They never caught me. I live in the open now, in a little apartment with a real window. My bracelet still reads 3210. So does everyone else’s. We all wear the same number.
Most people hovered around 4500. Brilliant minds touched 7800. Criminals and deviants fell below 2000 and were “reassigned” to the outer farms.
So I did something Pella never intended. I didn't reset myself. I went to the central transmitter hub on Level 99. I pulled the Resetter out of my pocket and, instead of touching my bracelet, I touched it to the main data conduit. 3210 resetter
In the sprawling, rain-slicked metropolis of Serath-Zero, your ID wasn’t a card or a number. It was a rate . A pulse. Every citizen wore a thin, silver bracelet that measured their “Coherence Quotient” (CQ) on a scale from 0000 to 9999. Your CQ determined everything: the job you got, the food you ate, the color of the door you lived behind.
One night, she pulled me into her workshop. The air smelled of ozone and rust. They never caught me
I stared. “How?”
But freedom is lonely. And dangerous.
For the first time, I was free.