Chapter 1: Rain and Anonymity
The rain in Neo-Serdica never seemed like it would stop. That, at least, was the feeling over the last few weeks. Sticky, fine droplets smeared the neon signs into bloody streaks across the window. Kalin Valchev—Kalata to people in the trade—sat behind his desk, watching the hypnotic dance of rainwater trickling down the glass. His fingers absentmindedly twisted the empty whiskey glass, leaving another wet ring atop the pile of old documents.
Two past midnight. That hour when the city didn’t sleep, but breathed slower. When the night predators had already found their prey, and the morning birds hadn’t yet begun to sing.
The hour of the lonely.
Kalata reached for the crumpled cigarette pack. Empty. Of course. He swore under his breath and sent it flying toward the trash bin. It landed softly atop his assembled army of fallen comrades.
His office was a mirror of himself—beat-up, but still functioning. It smelled of old paper, stale smoke, and failure. Shelves sagged under the weight of case files, yellowed with age. In the corner, an ancient computer hummed quietly—his one reliable companion in a world where technology changed faster than socks. The wall clock ticked away with annoying precision, a constant reminder that life moved on while he sat in the same office with fewer clients and more wrinkles.
Then, the silence shattered. A sharp, electronic chirp. Not just an email or a message—this was his private client channel, the one reserved for those paying for absolute discretion. Kalata tensed in his chair. That channel hadn’t made a sound in months.
Interesting... he muttered, leaning toward the screen.
The message was bare, not a drop of unnecessary information:
INVESTIGATION: SUICIDE (NOT). REQUIRE: FULL DISCRETION. PREPAYMENT: 5000 CREDITS. CONFIRM.
No name. No signature. Nothing. Kalata dragged a hand over his unshaven jaw. Anonymous clients were either a ticket to hell or to heaven—depended on perspective. Usually both. But 5000 credits... that was enough for three months' rent and the luxury of eating something other than canned food. And cigarettes. Definitely cigarettes.
"Suicide that isn’t suicide," he repeated aloud, as if tasting the words. "Classic."
In a world where you could interrogate digital ghosts, where corporations like Eternity Solutions held the keys to your post-mortem data-life, every death was potential chaos. Kalata had seen enough to know that in Neo-Serdica, nothing was ever what it seemed.
He hesitated for only a moment. Then his fingers danced across the keyboard, sending a coded reply:
ACCEPTED. DETAILS.
The response came before he'd even lifted his hands. A crypto-transfer notification and an attached file, encrypted down to its molecular structure. Kalata input the decryption key from the first message, and the file unfolded. Inside, there was only one name.
EMIL KIRILOV.
And a short note:
Programmer at Eternity Solutions. Found dead in his apartment three days ago. Officially—suicide. I don't believe it.
No signature, of course.
"Eternity Solutions," Kalata exhaled through his teeth. "Of course. Who else?"
He leaned back. The chair groaned like a dying animal. Eternity Solutions was the titan of digital immortality. The company that promised to preserve your consciousness, your memories, your very essence in the cloud so your loved ones could still chat with you post-mortem. Their ads were everywhere: smiling families conversing with holograms of dead relatives. Death wasn't an end anymore—just a minor inconvenience.
Bullshit, of course. Kalata knew that behind every megacorp's polished façade lurked dirty secrets. And Eternity’s shadows were longer and darker than most. What in the hell had this Emil Kirilov stumbled onto? What had he needed to "suicide" over?
He opened a fresh document. The case now had a name. He’d need info—a whole lot of it—about Kirilov, his work, his final days. And he’d need help. Someone who understood code and algorithms better than he did.
The raindrops still drummed against the glass, but Kalata didn’t hear them anymore. His mind was already trapped in the puzzle of Emil Kirilov, in the secrets Eternity Solutions guarded so fiercely. The game had begun. Another dive into the murky waters of Neo-Serdica.
"Alright, Emil," he murmured, opening a browser. "Let’s see why they killed you."
The night would be long. But Kalata was used to that. Sleeplessness, cynicism, and cheap whiskey—faithful companions in a trade where the truth was never simple. And even less often pleasant.
