Level Zero Love Part 2

Lucía didn't sleep that night.

Nor did she try. She sat on the edge of her bed for hours, legs crossed and hands clasped together, staring at her closed bedroom door, as if she expected something-someone-to burst through at any moment.

The recycled air smelled of ozone and metal. That characteristic smell of sealed spaces, where even silence felt artificial. The clock read 2:58. Her tablet screen was still on, projecting an incomplete code onto her desktop. Nothing more than an excuse to distract herself, to feel like she still had control.

But she didn't. Not for weeks. Or maybe ever.

Bruno slept two modules away, probably oblivious to the decision she had silently made. She had promised him she would wait, that she would stick to the plan. That she wouldn't make any reckless moves. But deep down, she knew that was a lie. Or worse: a betrayal disguised as a strategy.

But this time, it wasn't about tactics.

It wasn't a mission.

It was personal.

Lucia stood up when the internal timer reached the ideal cycle. She knew the security cameras in the eastbound corridor had a micro-focus interruption during the 3:40 maintenance protocols. A technical detail that seemed irrelevant to anyone... except someone who'd been searching for cracks for weeks.

She moved quickly, as she'd trained for years: measured steps, neutral face, straight back. Functional clothing, unmarked. She pulled her hair back into a high braid and stuffed a microdevice into the inside pocket of her left boot, just below the ankle. Everything was measured. Everything except the irregular acceleration of her heart.

As she walked, she mentally reviewed the phrase she would repeat if she were intercepted: "Backup protocols review, code OR-17, area Omega." She had the proper clearance. One she'd forged days ago with temporary access. Clean enough to pass a cursory scan. Dirty enough to become incriminating if someone looked closely.

The elevator to Omega Level took eleven seconds to activate. Enough to make her regret it. Enough to escape.

But she didn't.

The data backup room was empty, as she expected. Low lighting, anodized steel walls, a secondary console on standby. The interface flickered pale blue. There was something unsettling about the silence in that room. As if the entire system was holding its breath.

Lucía plugged in the device and waited. The file began transferring: manipulated access patterns, internal traffic diversions, circumstantial evidence of a plot that still had no name... but did have a face.

Hers.

Bruno's.

The faces of everyone who had ever thought they could love without paying the price.

"Upload in progress: 34%," she read on the screen, softly, almost like a prayer.

She felt a pulse in her fingers. At the base of her neck. At her temples.

Breathe. Stay in control.

"It's for us," she thought. But at the same time, she knew that wasn't true anymore.

She was doing it for her.

For the Lucía who ceased to exist the day she agreed to be part of a system that promised stability in exchange for silence. For the young woman who once dreamed of making a difference. And for the woman who now understood that surviving wasn't the same as living.

"You know, if you do this, there's no going back."

The voice wasn't a gunshot. It was a thunderous roar. As if she'd been expecting to hear it.

Lucía turned slowly. She knew it before she saw him.

Julián Iriarte.

He was leaning against the doorframe, unarmed, without direct accusation. Just watching her with that almost clinical expression, as if she were a phenomenon to be studied. There was something in his posture that wasn't threatening, but neither was it comforting.

It was a warning.

"I crossed the line a long time ago," Lucía replied, with a serenity she didn't feel.

Julián didn't move.

"I thought he'd be the one to do it first."

Lucía said nothing.

"I don't blame him. He was trained to obey. You... were trained to resist," she added with a hint of melancholy in her voice. "The mistake was thinking we wouldn't notice."

The screen behind her flickered.

"Transfer complete. Data secured."

Lucía withdrew the device and put it away leisurely. She looked at Julián with more questions than answers, but chose only one:

"Are you going to stop me?"

He looked at her for a second longer than necessary. Then he shook his head, barely.

"Not today."

Silence.

"Why?"

"Because someone looked at me like that once," she said, her voice trembling, almost imperceptible. And I couldn't do anything for her.

Lucía didn't ask who. There was no need.

She knew it in his eyes. In that ancient tiredness that sleep doesn't cure.

When Julián left, the room seemed to grow larger. Emptier. Lucía stood there for a few more seconds, processing what she had just done. She didn't feel heroic. Or liberated. She felt... real. For the first time in years.

She was no longer part of the machinery.

He was no longer obeying.

He had made a decision. Conscious. Solitary. Irreversible.

And with that, he had sealed his fate.

I don't understand. Not entirely.

I don't know if he came to save me or to warn me. If he let me go out of compassion, out of strategy... or because somewhere he still has a spark that remembers what it feels like to be on the other side of fear.

I saw something in his eyes. Something broken. Something that can't be mended with time or logic. I saw him tremble inside. It was only an instant, barely a heartbeat, but it was there. And I wonder if in another life, in another time, Julián Iriarte would have been someone I could trust.

Maybe that's why he let me pass. Because in me he saw the woman he couldn't protect.

