Prompt 8: What does it mean? Word count: 1500 words exactly Deadline: 13 August 2025
The Fracture Line
Aetherion’s surveillance hub was a vast, sterile chamber of white walls and glass windows, a hive of electronic eyes and humming processors.
Derik Chase sat at its heart, six curved monitors lighting his face in ghostly blue hues, each showing different sectors of the city he’d sworn to protect. They bathed his features in a perpetual twilight glow, a ceaseless ballet of data streams and drone feeds.
Hs thoughts kept wandering back to Mae’s flagged scan, picking at the memory like a splinter he couldn’t remove.
It wasn’t the first time a flag had appeared on his monitor, but this one had his daughter’s name attached to it. Category C deviation. Dissonance. Questioning. He’d erased the record before the system could respond. It had been the only thing standing between his daughter and a reconditioning center.
Ever since then, Lina had grown distant. Not the silence he’d grown accustomed to in their marriage, but something deeper. Something had fractured between them, unseen yet palpable.
And then Jonas Veylan had appeared at their door, smiling, charismatic, effortlessly slipping into their lives as though he’d never left. Lina welcomed him warmly; Mae laughed freely at his stories, things Derik could never understand. He'd felt displaced, a stranger in his own home. Though Derik had once trusted Jonas implicitly, now he wondered darkly: Why had Jonas returned precisely when Mae’s scan had flagged?
Dark, jealous thoughts crept into Derik’s mind: Was Lina having an affair? Had Jonas returned to take what belonged to him?
A sharp beep interrupted his thoughts. One of the monitors in the Iron Sector flashed a red perimeter overlay.
ALERT: Unauthorized Entry - Utility Access Tunnel 9-C
Tunnel Status: Inactive / No Scheduled Maintenance
Derik pulled up the camera feed. The tunnel was dim, running on low-power mode. He keyed in a command to sharpen the image.
At first he didn’t recognize them. They moved in tight formation, coats heavy, bags slung tightly against their bodies. Derik’s chest tightened. His pulse quickened as he zoomed in, the image growing sharper until it felt like ice filled his veins.
Then anger surged within him, twisting sharp and bitter.
Hands trembling, Derik opened a secure call to his wife’s comm unit, zooming the tunnel’s remote camera to focus on her face. Emergency lights cast pale red across her cheeks.
“Lina, what the hell are you doing?” he hissed, voice raw. “Is this what it’s come to? You’re abandoning everything I’ve worked to protect?”
“You saw the scan,” she said, pushing Mae gently ahead. “They’ll take her. You know what happens next.”
“I erased it.”
“You delayed it,” she said. “Mae won’t survive here. You know that.”
“Do I?” Derik’s voice cracked, hurt spilling into anger. “You think life out there with Jonas is going to be any better? You trust him more than me?”
“It’s not like that!” Lina’s eyes filled with anguish. “I asked you to come…”
“When did you ask?” he snapped sharply, voice trembling. “You just assumed I wouldn’t leave my post, the society I helped build for us.”
“Derik…”
“No,” he spat bitterly. “If you think Jonas offers something better, then go! I won’t stop you.”
Lina’s mouth trembled. “Come with us. Please, don’t make me leave you.”
“I can’t,” he growled. “I won’t betray everything I’ve stood for.”
“But you’ll betray your family instead?”
The pain in Lina’s eyes nearly shattered him, but Derik forced himself to sever the connection. He leaned back, heart pounding, body trembling with raw emotion. Could he really let them go?
A sudden alert flashed violently on another screen, forcing his attention. Director Halden appeared abruptly, face grim and commanding. “Chase. You seeing this breach at 9-C?”
Derik didn’t answer immediately. His throat burned.
“Three unauthorized contacts,” Halden continued. “They're using a maintenance tunnel where no work’s been scheduled. Could be desertion.”
Derik’s mouth moved before he thought. “I’ve got it under control.”
“Good. Stop them. We can’t have people leaving the dome.” Halden terminated the feed.
On the monitor Derik watched Jonas guiding his wife and daughter through the tunnel, nearing the access chamber. Bitterness stabbed him again, fresh and brutal.
As he tracked their movements, Derik’s hands trembled over the controls. Should he stop them? Could he let them escape, leave his world behind?
He accessed drone control, sending a security bot to track their movement without alerting the main system. Mae tripped slightly, Lina grabbing her, urging her forward. His heart clenched painfully. They were terrified, desperate.
