> Initializing system…
> Loading modules…
> Checking security protocols…
> System ready.
> grep “ctzn_a1245c972ba52b18aa3e85ed0d940004” -transcript -2 output
> Output:

/* Retrieved from Archive – Unredacted */

She sat hunched on the edge of the plastic seat, arms wrapped tight around herself, soaked coat clinging to her like a second skin. The precinct cubicle was sterile. No windows, no clocks, just dim blue light and a security lens pulsing faintly in the ceiling above. She could feel it watching her, recording her every twitch. She forced herself to stay still, even though her legs ached to move, to run. But there was nowhere to run.

Her hands were trembling. Not from the cold any more. That had passed. This was something deeper, bone-deep. The aftermath of adrenaline. A shiver that came from the sheer wrongness of what had just happened.

She had screamed at them. She hadn’t meant to, but when the nursery assistant with the clipped tone and perfect posture had said, “I’m sorry, without digital verification we cannot release her,” something in her had snapped.

“I am her mother!” she’d shouted, pounding on the reception glass. “She knows me! Just let me see her…”

They looked shocked. Frozen to the spot. Then one had subtly tapped her wrist against a wall sensor. Patrol alert.

And then there were uniforms. Drones. An automated restraint protocol she barely slipped from by curling into a ball on the pavement and sobbing until the rain turned the pavement into a river around her.

Her baby. Her daughter. Just on the other side of that door. Probably scared. Probably wondering why Mama didn’t come today. Why Mama shouted. Why Mama was gone.

She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, hard enough to see sparks. She wanted to block it all out. The looks from the assistants. The blank stares of the patrol crew. The rain. The drone’s cold voice. But the worst part was the fear in her own daughter’s face as they pulled her away from the door. That single second of eye contact before the assistant tugged the girl gently but firmly back into the authorised zone. That look would replay in her head forever.

They’d probably flagged her as a disturbance risk. Emotional instability. Tech-denier. Parental over-attachment. Grid-phobic. It would all be in her file now. Which she couldn’t even access without her ID.

She looked down at her empty hands. No phone. No implant. Just skin and bones and soaked sleeves. In this world, that meant nothing. She was uncredentialed. Unverified.

Even her name had to be entered manually when they brought her in. They didn’t trust her word, of course. They said a precinct captain would speak with her soon. But “soon” meant nothing when you weren’t in the system.

What would she say when they came?

That she loved her daughter? That she hadn’t disappeared on purpose? That she’d just… lost her phone?

It sounded so pathetic now. So small.

I lost my phone.

In 2025, that had been an inconvenience. In 2028, it was a crisis. In 2033—it was identity death. No wallet, no keys, no calls, no access. No you.

And she had chosen this. Not carelessly, not stubbornly—but deliberately. She had wanted to stay human. To resist the integration. To raise her child to know there was another choice. To be herself. To be free.

But now she was wondering if that idea was already extinct. Maybe her daughter would grow up telling people, “My mama never got the implant.” And maybe they’d blink in confusion, or laugh, or pity her.

She dug her nails into her palms.

She didn’t want pity. She wanted her daughter.

But sitting here, in this featureless booth with the lens blinking above her and no one coming, it hit her, cold and quiet: In the eyes of the system, she wasn’t a mother right now.

She was just a malfunction. An error state.

Until the system said otherwise.

The precinct Captain entered without ceremony. No knock, no announcement. Just the low hiss of the door sliding open and the soft, weary tread of boots across linoplex. His uniform wasn’t crisp, not like the junior officers, but creased at the elbows, collar rumpled. A man who’d been in it too long. Face lined, eyes sharp but tired. He carried a tablet, but he didn’t look at it right away. He looked at her.

“You look like crap,” he said, not unkindly. She didn’t answer.

He sighed, dragged a chair opposite her, sat with the heavy slump of a man with too many conversations like this in his past.

“I’m Captain Rios. Want to tell me why you don’t have an implant in this day and age?”

She opened her mouth. Closed it. What could she say that didn’t sound ridiculous now? Philosophical? Moral? Her skin felt like ice under her coat.

He continued, not angry, just resigned. “Look, we get the occasional off-gridder. Usually older. Religious exemption. Rural commune types. Sometimes fugitives.” He squinted. “You don’t seem like a fugitive. And you ain’t old.”

She didn’t reply.

“I checked your daughter’s file,” he added. “She’s in the system. Vacc records, biometric sync from birth, standard dev charts. Healthy. Bright kid.” He paused. “That means you chose this. To opt out. But she didn’t.”

That hit harder than she expected.

She swallowed, throat raw. “I didn’t want her to grow up thinking her only choice was to be owned,” she said quietly. “I didn’t want her thinking she always had to be scanned every time she breathed. Every movement monitored, every choice fed into some predictive model. I wanted her to know she could say no.”

Captain Rios nodded, slowly. “I’ve heard that before. Usually from people with podcasts.”

That stung. She leaned forward, voice wobbling. “I just wanted her to know she could say no one day.”

He finally looked at his tablet, scrolling. “Well, humanity’s moved on, Ms. Kestrel.” The name sounded strange, like it belonged to someone else now. “And the systems we work in don’t care about ideals. You don’t have an implant, you’re off-network. You’re a liability. You’re a risk profile, not a person.”

She bit the inside of her cheek. Hard.

“I lost my phone,” she said, voice trembling with shame and anger. “Just my phone. That’s all it took.”

He nodded again, but slower this time. Like he actually understood.

“I’ve got two kids,” he said. “Five grand-kids. All chipped by six months. I get why you’d resist. I really do. But this whole thing? Screaming at nursery staff, resisting patrol protocol, no ID backup? You’re not helping your case. The system doesn’t differentiate between a desperate mother and a threat any more. It just logs ‘non-compliant behaviour.’ You scared people.”

“I was scared,” she snapped. “I was scared because my daughter needed me and they treated me like I wasn’t her mother, like I didn’t exist!”

Rios leaned back in his chair, exhaling long and slow. Then, almost gently: “Because, to them, you didn’t.”

The words settled between them like dust.

He rubbed his face with one hand, thinking. “Look, I can’t just wave you through. There are forms. Investigations. Social services. The alert already triggered a provisional neglect flag. But I can recommend holding off on escalation for seventy-two hours. If you retrieve your phone and verify your identity, or—better—get scanned in and registered, we can classify this as a systems lapse instead of parental misconduct.”

She looked at him, eyes burning. “So, if I get the implant… then I’m a mother again?”

“No,” he said. “You are a mother. That’s the tragedy. But in this world? You’re only a mother if the system says so. And right now, it has no idea who you are.”

He stood up, bones creaking. “Think about it. I’ll file the report on hold for now. You’ve got until Monday.”

The door hissed open again, and he left without another word.

She sat there, staring at the blank wall, the silence louder than anything.

Until Monday.

Three days to become someone the world recognised again.

Three days to choose. Her principles. Or her child.

And the terrifying part was, she wanted both.

> done
>