Kalata took a sip of his coffee. Black, bitter, and strong. Exactly what he needed. The anonymous client’s payment sat quietly in his digital account. Now came the hard part—figuring out exactly what kind of mess he’d stepped into.
He reopened the encrypted file. The password was long and complex, but he’d memorized it by now. The contents unfurled on-screen, and Kalata scoffed.
That’s it?
For five thousand credits, he’d expected more. This was… well, almost nothing. Offensively little.
A handful of documents, dry as gunpowder. A copy of an ID, a registration address, a job description: Senior Software Architect, Innovative Mnemonic Systems Department, Eternity Solutions. There was also a police report, scanned and filled with hollow phrases that meant absolutely nothing.
No signs of violence, Kalata read aloud. Probable cause: drug overdose. Presumed suicide.
He frowned. The whole thing was sterile, scrubbed clean, as if some bot had sanitized it. His eyes lingered on the photo of Emil Kirilov. A young man, maybe early thirties. Sharp but tired eyes behind thin-framed glasses. Hair that had a life of its own, and a sad half-smile—like he knew a joke no one else got.
"You don’t look like a suicide kid," Kalata said to the photo. "But then again, no one does. Until they jump."
The most alarming part was what wasn’t there. Nothing personal. No mention of friends or family. As if Emil Kirilov had just been a function, a line in a corporate ledger. Erased.
Kalata went back to the cops’ report, reading between the lines.
Drug overdose. Fine. What pills? Prescribed? And where the hell was the suicide note? The report was silent. Just evasive phrasing that could mean anything—or nothing.
No signs of violence. Now that was a joke. Too clean, too tidy. Kalata had seen enough staged kills to smell one from a mile off. This reeked of a cover-up. Especially when the victim worked for Eternity Solutions in a department with a name that absurd...
Innovative Mnemonic Systems, he mouthed slowly. Corporate nonsense for something they didn’t want you to understand.
The lack of info was the most revealing clue of all. It screamed control. Someone with power had polished the scene to a shine, leaving only the convenient version behind.
Kalata leaned back, rubbing his temples. He needed something real. Something he could touch. He pulled out a battered notebook and a barely functioning pen from the drawer. Time for a plan.
First stop: the apartment. No matter how thorough the pros were, amateurs always left traces. And cops were often the biggest amateurs of all.
Emil’s address was in one of those new, glossy districts near Eternity’s headquarters. Typical. A corporate leash that stretched from the office to the bed.
Second: Eternity. The fortress. That’s where the answers—and the trouble—would be.
Prying anything out of them was like trying to steal a bone from a wolf while it stared you down. They had armies of lawyers and security with better gear than the city cops. But right there, in the machine’s heart, was whatever got Emil killed. Kalata was sure of it.
He closed the file, but the programmer’s photo stuck in his mind. Those sad, clever eyes. There was more than exhaustion in them. There was knowing. Emil had seen something he wasn’t supposed to. And that had killed him.
"I’ll find out, kid," he muttered to the empty screen. "I’ll figure out what they did to you."
Rain lashed the windows, harder now. Like an impatient client demanding entry. The whole city was one pulsing wound, and Emil Kirilov’s secret was just another festering pocket in it. Now that pocket was his.
He checked the time. Nearly 4 AM. Too late for sleep, too early for official questions.
But perfect for some unofficial digging.
Kalata shrugged on his scuffed leather jacket, shoved the notebook into an inner pocket, and killed the lights. The darkness of the office merged with the night outside. Time to dive back in, following the ghost trail of a dead programmer.
Chapter 2: The Killing Floor
Morning in Neo-Serdica was just a brighter version of night. The same leaden-gray clouds, the same neon smog blurring the outlines of buildings.
Three hours. That’s how long it took him to crawl through the clogged arteries of the city. Three hours in the company of endless caravans of vehicles creeping along the elevated highways. Twice, the city's traffic system rerouted him on detours because of "blockades." Bullshit. Through the window, the people looked like ghosts in the rain haze—gray silhouettes in respirators, rushing to nowhere.
