Crossed Wires

The maintenance wing smelled of oil and ozone, the metal walls humming with the low thrum of cooling fans. Sunlight pierced the grimy glass above, slicing the dust into thin, sparkling ribbons that drifted past Kaito's face as he hunched over a panel of blinking LEDs.

A sudden clank echoed from the far end of the corridor. The sound was followed by the crisp click of reinforced boots on steel. Kaito's breath caught; his pulse thudded against his ribs like a drumbeat he could not silence.

General Ma stepped into the aisle, his coat a matte black that seemed to swallow the light. A visor glowed faintly, scrolling streams of data across its surface. He moved with the measured stride of a predator—every step measured, every eye on the room.

"Ma," Kaito said, voice flat, trying to keep his hands steady as he twisted a wire. The wires twisted under his fingers, hot and slick, but his fingers trembled.

General Ma's visor flickered, then settled on Kaito. A soft, mechanical voice whispered from the helmet, “Biometric readout: emotional variance – 27.4% above acceptable threshold.”

Kaito's stomach clenched. He could feel the echo of the sunset memory still pulsing in his mind—warm, amber light spilling over a distant river, the scent of wet pine. The feeling was a bright scar, too vivid for the grid's calm.

He forced his eyes to the console, fingers flying. The screen flashed red—*override required*. He tapped the emergency rewrite protocol, the code racing across the display like a comet.

"Your compliance is noted," Ma said, his tone thin, almost amused. He stepped closer, the visor now reflecting Kaito's own strained face. “Explain the anomaly, technician.”

Kaito's throat felt like sandpaper. He swallowed, feeling the memory's heat flare, then dim as he fought it down. “Routine maintenance,” he replied, the words sounding hollow. “A residual latency from yesterday’s grid patch.”

Ma raised an eyebrow, a thin line etched into the visor's glass. “Latencies do not affect the affective regulator. They are filtered. Yet our scanners record spikes.”

Kaito's hand slipped on the wet panel. The metal was slick with his own sweat. He pressed the rewrite key harder, the neural biometric array trembling under his fingertips as he injected a cascade of neutral code. The hum of the wing rose, a low, angry growl, as the system fought back.

“Your emotional buffer is destabilizing,” Ma continued, stepping back to let the scanners sweep the room. A soft whine rose from the ceiling, the scanners' lenses sweeping in slow, deliberate arcs, painting Kaito in a pale blue light.

Kaito clenched his jaw, feeling the sunset fragment tug at his mind like a rope. He forced the overwrite. The screen blinked: *Neutralized*. For a heartbeat, the blue light steadied, the readout fell to 0.2%.

Ma's visor pulsed, then softened. “Override successful,” the mechanical voice declared. “Compliance restored.”

Kaito let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. The weight in his chest eased, but the after‑effects surged like a wave crashing onto a shore. The warm sunset memory recoiled, turning icy. A cold prickling spread across his temples, a sharp ache that flared whenever he tried to breathe.

“Make sure this does not happen again,” General Ma said, his voice now a low rasp. He turned, his boots clacking against the metal floor, the echo fading down the corridor.

Kaito sank back into the chair, the chair squeaking under his weight. He pressed his palms flat on the console, feeling the cool glass against his skin, the tremor still running through his hands. The memory of the sunset burned, now a phantom pain, a bruise behind his eyes.

He closed his eyes, trying to calm the phantom ache. The silence in the wing was thick, broken only by the distant drip of water from a leaking pipe and the faint, steady hiss of the fans. For a moment, nothing moved—no scanners, no footsteps, just the lingering sting of suppressed feeling.

When he opened his eyes, the console displayed a single line in stark white: *SYSTEM STABLE*. He stared at it, the words feeling both a relief and a reminder. He had survived the inspection, but the cost was a jagged, lingering pain, a reminder that even a rewired mind could not erase a feeling completely.

Kaito leaned back, the metal chair creaking, and let the ache settle like a stone in his gut. He knew the next inspection would come, that the grid would keep watching, but for now the room was quiet, the tension thin as a stretched wire—ready to snap at the slightest tug.