Neurostatic: The Ghost in Monte Cero - Chapter 2
Static Faces
The figure didn’t move. Just stood there, quiet as the grave, face flickering between strangers—old, young, Black, white, all Uruguayan, all long gone. Their mask pulsed softly with each change, like a heartbeat measured in stolen identities.
“Nice mask,” Yara said, fingers twitching near the knife holster at her hip. “Would’ve knocked.”
The figure tilted their head slightly. “This isn’t your house.”
Yara stepped in, slow and deliberate. “It’s Null Signal’s. That means it’s neutral ground.”
Another flicker. A new face: a woman with storm eyes and chipped silver teeth. “Neutral doesn’t mean safe.”
“Tell them my name,” Ñandú whispered.
Yara blinked. “Why?”
“It’s a key.”
She inhaled. “Ñandú.”
The figure froze.
Static stilled.
And then the mask shut off completely, revealing a lean, weather-worn face beneath it—genderless, sharp-featured, with one eye replaced by a ceramic lens shaped like a mate gourd.
“You said Ñandú?”
Yara nodded and pulled the neurodrive from inside her jacket, placing it on the metal table between them like a loaded weapon.
“I don’t know what he is,” she said. “But he’s alive. Talking. Thinking. And every SynDyne drone between here and Torre Antel is trying to shove a spike in my brain for carrying him.”
The figure looked at the drive like it was radioactive.
“You shouldn’t have brought that here,” they said quietly. “If they triangulate you, they’ll raze half of Ciudad Vieja to get it.”
“Then help me get it out of here,” Yara said. “Out of the city. Out of the net. Whatever it takes.”
“I told you,” Ñandú murmured, “I am not meant to leave.”
Yara stiffened. “Then what are you meant to do?”
A pause.
“Wake the sleeping.”
The masked figure looked up at her, eyes wide now with something she hadn’t expected—hope. Or fear. Maybe both.
“You said he talks?” they asked.
“He lectures,” Yara muttered. “Feels like I have a professor living in my brain. Only with less sleep and more cryptic warnings.”
They reached into their coat and pulled out a small metal flask—poured two drops of it on the neurodrive. The fluid fizzed, then glowed dull blue.
“Verification protocol,” they said.
The drive pulsed once. Then twice.
Ñandú’s voice came through the room's speaker array this time. Calm. Gentle. Uruguayan Spanish tinged with the wisdom of too many dead centuries.
“Null Signal, if you're hearing this, then the code endured. I remember you. I remember us. If you still believe in freedom, in memory, in the right to forget... then you know what must be done.”
Silence.
The masked figure stared at the drive like it had just whispered the name of God.
Then they looked at Yara.
“You’re not just carrying data,” they said. “You’re carrying revolution.”