Halden’s face appeared onscreen again, his voice sharper this time. “Chase, what the fuck? Why are you still at your post?”
“I need another minute to identify the targets.” Derik said.
Halden paused suspiciously, narrowing his eyes. “You already have visual. Zoom in. Who are these people?”
In Derik’s hesitation, Halden remotely commandeered the feed, the screen resolution sharpening instantly.
“My God,” Halden murmured, stunned recognition crossing his face. “Your family?”
Derik remained silent, feeling trapped.
“Stop them, now,” Halden demanded, voice low and dangerous. “Or I’ll do it myself.”
Derik shut off Halden’s feed, hands trembling as he keyed commands, throwing false signals toward Sector Blue, confusing targeting systems. He opened an emergency maintenance corridor ahead of Lina and Mae, overriding security locks with frantic taps.
On the private feed, Lina’s face was pale. “Derik, what are you doing? If you’re going to stop us, just…”
“I’m not stopping you,” he said quickly. “I’m giving you a chance.”
“Then come!” Lina cried, desperation raw. “You don’t need to stay behind.”
He hesitated, the truth burning bitterly. “Someone has to hold the system back. They’ll never let us all go. If I stay, I can blind their eyes long enough for you to escape.”
“No,” Lina gasped. “Please…”
The reality of the situation pierced him with devastating clarity.
Fingers flying, he sent more false alerts to other sectors, rerouted security patrols, overriding command sequences. Alarms erupted throughout the hub, a cascade of red warning lights.
Halden’s voice came through his ear piece. “You’ve lost your mind, Chase. I’ll have you erased for this!”
“I know,” Derik said softly, swiping his personal device from its cradle. He enabled mobile command mode and ran, the door sealing shut behind him.
He raced through sterile white corridors toward Gate 17, lights flashing overhead. Drone feeds filled his mobile device: security units rapidly converging. He redirected them furiously, but the system was waking, fighting back, breaking through his overrides faster than he could keep pace.
His earpiece crackled. Halden’s cold voice rang in his ear. “Stop, Chase. This is your last warning. You’re sacrificing everything.”
Derik kept running. What does it mean to keep them safe if I lose myself in the process?
He burst into the corridor near Gate 17, seeing Lina and Mae’s panicked eyes as they turned at the sound of his footsteps. Jonas instinctively shielded them.
“Derik, don’t…” Lina’s voice was raw.
“You have to trust me!” Derik shouted, signaling Jonas to keep moving. “Go!”
Lina hesitated. Mae stared, eyes wide, torn between parents.
“Trust me,” Derik pleaded again, softer this time, desperate.
Something in Lina’s expression shifted, softened. “Come with us.”
“I’m trying,” Derik whispered urgently, once again rerouting security bots. “I just need another second.”
But it was too late.
Behind him, mechanical footsteps echoed, the security bots were closing in. Halden’s angry voice echoed from their speakers. “Guardian Derik Chase, you are under arrest. Stop now or you will all be terminated.”
Mae clung to Lina, terrified. Jonas stepped protectively between them and the bots.
Derik felt the crushing weight of defeat.
At that moment, his device pulsed softly: “Gate override successful.”
The gate shuddered open for the first time in Derik’s life, a cold gust of outside air surging in.
“Go now!” he screamed.
The bots lunged, Derik could hear the high pitch of their weapons powering up. Derik stood in their path, arms spread wide. He braced for impact, certain he’d be cut down, but they halted abruptly, confused by conflicting commands.
Halden’s voice barked furiously through their speakers, distorted now. “You’ll never survive out there!”
Derik turned toward Lina and Mae, the open gate behind them. They stared back, frozen, uncertain.
“Derik, come on!” Lina called, reaching toward him.
He bolted toward them, passing through the gate and sealing it closed as he went, blocking the bots behind an impregnable barrier of metal and glass.
For a long moment, everything was silent. The wind smelled raw and alien, but oddly invigorating.
Mae gripped his hand tightly. “You came with us.”
Derik squeezed her hand gently, feeling something within him break open. “I couldn’t let you go without me.”
He looked toward Lina, who stood quietly, her eyes gleaming with something he hadn’t seen in years, hope, raw and fragile. “I was more afraid of losing everything I’d ever known.”
Behind them, Aetherion’s alarms wailed uselessly, an empty noise against walls that no longer contained them. Ahead, beyond their narrow beam of light, stretched uncertainty, vast, terrifying, and breathtakingly free.