Finally, he parked his beat-up rattletrap in front of Celestial Gardens. A gleaming facade of glass and chrome screaming money. Just another sterile monument to corporate utopia.
"Celestial Gardens..." Kalata exhaled through his teeth, stubbing out his cigarette in the car’s ashtray. "Nothing celestial about it. And definitely no gardens."
The security at the entrance was a joke. A mix of expensive tech and a bored human. Kalata had a solution for both. A small black box, bought from some guy in the Lower City, intercepted the code of the last person who entered. The glass door slid open without protest. The guard didn’t even glance up from his tablet. Idiots.
The elevator carried him upward. Twenty-third floor. The hallway was quiet, softly lit by recessed lighting. Apartment 2307. Emil Kirilov’s final stop.
Yellow police tape hung over the door like cheap decoration. Kalata glanced around. Clear. From his inner coat pocket, he produced a slim set of picks. Seconds later, a faint, almost polite click sounded. The door gave.
The first thing that hit him wasn’t a smell. It was the silence. Dead, tomb-like. As if someone had sucked all the air out. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him.
Everything was clean. Not just clean—clinically clean. The books on the shelves—aligned by height. The kitchen counter—not a speck of dust. Expensive, impersonal furniture. The apartment of a man who lived more in code than in reality.
Or someone who came through after you with bleach and a rag, Kalata muttered, dragging a finger along the immaculate tabletop. Nothing.
A faint chemical scent hung in the air. It smelled staged. He scanned the living room, then the kitchen. No signs of struggle, no panic. This perfect order was more unsettling than chaos. Like someone had erased not just traces, but life itself from this place.
The fridge might as well have been a pharmacy. A few meal-prep containers, water, energy drinks—the diet of a coder. But everything was arranged with military precision. Who the hell organizes a fridge like that?
The bedroom was the same hollow shell. A king-sized bed draped in perfectly stretched gray linen. A nightstand with a glass of water and a lamp. Here, according to the official story, Kirilov had decided to check out of life.
"Let’s see what our boys in blue missed," Kalata murmured, pulling on thin latex gloves.
He searched methodically. Under the bed, along the baseboards. Looking for a crack in that flawless façade. A dropped item, a smudge, a strand of hair. Something.
At first, nothing. But when he crouched and slid a hand beneath the bed, his fingers brushed against something small and hard. He pulled out his flashlight. There, in the darkest corner, lay a thumb drive—no bigger than a fingernail. The kind of thing you’d miss if you didn’t know to look.
"Bingo." He slipped it carefully into an evidence bag. "What were you hiding here, Emil?"
This was something. Real.
He moved to the desk. A powerful workstation, multiple monitors. No point touching it—corporate Cerberus had probably wiped it clean. Instead, he checked the trash bin. Empty. Too empty.
"Someone was very thorough," he muttered.
The drawers were bare too, save for a few pens and a pristine notebook. Not a single word written.
The bathroom was his last stop. The same sterile cleanliness. The medicine cabinet held only painkillers and vitamins. According to the report, Kirilov had overdosed.
"Overdosed on what?" Kalata scanned the labels. "Vitamin C?"
He took one final look around. This wasn’t the apartment of a suicide. It was a set. A stage. And someone had done an excellent job dressing it. The thumb drive was the director’s first mistake.
On his way out, an older woman in the hallway eyed him with suspicion.
"Looking at rentals," Kalata lied with his best innocent smile. "Agent was supposed to meet me here. Running late, I guess."
She gave a vague nod and shuffled off. He hit the elevator button. The thumb drive in his pocket had weight. He needed to see what was on it before someone realized it was gone.
The cold trail had just warmed up. And that made him grin. Because in Neo-Serdica, when trails got warm, someone else usually felt the heat too. And that someone almost never wanted you to reach the end of it.
Kalata returned to the lobby of Celestial Gardens. Sometimes the oldest tricks worked best—and people always knew more than they realized.
