CHAPTER 32: CHAPTER 32 – THE MEMORY HACKER OF NIMOS-KAI

The journey to Nimos-Kai took six hours in hyperfold, but Kairos barely felt the time pass. His mind remained focused, already preparing for the next encounter.

Where Vael Sarn had been a weapon—precise, honed, lethal—Raya Quill was something different.

She was a key.

Not to a door, but to an entire forgotten archive of information, technologies, and forbidden secrets no one else dared touch. Rumors called her the "Dream Diver," a rogue archivist who could break into any data-vault, biological memory, or neural web—living or dead.

She was also dangerously unstable.

Kairos stared at her last known coordinates on the display screen.

Nimos-Kai.

A quarantined moon swallowed by a rogue AI years ago. Deemed a Class-7 Cognitive Hazard Zone, it was now cordoned off from most galactic navigation routes. A "dead mind" world. The entire surface existed inside a closed-loop thoughtscape—somewhere between simulation and reality.

"You’re sure about this?" Vael asked as she stood at his side, arms crossed.

"I need her," he said.

"No. You need to not get killed by a former Dreamnet breaker who lives in an AI-haunted memory vault."

Kairos smirked. "That too."

Descent to the Dreaming Moon

The Jade Vulture descended into orbit, its shielding flickering as it passed through the moon’s anomalous field. The planet below pulsed with strange colors—impossible hues that bent perception.

Nimos-Kai looked like a shattered circuit board. Its surface was segmented into gridlike zones, each one hosting a fragmented piece of a simulation. One zone mimicked a medieval village caught in an endless siege. Another, a dystopian city of metal giants. Others were blank—data erased by time or violence.

In the center of it all stood the Library Heart, a ziggurat-like structure of obsidian and glass that shimmered with shifting glyphs.

She was there.

Or what remained of her.

Entering the Mindfold

The moment Kairos and Vael stepped into the library, the world changed.

A warning flashed across Kairos’s retinal implant.

[Cognitive Hazard Detected: Nonlinear Memory Zone][Tethers Active: Consciousness Anchor (Sovereign Key) – Stable][Reality Layer: 2.3 / Host Simulation ID: Raya.Q]

They weren’t walking into a building.

They were walking into someone’s mind.

Vael exhaled slowly. "Feels like dreamspace."

"Not just dreamspace. This is custom-coded." Kairos turned, pointing to the streams of data flowing along the floor like rivers of neon code. "She’s running this entire structure in layered consciousness."

"Then what’s the architecture?"

Kairos paused, examining the surroundings.

Gothic columns surrounded them, but shifted textures—sometimes marble, sometimes glowing copper. Floating data-nodes orbited above them, whispering fragments of thoughts and memories in languages both old and newly invented.

He tapped his wrist-link, projecting a map overlay.

"She’s rewritten this place like a brainstem. There’s no fixed path."

"And yet we follow one anyway," Vael muttered.

Ghosts in the Archive

The deeper they went, the stranger things became.

They passed echoing corridors lined with crystalline skulls that spoke in riddles.

They crossed bridges over chasms that didn’t seem to end, filled with falling code and pieces of shattered memories—fractures of conversations, emotional outbursts, images of unfamiliar faces.

Each memory fought to imprint itself on Kairos’s mind. The Sovereign Key’s tether burned hot, resisting.

Vael grimaced. "This isn’t a vault. It’s a battlefield. She’s fighting herself in here."

Suddenly, a laugh echoed.

High, amused. Feminine. Familiar.

Then came the voice.

"You brought a sword into my library. Bold of you, Sovereign."

They turned. A shimmer rippled through the wall. And she stepped out.

The Memory Hacker

Raya Quill looked like someone who hadn’t been real for a long time.

Her body flickered with holographic static. Her eyes glowed green—overclocked irises running too much data. She wore a coat of flowing neural threads, and her skin bore fractal tattoos that moved of their own accord.

She tilted her head, studying Kairos.

"You’re earlier than I calculated."

"You knew I was coming?"

"I see many timelines," she replied. "Most of them involve you dying here."

Vael stepped forward. "Try it."

Raya gave her a flat look. "You’d be easy to erase. You’re real. Real things have edges. Me? I’m possibility."

Kairos raised a hand. "I came here to offer you a contract. Join my expedition. To Aetherion."

