​Chapter 4. Your Mind in Our System

The car was warm. Safe.

“Go,” he exhaled with relief. “Through the Old City.”

It would take longer, but the detour would give him time to pull himself together a bit.

The car glided past the standard Eastside housing blocks and turned into the narrow streets of the Old City. The buildings here were low and brick, their paint peeling in long, worn strips — many of them standing since before the war. Neon signs flickered above the sidewalks, their reflections trembling in the puddles; the whole district reeked of dampness.

Workers in soaked jackets trudged along the sidewalks; at the corners, disabled men sat, waiting for whatever anyone might drop into their hands. Most often he saw women carrying heavy bags, hunched against the rain. The smell of fried meat and spices drifted out of the open doors of cheap diners, mixing with the thick, stubborn odor of the Old City — acrid, like rancid oil and rotting fish.

“Filter the air,” Mark said. The car hummed in response.

A bar with a blinking sign reading Babylon blasted music loud enough that it thudded even through the closed windows.

“Four already?” Mark muttered, surprised. He had lost half a day, though he couldn’t have spent more than an hour in that building.

The cuff didn’t answer — sulking, most likely.

The Old City was alive. It was dying, but there was still more life here than on the other side of the Barrier. Mark shifted his feet forward, and the seat adjusted, sliding him back. He caught himself thinking that here, for all the decay, he felt freer.

The car eased through an intersection, and the market came into view. The old stalls stretched beneath rusty awnings and tarpaulin roofs slick with rain.

People crowded around the counters: bargaining, warming their hands over the steam rising from pots. Here they sold things you couldn’t buy in the City: real vegetables and fruit — half-rotten but alive — meat from Sector 17 and the farms beyond the Ring, fish wrapped in wet paper sheets. A cheerful old man in a wheelchair showed children the chickens in a cage; they reached toward the bars with eager fingers.

Nearby, vendors sold scrap: tools, machine parts, weapons — everything mixed together on grimy tables. But it was the food that drew people in. Real food — not the synthetic matter printed in the City’s pristine labs.

The car turned off the narrow street and rolled out into a square. There stood the generator — a massive concrete block with peeling walls and cooling fins running along its sides. Heavy pipes jutted from the corners, disappearing into the ground and into neighboring districts. Through cracks in the surface seeped a dull, sickly glow. The hum inside it got into his bones — the mechanical heart of the Ring.

They had built these during the war, so each sector could live independently — power, water, communications. Even if the city were torn to pieces, it still wouldn’t die.

At the entrance sat armed guards; a pre-war machine gun angled at the sky. Around it lay sandbags stacked into a tidy parapet, and nearby — ammunition crates with faded warehouse markings. A little farther off stood two figures in matching jackets with a white cross on a black field: the Legion. Their mirrored visors tracked every step of the sparse pedestrians and every movement of the passing cars. This wasn’t a place to linger. He didn’t want trouble, and City vehicles were rare in the Ring.

The generator’s low rumble lingered in his ears long after they left the square, like a warning: everything here belonged to someone. And you’d better remember who.

Leaving the cramped, tangled streets of the Old City behind, the car passed back through the Barrier, crossed the checkpoint, and entered the City. This was the corporate district. The transition was so abrupt, Mark instinctively closed his eyes. The narrow alleys and neon signs gave way to towers of glass and metal, their facades shimmering with corporate logos — bright, immaculate. He rarely drove through this sector.

Wide, perfectly even roads stretched between the buildings. Cars glided in silence, unhindered. No dirt, no chaos — just the rhythm of corporations, precise as clockwork.

On the sidewalks walked people in long coats, their faces focused and distant. Everyone hurried somewhere, and the exposed patches at their temples pulsed with faint blue light. There were no chance encounters here — just a well-tuned mechanism where every component knew its place.

Mark glanced upward, and the roof of the car turned transparent. The towers blotted out the sky, reflecting the washed-out clouds above. The rain had vanished — the streams slid down the glass so cleanly that they left neither streaks nor dirt. Even the weather seemed to obey the architecture.

