The silence around Citadel Vahn was absolute. It was a carefully constructed void, a total communications embargo enforced by military-grade mental firewalls.
Commander Vahn stood on the observation deck of his consciousness, looking out into the digital nebula where other minds drifted. He preferred the isolation. He had spent years reinforcing the perimeter, brick by psychological brick, to keep one specific frequency out.
The entity known as Elara.
She did not inhabit a Citadel. She existed as a swirling, chaotic vortex of energy that required constant streams of data—attention, validation, conflict—to sustain its form. She was a devourer of focus.
Vahn had once been part of her constellation, a fixed satellite orbiting her needs. He had broken away, a violent secession that left ragged edges in his own programming. Now, he just wanted the silence.
But Elara didn’t want connection. She wanted retrieval.
A proximity alarm chimed softly on Vahn’s console. A low-priority ping from the outer perimeter.
Vahn narrowed his eyes. It was her signature. It wasn’t a brute-force attack—she knew his shields held against direct emotional guilt-tripping. This was subtle. A probe.
He pulled up the data packet. It was a simple query, broadcast on an open channel, feigning ignorance.
“Vahn unit. My Archives are fragmenting on the pre-Unification history files. Specifically the flawed logic of the Mars Betrayal. I cannot locate the primary cause.”
Vahn felt a twitch in his sub-routines. The Mars Betrayal. It was his deepest area of expertise. He had literally written the definitive treatise on it in the academy. It was a passion subject, a piece of intellectual territory he cherished.
And she knew it.
The trap was elegant in its laziness. She could have repaired her Archives in seconds with a basic search algorithm. She didn’t need the information. She needed him to provide it.
His logical core—the Vanguard Protocol—flashed RED. Do not engage. It is bait.
But deeper down, buried beneath layers of armored plating, legacy code flickered to life. It was the old programming, the subroutine labeled “Be Helpful.” It bypassed his security clearance because it originated from inside the fortress.
The intellectual urge to correct an error overwhelmed his tactical caution.
Without thinking, Vahn’s fingers moved across the interface. He compiled a concise, irrefutable summary of the socio-economic pressures that led to the Mars Betrayal, attaching the primary source codes.
He hit send. The data packet streaked out of the Citadel, crossing the embargo zone.
The moment it cleared the perimeter, Vahn felt sick. The realization hit him with the force of a gravity well.
He watched on the long-range scanners as the packet reached Elara’s swirling vortex. She didn’t absorb the data. She didn’t integrate the history files.
The vortex merely pulsed once, brighter. A satisfied, predatory thrum echoed back across the void.
Ping. Asset active. Connection confirmed.
She hadn’t wanted to know about Mars. She wanted to know if her backdoor access into his mind still functioned. She wanted proof that she could still reach past his defenses and trigger a predictable response, forcing him back into the role of the reliable dispensary of information.
She had weaponized his own intellect against him.
Vahn slammed his fist onto the console, severing the connection instantly. The silence rushed back in, but it felt different now. It felt compromised.
He stared out into the nebula, seeing the faint, smug glow of her position. He wasn’t an independent Citadel to her. He was just a rogue asset that had briefly, foolishly, reported back for duty.
Vahn began the long, arduous process of recoding his legacy protocols. He would have to learn to love the silence more than he hated being wrong.
WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co
Travel in Life 