The Silent Pulse

The city of Vailis ran like clockwork, a place where efficiency reigned and deviation was crushed beneath the weight of cold precision. Buildings stood in identical symmetry, their steel-gray facades devoid of personality. The streets were silent save for the rhythmic hum of surveillance drones and the echo of synchronized footsteps. No laughter. No lingering glances. No warmth.

And beneath it all, the Pulse beat on.

A citywide network, wired into every building, every pathway, every body. The Pulse System tracked the rhythm of its citizens—heart rates, breathing, stress levels. It measured compliance in real time, ensuring that no one wavered, that no one questioned, that no one felt too much.

Emotions? Banned ages ago. The Directive had declared them a threat to order. Love, attachment—weaknesses that led to hesitation, inefficiency, ruin. People who let their hearts dictate their actions lost themselves to correctional treatments, their memories stripped clean, their will reshaped to fit the mold of obedient citizens.

But that was the lie.

Rowan had seen things others didn’t. The Hollowed, as he called them—citizens who had undergone the Directive’s final stage of emotional suppression. Their eyes were empty, their movements sluggish, their bodies wasting away. It was as if something had been carved out of them, leaving only shells that barely functioned. He had seen them in the Bureau of Innovation, working slower, sometimes trembling at their stations, until, one day, they were simply gone.

He had seen one up close, once.

Rowan had been twelve when he saw the first one.

It was an old woman, once a respected archivist in the Bureau. She had always been quiet but sharp, her eyes alert, her hands quick as she sorted through documents with a precision only decades of experience could perfect.

Then, one morning, she wasn’t.

He had found her slumped at her workstation, her back stiff, her fingers twitching uselessly over a stack of reports she no longer seemed to recognize. The documents lay scattered, unorganized—an unforgivable offense in Vailis.

He had hesitated, watching her, confused. Something was wrong, deeply wrong.

She blinked—too slowly, too deliberately. When she turned to look at him, her eyes were empty. Not blank, not vacant, but wrong—like something inside had been scooped out and replaced with silence.

“You’re dropping the files,” he had said, his voice a whisper.

She stared at him as if she didn’t understand the words. Then, with agonizing slowness, she opened her mouth.

Nothing came out.

No words. No sound. Just a hollow exhale, like wind through an abandoned corridor.

Rowan had backed away. A cold fear curled in his stomach.

An enforcer appeared moments later, their face expressionless. No one acknowledged what was happening. No one even reacted as the woman was lifted to her feet and guided from the room.

Rowan never saw her again.

No one spoke about her after that. It was as if she had never existed.

That was the day Rowan understood what it meant to be Hollowed.

For years, he convinced himself that survival meant submission. That if he obeyed, if he forced himself to be like the others, he would be safe.

But that memory—the woman’s vacant eyes, the way she had exhaled like she had forgotten how to speak—never left him.

And now, standing in his lab, staring at Elya’s trembling hands, he realized it was happening again.

To her.

To him.

Then, a sound.

A hum—a warning pulse vibrating through the floor.

Rowan stiffened. The Pulse System had detected an anomaly.

Their heart rates.

Too fast. Too erratic.

They were being watched.

Footsteps. Voices.

He yanked Elya behind a row of data servers just as two enforcers strode past the doorway.

“They’re still inside the Bureau,” one of them said, his voice low and clipped.

“Are you certain?”

A pause. The click of a datapad.

“Thermal scans confirmed two heat signatures. Non-authorized movement detected near Lab Section B.”

Rowan felt Elya’s grip tighten on his arm.

The first enforcer exhaled. “Orders?”

“Capture on sight. Level Three Correction. No delay.”

Her breathing went still.

Rowan swallowed hard.

Level Three.

Neural correction.

They would be erased.

The first enforcer tapped something on his device. “I’ve already sealed the lower exits.”

Rowan’s stomach dropped.

No way out.

Unless—

He turned, locking eyes with Elya. She knew.

The outer gates.

The wastelands.

It was suicide.

But it was better than what waited for them here.

The city sirens wailed, a mechanical scream that chased them through the deserted alleys.

But this wasn’t just an alert. The Pulse was tracking them.

It knew their breathing patterns, their blood pressure, their fear.

Searchlights cut through the darkness, scanning, hunting. The air was thick with smoke from the purification vents, acrid and suffocating.

Then, that voice—the one that had dictated their entire lives—rang through the loudspeakers.

“Cease movement immediately. Surrender, and correction will be administered.”

Rowan faltered for just a second. He had obeyed that voice his whole life.

Then Elya yanked him forward. “We keep running,” she whispered.

The outer gates loomed ahead, a monolith of steel and wire. Beyond it, the wastelands stretched, endless and desolate.

Elya yanked out a stolen disruptor, jamming it into the control panel. Nothing. A dead click.

The Pulse had locked the gate remotely.

No—Rowan thought. They know.

Footsteps. Closer.

He turned. A black-clad enforcer raised his weapon.

A second attempt. Sparks flew. The air sizzled. The gate flickered.

The enforcer didn’t hesitate.

Neither did Rowan.

He grabbed Elya’s hand and leaped through the gate just as it powered down.

The wind hit them like a scream, raw and unfiltered, tearing through the stillness they had always known.

Rowan stumbled forward, gasping. He pressed a hand to his chest, where the Pulse had once dictated his rhythm.

Now, it was silent.

But something felt… off.

A figure emerged from the ruins, wrapped in patchwork armor, eyes burning like embers in the night.

“Thought you’d make it far, did you?” a voice drawled.

More figures moved behind him—silent, waiting. Survivors.

Elya’s fingers tightened around Rowan’s wrist.

They weren’t alone.

The leader of the survivors studied Rowan for a long moment before nodding toward his wrist, where his Pulse node had once been.

“You think you’re free?” The words were soft, almost pitying.

Rowan swallowed. “We made it out.”

The man smirked. “Out of what?” He let the question linger, then nodded toward the ruins. “You ran from a cage you understood into one you don’t.”

Something cold settled in Rowan’s stomach.

This was supposed to be the part where he could breathe again.

But his chest was tight.

His lungs ached—not from the wind, but from the weight of a truth he didn’t want to face.

There was no Pulse to guide him now. No certainty, no control. Only the silence in his chest. And for the first time, he didn’t know if that was freedom… or death.

He clenched his jaw, swallowed down the rising dread, and forced himself to move.

And together, they ran.