Chapter 4: Code of Silence
1250 Words
The ceremonial hall inside Valkor Citadel was a monument to engineered awe, designed not just for function but for spectacle. It spiralled upward like a cathedral carved from obsidian and gold, its walls inlaid with data-veins that pulsed faintly like living arteries. Above, holographic banners shimmered with the empire’s insignia: a phoenix entangled with circuitry, rising in eternal fire. It was a calculated reminder — rebirth through domination, survival through obedience.
Elena stood at the centre of the vast chamber, draped in the formal silver robes of her station. The fabric shifted with her movements, threads woven from bio-synthetic fibres that adjusted to her temperature, displaying subtle glimmers of light across her figure.
To the crowd, she was untouchable, flawless, the architect of Valkor’s new order. Around her, officials and foreign dignitaries filled the balconies, their faces half-hidden behind ceremonial masks. Cameras hovered like metallic insects, silently transmitting the anniversary commemoration to millions across the Eastern Dominion.
At her side, Damian’s presence radiated control. His deep voice filled the chamber, amplified by the sonic projectors in the walls.
“Fifteen years ago,” he declared, “the world burned. Civil war. Biological fallout. Collapsed economies. Humanity splintered and scattered, each sector turning on itself. But out of the ruins, Valkor rose — not as tyrants, but as stewards of a new age.”
A wave of applause cascaded through the hall, carefully orchestrated yet powerful enough to shake the chamber. Elena kept her expression neutral, her lips curving into a smile she had practised countless times before. Outwardly serene, inwardly distracted.
Her mind flickered back to the encrypted file she had uncovered the night before. It had not been an accident. She had confirmed it three times. The failsafe woven into her neural architecture had not been placed there for her safety as Damian claimed. It had been a leash, a silencing mechanism designed to contain her.
“And it is with unwavering pride,” Damian continued, his voice smooth as silk, “that I stand beside my wife, Elena Drakov-Rourke — the architect of Valkor’s technological order. The woman who stabilised the very systems that sustain our lives today. She is the mind of our Dominion, as I am its hand.”
The applause swelled into thunder. Foreign envoys rose to their feet. The chamber vibrated with approval, but Elena felt no warmth. She felt cold. Cold because every cheer was built on a lie.
She bowed her head, fulfilling her role, and when the ceremony concluded, she allowed herself to be led out like an ornament polished for display.
That evening, once the protocols were fulfilled and the cameras removed, masks dropped. The palace suite, so ornate it might have been a museum piece, became a stage for private battles. Elena faced Damian across the lounge, the firelight casting sharp shadows against the glass walls.
“Tell me,” she said quietly, though her voice carried steel, “why is there a surveillance layer tied directly to my neural core?”
Damian, lounging in a charcoal robe, didn’t flinch. He poured a measure of amber liquor into a glass, his movements deliberate. “For your protection.”
“My protection?” Her voice was razor-thin.
“If someone compromised your system, they could access everything — the latticework, the codes, the blueprints of Valkor’s spine. With one breach, the empire falls. That cannot happen.”
“So you installed a failsafe,” she said. “Not to shield me, but to weaponise me.”
He lifted the glass, sipping as though the matter were trivial. “I ensured your safety. There’s a difference.”
Her pulse quickened, but not from fear. From clarity. “Do you think I am your property, Damian?”
His eyes darkened, though his tone remained controlled. “I think you’ve forgotten how much you owe this empire.”
“I bled for this empire,” Elena hissed. “I built its foundation while you played saviour on broadcasts. My designs, my code, my vision — all stolen in the name of your legacy.”
Silence. Heavy, suffocating. The flames in the hearth flickered, painting his face with shifting light.
“You’re tired,” he said finally, his voice quiet but absolute. “Rest. I’ve already overridden the failsafe.”
“No,” she replied flatly. “You didn’t. You only told me you did.”
For a moment, his mask slipped — the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth, as though her defiance amused him. Then he stood, leaving the glass untouched, and exited without another word. The door sealed behind him with a muted click.
Alone, Elena sat in the silence, her breath steadying. She rose, crossing to her private study, and pressed her palm against the mirrored wall. The panel hissed open, revealing the hidden terminal within.
The wristband interface blinked alive. Lines of old code scrolled across the screen, crude and unstable by Valkor’s sleek standards, but it was hers. Her rebellion had lived in these lines once — her fingerprints, her voiceprint, her secrets encoded in the shell. She typed manually:
/open: veylor-channel.securelink
/auth: el.drakov
Static. Then a voice, familiar, low, and sharp-edged with caution.
“You’re risking everything.” Cassian.
“I need a system off-grid,” Elena said. “Secure. Invisible to Valkor’s lattice. I’ll route it through abandoned rebel satellites. Decentralised. Can you build it?”
There was a long pause. “This is real, then.”
“It was always real.”
“Give me seventy-two hours.”
In the ruins of Sector 8, Mira Langley crouched by a barrel fire, her face smudged with soot. She had just returned from a supply raid when the transmission flickered across her comm. The coded burst was brief, but its sender froze her blood.
EL.DRAKOV: I’m in.
Begin assembling. Keep the names off record. Use dormant rings.
Mira read it three times before whispering, “She’s back.”
The following night, Elena stood on Valkor Tower’s wind platform, high above the city. The sprawl of lights shimmered beneath her like a sea of fireflies, but the silence was what struck her most. No cheering crowds. No surveillance drones. Just the wind.
Cassian appeared from the shadows, his coat whipping in the gusts.
“Did you ever think,” Elena said softly, eyes fixed on the horizon, “that we would become the very system we fought to destroy?”
Cassian shrugged. “Power is a beast. We always knew that. The question was whether we’d ride it or be devoured by it.”
“I let myself be devoured,” she admitted, bitterness catching in her throat.
“Not anymore.”
She turned to him, her eyes hard. “When the time comes… when this empire burns… I’ll need people I can trust.”
“You’ll have them,” Cassian said firmly.
She pressed a small crystal into his hand, its glow faint but pulsing. “Store this off-grid. If Valkor detects it, I’m dead.”
He closed his hand around it. “Consider it buried.”
Three days later, whispers spread through the Hollow’s black markets. Old rebels stirred from exile. Engineers answered coded calls. Across the wasteland routes, transmissions moved under false names. A network was forming, quiet but inevitable.
They did not call themselves rebels. Not yet. But Elena knew what she would name them when the time came — when her blade was drawn, when her silence ended.
The Scarlet Vow.
- Writer