The lobby was vast, chilly, and polished to a sheen. Marble, glass, designer chandeliers worth more than his annual rent. Behind a dark wood desk, a concierge sat in a crisply pressed uniform, though his weary eyes had seen too much to be impressed by a fake ID.
Kalata tried anyway. He produced a card from his pocket. "Kalin Petrov, Insurance Investigator."
"Good afternoon," he said with his smarmiest smile. "Following up on a claim for Mr. Emil Kirilov. Apartment 2307."
The concierge’s eyebrows flickered at the name but settled back into practiced boredom.
"Tragic case. How may I assist?"
"Tell me about him. What was he like? Notice anything unusual before... the incident?"
The man crossed his arms. Sizing him up.
"Mr. Kirilov was quiet. Paid his rent. Caused no trouble. Maybe seemed a little more distracted lately, but he was always... closed off."
"Visitors? Girlfriend? Neighbor disputes?" Kalata pressed.
A headshake. "A loner. A young woman stopped by occasionally, but rarely. Never any drama. The kind of tenant you forget lives here."
"On the day he died—anything unusual? Anyone asking for him?"
Here, the man tensed. His gaze darted to the corner surveillance camera.
"The police already asked. I saw nothing. Came home one evening, same as always. Didn’t see him leave in the morning, but he often worked remotely."
Something lurked beneath his tone. Fear? Or just reluctance to get involved.
"For official records, speak with building management," he clipped, eager to end this.
Kalata knew he’d get no more. Someone had already warned him to keep his mouth shut.
"Thanks. One last thing—who were his nearest neighbors?"
The concierge brightened slightly. "2306 and 2308. Across the hall is 2310. But I can’t guarantee they’ll answer. Folks here value their privacy."
"Of course. Appreciate it."
Kalata headed for the elevators—but didn’t take one. Instead, he backtracked through the stairwell, knocking on doors near Kirilov’s unit, then above and below.
Most were dead ends. Either no answer, or a cracked door followed by "Don’t know my neighbors." Classic.
But Apartment 2210—directly beneath Emil’s—was a strike. An elderly woman with piercing blue eyes invited him in after hearing his insurance spiel.
"Tea?" she offered. Her apartment was cozy, lined with books, alive—the antithesis of Kirilov’s sterile hole.
"No, thank you, Ms...?"
"Stoimenova. Vanya Stoimenova. Knew the boy upstairs. Such a shame."
"Notice anything unusual lately?" Kalata asked, pulling out his notepad.
She deliberated. "Well... sometimes I’d hear him arguing. Loud, like he was fighting with someone. But he lived alone. Couldn’t make out words, but the tone was... tense."
"Interesting. The night before his death?"
"Yes, actually!" She leaned in. "Heard a loud thud above me. Like something heavy falling. Late, past midnight. Didn’t think much of it then, but now..."
She left it dangling, suspicion thickening the air.
Next stop: 2310, across from Emil’s unit. A young man with messy hair and thick-framed glasses cracked the door.
"Insurance?" Skepticism dripped off the word. "Didn’t know suicides had policies."
"Each case is unique. You knew him?"
A shrug. "Elevator nods. That’s it."
"Anything unusual recently?"
The guy leaned against the doorframe. "Actually... yeah. Started leaving late at night. Coming back at dawn looking like hell. Almost ran into him once—jittery, kept glancing around like he was being watched."
"Anything else?"
A hesitation. "Yeah. Few days before he died, saw this guy lurking by his door. Dark clothes, hoodie. Sketchy vibe. Asked what he wanted; dude just turned and vanished."
"Would you recognize him?"
"Doubt it. Only saw his back. But big. Built like a linebacker."
Kalata scribbled notes. No smoking gun, but the pieces were aligning. Paranoia. Late-night meets. A stranger at his door. The thud. And that hidden drive. The suicide narrative wasn’t just cracking—it was crumbling.
Back in the lobby, the concierge gave him a silent once-over. Kalata nodded curtly and stepped into the gray afternoon.
He needed to know what was on that drive. And for that, he’d need help. Someone who could dance with digital ghosts better than he ever could.