Her eyes widened.

Then she laughed.

"Oh stars. You really are broken."

"I have a Sovereign Key. A crew. And a cause."

She paced, trailing fingers through a stream of floating data.

"And why would I leave the one place I control? Out there, I’m a virus. A ghost. Here—I am goddess."

"Because out there, Aetherion is waking. And it will rewrite everything—including you."

That stopped her.

The Price of Knowledge

Raya walked in silence for a while, then snapped her fingers.

The entire hallway shifted. The walls melted into data. They now stood in a simulation of Kairos’s childhood room on Aurinox. Everything was identical—except darker. Colder. Wrong.

"How—" he began.

"I found your memory echoes in the sovereign tether you’re wearing," she said. "Sloppy firewall."

"You read me."

"I read everyone."

She faced him again. "What’s your plan, trader?"

"Get to Aetherion. Find the remaining Sovereign Keys. Survive. Trade. Learn."

"Control it?"

Kairos didn’t answer.

"Good," she whispered. "Because no one can."

A Fractured Mind

The light flickered.

Suddenly, Raya winced.

Her form split—three versions of her glitching in place. One cried. One laughed. One screamed something unintelligible in binary.

Vael drew her sword.

"Don’t," Kairos said.

He stepped forward and gripped Raya’s arm.

Her body surged with heat.

[Synaptic Feedback Detected – Data Sync Request: Accept/Decline]

He accepted.

Their minds collided.

Inside Raya

He stood on a vast flat plain filled with towers made from thought.

Each tower represented a memory. A program. A rule.

And they were collapsing.

A virus ran rampant inside her mind—a code-worm she’d built herself, long ago, to forget something too painful to live with.

He found the source.

A door.

Marked in deep scarlet code.

DO NOT OPEN.

She appeared beside him.

"You don’t want to see that."

"I need to know what broke you."

"You don’t."

He reached out.

The door opened.

Her Truth

Raya Quill had once worked for the GEA. A Sovereign Codebreaker. One of the few who could parse the Echo Protocols—sacred tech too dangerous to document.

She’d uncovered something.

A signal buried beneath the sublayers of Aetherion. A message too ancient and too large to understand. It broke her mind trying to interpret it.

The GEA tried to kill her afterward.

She erased her physical self and uploaded her consciousness to Nimos-Kai to escape.

"I’ve been rebuilding myself ever since," she whispered.

Kairos stared.

And nodded.

"I still need you."

She blinked. "Even after all this?"

"Especially after this."

The Hacker Joins

Back in the library, Raya stabilized.

Her body coalesced again. The glitching faded.

She extended her hand.

"On one condition."

Kairos raised an eyebrow.

"You let me dive into Aetherion first. Alone. I need to confirm the message I heard... wasn’t just madness."

He looked to Vael. She nodded grimly.

"Deal."

Raya grinned. "Then I’m yours, Sovereign."

Crew Update

[New Crew Member Acquired: Raya Quill]Class: Memory Hacker / Mind DiverTraits: Echo-Protocol Trained | Fractured Consciousness | Hyper-Loyal (Data-Bound)Status: Semi-Stable – Needs Neural Stabilizer within 30 daysThreat Level: High (If Infected)

Back to the Ship

As they exited the Dreamscape, Raya looked around the Jade Vulture.

"Nice. Old Mercury-III design. Modified drive core. She’s got attitude."

"She has a name," Vael muttered.

"Don’t tell me. Let me guess. She told me herself."

Kairos raised an eyebrow.

"She named herself?" he asked.

Raya nodded. "Everything dreams. Even ships."

Status Summary

Cosmic Units (C.U.): 11,900

Star Credits: 64,750

Sovereign Keys: 1 / 7

Crew:

Kairos Vant (Sovereign Trader)

Vael Sarn (Psionic Vanguard)

Raya Quill (Memory Hacker)

Ship:Jade Vulture (Mercury-III Core-Class Freighter)

Next Destination: Station Nine – Burial Crypt of the Iron Sage

Mission: Unlock Second Sovereign Vault

Kairos now had a blade.

He had a hacker.

Next, he’d need a map.

And the galaxy was running out of safe places to search.

This content is taken from (f)reewe(b)novel.𝗰𝗼𝐦