The Ring lived by dying in concrete and chaos; the City had died long ago, turned into a beautiful, spotless imitation of life.

Suddenly the car’s display lit up, and the cuff blinked: signal received, data stream active. The City spoke, and the vehicle obeyed.

“Damn it,” Mark muttered. He had completely forgotten about the ads in this sector.

“Today only: BioFood nutrition bars with real orange flavor — twenty percent off!”

A holo popped up before him: a perfect family chewing identical bright-orange bars.

“ClearMind health system. Just one patch for your patch — and forget insomnia, stress, and fatigue. Discounts for corporate employees,” the ad continued. “Patch your patch!”

The images flickered one after another: faces, brands, slogans. The ads didn’t ask permission — they simply played, cutting into his subconscious like part of the City’s own breathing.

He wanted to listen to the rain without anyone else’s voice intruding, and he closed his eyes.

Rain washes everything away, just like you...

But a ride without ads had to be paid for — or endured.

“Please open your eyes,” the car said politely. “You skipped an advertisement.”

He obeyed, but the cuff chirped — the charge had already been deducted automatically.

“BioTech — the leader in medical solutions. We don’t need advertising — our results speak for themselves. Over a hundred years on the market.”

The voice was calm, assured, almost hypnotic.

“BioTech. Your body. Your mind. In our system.”

No unnecessary enthusiasm, which made it even more convincing — the corporation wasn’t offering anything; it was stating an inevitability.

A logo flared on the holo: a circle, a tree with three branches reaching upward and outward. A snake coiled around the trunk, rising toward the junction of the branches. The symbol glowed evenly, without a flicker. Even the advertisement looked flawless — not a hint of distortion.

“BioTech. We don’t offer. We define.”

Sharp and final — like a sentence.

Mark stared at the logo — the circle, the clipped cross, the snake. The same sign. The same one he had seen scratched into the wall of that abandoned apartment — crude lines gouged into old plaster, but the essence unmistakable. He’d seen it before — everywhere. Everyone knew the logo.

The mark on her hand surfaced in his memory. He had assumed it was a reflection, a trick of the light. Now there was no doubt.

BioTech was everywhere: on the screens of the corporate district, on the wall of a dead apartment — and on her body. We don’t offer.

“Tell me about BioTech,” he said.

The car replied with noticeable satisfaction:

“BioTech Corporation. Founded in the 2020s by billionaire Damian Lanier. Initially specialized in neural interfaces and brain augmentations. Pioneer of bionics and bioprinting.”

In the air, archival footage appeared: Lanier smiling into camera lenses, laboratories with the first patients, children who could finally hear, finally see.

“In the mid–21st century, the corporation became the global leader in restoring brain functions and sensory perception. At the same time, it developed bioprinting of tissues and organs.”

The image shifted: soldiers applauding Lanier with their bionic hands.

“During the Great War of 2101–2120 the corporation became the main contractor for the Western coalition. It developed combat patches for soldiers — replacing up to one-third of the brain, controlling emotions, accelerating reactions. It created new-generation bioprinters capable of printing organs — and, eventually, even entire bodies.”

On the battlefield, the soldiers moved in perfect unison, like machines.

“After the war and the collapse of nation-states, the corporation founded the City Committee and opened branches in every City on the continent. Main areas: patches, bioprinters, medical services. Slogan: ‘Your body. Your mind. In our system.’”

The car paused for a moment.

“Today, BioTech is one of the four members of the Committee. It controls biological maintenance — and the citizens’ entire life cycle, from first scan to last.”

“Tell me about their logo,” Mark said.

“The BioTech logo is built on the image of the ‘Tree of Life,’” the car continued. “The central trunk divides into three branches, symbolizing body, mind, and progress. A snake coils around the trunk — a sign of knowledge and medicine.”

The familiar emblem flared again.

“The symbol is meant to represent the harmony of science and nature,” it concluded.

The tree with its branches concealed the same mark he had seen in the apartment — ancient, ominous, older than medicine itself.

