels or by the city planners who once owned these bones. Strange signage appeared—white glyphs on black tiles, unreadable but oddly familiar—like icons from software she had never used but somehow understood.

She followed a turn, then another—no plan, no map, only instinct and the certainty that something was waiting ahead, something that wanted to make sense of the fracture as much as she did.

Behind her, far down the tunnel, she heard footsteps splash lightly in pooled water.

Not military.

Not rebels.

Someone—or something—was following.

Maren lifted her lantern, pulse racing, and whispered to the dark:
“Show yourself.”

But nothing answered—only the hum, deeper now, warmer, as if trying to decide what world she belonged to.

And whether she was meant to wake.