​Chapter 12. User Not Found

The thought of being in the same apartment with Eliza was unbearable. Mark didn’t go home. Instead, he found Barry in one of the 24-hour bars in the Old City and drank with him until morning, silently, as the world tightened around him, turning into a heavy, murky haze of cheap whiskey.

Barry cracked jokes, complained about the brass, and kept trying to lure him into a brothel down the street. Mark barely heard a word. He nodded, took another burning swallow, and stared into the murky bottom of his glass, where the same scene kept replaying endlessly.

The door exploding into splinters. Blood. His own frantic leap inside, certain she was dead. But she wasn’t. And at her feet — the borg, choking in a thin, nearly invisible noose.

“...so I tell her, either work or pretend to work, but don’t do both at once!” Barry barked a laugh, elbowing him. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Can’t you see what she is?!” — the borg’s rasp, raw in memory. The horror in his eyes. Not fear of dying — fear of something impossible, unnatural.

And her boot coming down on the severed head. That dry crack of bone. The burst of white synthetic wadding, sparking wires, the nauseating stench of burning plastic.

“Earth to Mark!” Barry snapped his fingers in front of him. “You’re falling apart, partner. It's your funeral. But listen—your captain? She’s a real piece of work. Keep your eyes open with her.”

For Barry, the borg was just another corpse. He hadn’t seen him begging for help, hadn’t seen what was inside him. Just another cleanup. But for Mark—it was the moment reality finally broke apart.

He returned near dawn. Pale light barely seeped through the curtain of rain. The apartment greeted him with tense silence. Eliza was already dressed, already in uniform, ready to leave. He reeked of booze and smoke, but she didn’t ask anything, didn’t reproach him. Her indifference was worse than any fury.

In the same heavy, viscous silence, they drove to work. The car slid along the wet streets, stubbornly sweeping streams of water from the windshield as if trying to wipe the day away. Mark didn’t see the city—only his reflection: gaunt, with dark circles under his eyes. The face of a broken man.

“This is yours,” Eliza said, and in her voice Mark heard a fracture for the first time. Not coldness—endless, mortal exhaustion.

The tiny device fell from her palm onto the dashboard with a faint metallic note. Her fingers trembled — barely, but enough.

Part of him collapsed, while another part saw everything with unbearable clarity, down to the smallest detail. There was no sadness left in her eyes—only real, living pain.

In that moment he desperately wanted to tell her everything. About Michael and the Agency. About his lies and betrayal. To warn her, to beg forgiveness for becoming their tool, for letting this happen. He was choking on the truth clawing at his throat. He wanted to speak—but she was faster.

She looked at him as if she had already heard every unsaid word, and a faint smile touched her lips.

“See you, Mark,” she whispered.

The next instant, the car jolted. From both the front and the back, blocking the narrow street, two heavy white vans skidded to a stop. Their doors burst open as shock troopers in black tactical suits and sealed helmets poured out. Their movements were inhumanly precise.

The windshield on Eliza’s side shattered with a muffled crack inward. A series of quick, hissing pops followed. One dart buried itself in Mark’s shoulder, and his body went numb instantly. Six or seven struck Eliza. She jerked with each impact, a faint, strangled moan slipping from her lips.

One of the agents stepped closer, raised his rifle, and fired. The charge hit Eliza right between the eyes. Her body arched, her head snapped back, and two thin streams of blood trickled down her face from the ruptured sockets.

The car door was yanked open, and the agents dragged her limp, convulsing body outside. They shoved her into a bulky metal containment pod.

As the lid was closing, she turned her head toward the car. From the empty, burned-out sockets, what stared at him wasn’t darkness but mute, monstrous pain.

It was the last image his mind could withstand.