“Search for similar symbols,” he said, then paused for a moment and added, “Maybe ancient ones.”

The car hesitated for a second, and the holo flickered out.

“This information is not available,” it said at last.

“How do you think...” he began automatically, turning to his cuff.

And immediately caught himself: he did it far too often. Far too naturally. He spoke to them as if they were real people. A little more — and he would start believing the cuff actually thought like a human being.

The green light blinked back at him, patiently awaiting a command. Mark brushed his fingers over his wrist, feeling the coolness of metal against his skin. And what if the cuff had been thinking for him all along?

“...how do I learn more about the logo?” he finished. “Maybe I should talk to someone from BioTech?”

As soon as he said it aloud, he froze up. The word talk — a key word, a dangerous trigger. Advertising could flow both ways. And now the trigger had probably fired. The cuff blinked green.

“I can locate the nearest corporate office,” it said. “I can connect you to—”

“Don’t.” Mark cut it off sharply.

The cuff fell silent, but the uneasy feeling didn’t leave him: one more step, and he would be on display. BioTech would know he’d been looking into their symbol.

Or they already knew? A cold shiver ran down his back. In the City, everything was recorded — through cameras, wristbands, cars, apartments. Even kettles and lamps.

The call came suddenly, sharp as a gunshot. The cuff blinked, and in the air the same logo flared once more.

“Good afternoon, Mark,” a soft female voice said, neutral and friendly. “I’m Amy, and I work with BioTech.”

A surge of anger tightened his chest. There it was — the hook in his mouth.

“We noticed your interest in our corporation,” she continued, a hint of satisfaction slipping through. “Please confirm which question is most relevant for you? Are you interested in our implants, our patches? Or perhaps... something more specific?”

She spoke politely, without a trace of pressure.

An image flashed before him: a hand clenching into a fist, the soft glow of lenses — a visor built directly into the retina. Then the slogan again.

“I wanted...” Mark hesitated. The word logo hovered on his tongue. “To speak with your management.”

Silence filled the line; only the whisper of the tires on wet asphalt remained.

“Of course, Mark,” Amy replied smoothly, maintaining that perfectly corporate tone. “I can redirect you to a request handler. But first I need to clarify the topic: implants, patches, or bioprinters?”

Options floated into view on the holo, each neatly framed in white.

“Implants. Patches. Bioprinters. For you.”

Too quick. Too polite. They knew exactly what he wanted to ask, yet they offered only safe choices.

“No... with management,” he repeated unevenly.

Amy fell silent for a moment. Not a pause — time to decide.

“I understand, Mark. You wish to speak with Miss Lily Thorne, Chairwoman of the City Committee and director of our corporation,” Amy finally replied, listing every title with deliberate clarity. “Contact with executive leadership is available only through secure channels. Verification will be required, as well as a visit to our main office.”

An address appeared in the air — the BioTech tower in the corporate district, encircled by glowing logos.

“Would you like to schedule an appointment?” she asked.

This was what they’d been waiting for.

“Yes... of course,” he managed.

“Excellent,” Amy said warmly. “We are always pleased to cooperate with the protectors of our City.”

The holo and the car’s display lit up simultaneously:

Appointment confirmed. BioTech, Corporate District. 8:00 p.m.

The hollow feeling in his chest was disturbingly close to fear. Amy hadn’t coordinated anything — as if directors and chairwomen didn’t have their schedules planned months in advance. As if the meeting had been arranged long before he’d said yes.

Outside the window, the streets slid by as dark fissures in the quiet.

Go? Yes, without hesitation.

Life had long since lost any meaning, reduced to a ritual of empty motions. But this meeting, real or not, had become the only proof that an exit was possible.

To the corporate district, straight to the BioTech tower. Maybe there he would find an answer. There was no other way to find her. Not really. In the Ring there were no cameras, and without a photo he could search the databases forever.

The district ended, and with it the advertisements vanished. He was free to close his eyes. In the City, everything was decided and arranged in advance. His response had already been anticipated and placed in someone’s calendar long before the call.

They had been waiting for him all along.