The Vault
1190 Words
Three days later, Lia found herself sitting in the passenger seat of a delivery van, staring out the window at the sprawling facade of Blackstrand Media Headquarters. It looked less like a corporate building and more like a fortress—eight floors of mirrored glass and concrete silence, tucked behind tall hedges and guarded gates.
Noah tapped the steering wheel nervously. “We have exactly twenty-six minutes before the real courier figures out he’s been rerouted to the wrong city.”
Lia adjusted the cap on her head, pulled the collar of her oversized hoodie higher, and reached for the crate beside her. It was empty, except for a hidden compartment with her and Noah’s forged credentials, an EMP stick, and a burner drive Pixel custom-built.
Behind them in the alley, Pixel monitored their route via encrypted radio. She was stationed in a borrowed van two blocks over, sitting in a pile of wires and soda cans, her face pale in the light of her custom dashboard.
“Remember,” Pixel said into their earpieces, “you have exactly one shot at this. Vault access is on sublevel three. You’ll enter through maintenance under the south wing. Two hallways, one keypad. Once inside, plug me in. I’ll do the rest.”
Lia clenched her jaw. “Got it.”
She didn’t say it out loud, but she was terrified.
Terrified of getting caught.
Terrified of what they might find.
Terrified that if they failed, the version of James Blackstrand had built—the soulless, hollow voice wrapped in a smile—would be released to millions.
Erasing the real one forever.
---
Inside the building, the disguise worked—for a while.
The security desk barely glanced at them as they wheeled in the crate, thanks to a well-forged Blackstrand ID and a lot of digital noise Pixel had planted days before.
Once in the maintenance hallway, Noah pried open a floor panel with a crowbar, revealing a hidden shaft that dropped to the sublevels. They descended slowly, knees scraping metal, heartbeats thudding in sync.
Sublevel three was silent.
The hallway was long, sterile, and cold, lit by panels of pulsing blue.
Lia had never seen anything like it.
The vault sat at the end—titanium reinforced, sealed by biometric and keycode.
Noah turned to her. “Ready?”
Lia swallowed. “As I’ll ever be.”
Noah pressed his palm to the scanner. The false skin mesh Pixel gave him worked perfectly.
Next, Lia entered the code.
1-9-8-7.
James’s birth year.
Click.
The vault hissed open.
Inside were rows of servers, humming gently. The temperature dropped ten degrees instantly. Red lights blinked across the room like artificial stars.
In the center sat a pod, clear, with a headset suspended inside. It looked like a prop from a sci-fi movie. But Lia knew exactly what it was.
The ECHO Core Unit.
The place where James’s voice—his soul, his likeness—was being remade.
Pixel’s voice broke through the comms. “I’m in. Plug me into the mainframe.”
Lia moved quickly, inserting the burner drive into a nearby console.
Monitors came to life. Thousands of files spilled across the screen.
Voice samples.
Mouth scans.
Facial AI renderings.
Emotional mimicry logs.
And there, at the very top—tagged in red:
> ECHO.J_FINAL
Pixel gasped. “That’s it. That’s the release version. They’re planning to upload it tonight, synced across six global servers. We stop this here, or it goes viral forever.”
Lia looked at the file.
A part of her wanted to listen.
Just once.
To hear what they’d done to him.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she looked at Noah.
“I’m not scared anymore,” she whispered.
“Good,” he said, “because we have company.”
---
A click echoed in the hallway.
Then a voice.
“Well, well. I wondered who’d figure it out first.”
Lia spun around.
A woman stepped into the vault, flanked by two armed guards. Tall, sleek, wearing a grey power suit and a perfectly dispassionate expression.
“Director Sloan,” Noah muttered. “Blackstrand’s head of digital operations.”
Sloan smiled without warmth.
“I’d like to commend you, Lia. You found the thread. Most of our interns wouldn’t have lasted two letters.”
Lia stepped forward. “You lied to the world. You built a ghost.”
“No,” Sloan said, coolly. “We preserved a legacy. James wanted to be remembered. Now he will be. Forever. Flawless. No breakdowns. No disappearing acts. Just perfect, lucrative art.”
“He didn’t want to be perfect,” Lia spat. “He wanted to be real.”
Sloan stepped closer.
“And reality is messy. Reality dies. But ECHO—he doesn’t age. He doesn’t get tired. He sells out arenas in his sleep.”
Lia felt fire rising in her chest. “He’s not your product.”
“He signed the rights.”
“Under duress.”
“Prove it.”
That stopped her.
For a moment.
Then Pixel’s voice crackled in the comms.
> “I’ve got something. A buried file. Not part of the ECHO chain. Looks like… a recording. A legal deposition. Audio and video.”
> “Playing it. Now.”
The screen on the vault wall flickered to life.
James appeared—pale, unshaven, eyes sunken.
> “They said I’d vanish if I didn’t agree. They said no one would hear from me again. So I signed. But I didn’t mean it. I never meant it. This isn’t music anymore. It’s theft.”
Sloan’s face tightened.
Pixel’s voice came back. “It’s been copied to every free drive in the building. And about a dozen news outlets.”
Lia turned to Sloan.
“You wanted to immortalize him,” she said. “Now you’ll be immortalized too—for killing his legacy.”
Sloan’s guards raised their weapons.
But before anything else happened—the lights cut out.
Pixel again.
> “EMP stick. I told you to duck.”
Noah yanked Lia down.
A pulse surged through the room.
Sparks flew.
Consoles burst.
Everything went dark.
---
They didn’t wait to see what happened next.
They ran.
Up the shaft.
Out the loading dock.
Into the morning sun.
By the time Sloan rebooted her system, it was too late.
The ECHO.J_FINAL file had been deleted.
The original James—his confession, his truth—had gone public.
---
Two weeks later, the headlines were everywhere.
> “Blackstrand Scandal: AI Fraud Uncovered”
“Late Singer’s Final Words Surface in Leaked Tapes”
“Fans Call for Ban on Posthumous AI Performances”
Lia didn’t celebrate.
She mourned.
She cried.
She listened to James’s real voice every night on cassette—raw, imperfect, human.
Noah stayed close.
Pixel disappeared for a while—she said she needed space. “Too many wires. Not enough heart,” she’d said in a message.
But the three of them knew what they’d done.
They hadn’t saved a file.
They’d saved a soul.
And no one could take that from them.
- Writer