Because he believed I could escape.

But escape from what? From NCA? From this system infected with false loyalties? From Bruno? From myself?

I'm not sure of anything.

I only know that I crossed the line. And now I know with brutal certainty: there is no going back. Not for me, not for him, not for us-if that "us" still exists.

And yet... when he looked at me, for an instant, I didn't feel alone.

I felt seen.

Not as a threat.

Not as just another pawn.

But as someone who chose to fight.

And that, in this place, is the most dangerous thing you can be.

On the way to the elevator, he passed a security mirror. He paused for a moment. He looked at himself.

He didn't recognize the woman looking back at him.

But he did respect her.

Leaking data wasn't difficult.

The difficult thing was what that data said about you.

The difficult thing was living with you afterward.

Lucía knew that.

And yet, that night, in front of the dusty console on Level Beta, her eyes fixed on a blinking cursor and her hands steadier than she expected, she did it.

Send.

A tiny word, but with seismic consequences.

But behind that word wasn't just data:

There was a decision.

Classified File Note – Andrea Mendizábal

NCA Internal File – Restricted Access / Level Red

Risk Report Updated: 06.09 / Revision B.6

Name: Andrea Mendizábal

Original Rank: Transversal Operations Coordinator

Official Status: Dismissed. External Relocation. (No registration confirmed)

Actual (unofficial) Status: Deserter. Operational. Highly dangerous.

Andrea Mendizábal doesn't appear in NCA's public records. She was removed from the system three hours after disappearing. Her access to the strategic core was disabled, but not before she extracted fragments of confidential protocol, including audit keys and internal routes.

Few know how she managed to escape. No one has managed to find her.

Since then, the name Andrea has become synonymous with betrayal... but also with something more dangerous: freedom.

Those who still mention her-if they dare-speak of her as a shadow whispering from the margins, a specter exposing cracks in the system.

Some believe she's dead.

Others claim she leads a clandestine network dedicated to dismantling corporate control structures from within.

The truth is, no one forgets what she represents:

An agent who knew all the rules.

And chose to break them.

That's why, when Lucía Vega receives a response signed with a single letter, she needs no further confirmation.

"A."

Andrea is back.

And that means war is no longer a possibility.

It's a fact.

It all started weeks ago, with a name that emerged from silence: Andrea Mendizábal.

For most, she was a legend. For others, a threat. In the highest circles of NCA, Andrea was what shouldn't be named: a former agent who had not only defected, but had survived. She was still active. She was still operating. And, worse still... she hadn't stopped winning.

Lucía met her only once, although no one at the Corporation knew what happened. It was in Geneva, during a conference that was merely a facade for an inter-agency intelligence meeting. The two pretended not to see each other. But they did.

There was something in Andrea's eyes. Something that burned.

A conviction that was frightening.

And Lucía, who back then still believed in structure, in obedience, in this code of control disguised as order, stepped back.

She wasn't ready.

Now she was.

The secondary console was everything NCA despised: old, slow, imprecise. And for that very reason, it was perfect. No next-generation biometric readers. No infrared breath sensors. No pretense of knowing more than the user.

Lucía inserted the microdevice with a swift motion. It shouldn't look calculated. It shouldn't look like anything.

She had exactly four minutes before the system performed a micro-reading of input streams. She knew how to bypass that check. She'd learned it over years of poring over redundant supervisory codes and protocols.

The first capsule was small. Innocent, on the surface, a list of administrative transactions with no apparent relevance. But anyone who knew how to read it-who knew the cross-level data extraction routes-would understand what lay behind it.

Agent changes. Names eliminated. Reassignments.

The first signs of a silent purge.

The prelude to fear.

Lucia didn't breathe as the file compressed and camouflaged itself as a dead network update packet. It was like injecting poison into a dead vein, hoping someone on the other end would know how to revive it.

Phantom sender. Echo channel. Packet 01.

"Send," she whispered.

And the cursor blinked.

Once. Twice.

Then everything went blank.

She didn't cry. She didn't smile.

She just stood still.

Feeling something inside her... break. Or maybe, open.

For the next few minutes, she walked as if nothing had happened. She went up two levels. She stopped at the central cafeteria, ordered an unsweetened black tea. She sat at a table facing the east window, pretending to review a file. Around her, everything seemed normal.

And yet, she wasn't.

She had crossed the line.

Not in theory. Not as a thought.

She had done it. With her fingers. With her voice. With her fear.

And that wouldn't go away.

That night, in her sleep module, normality persisted. The dim lights, the hum of artificial ventilation, the firm, sterile mattress.

Everything familiar. Everything suffocating.

Until a light flickered.

Not on the screen. Not on the phone.

In the mirror frame. A soft, almost imperceptible pulse, a reddish hue.

Lucía stood up. She approached.

She slid her fingers along the edge of the frame until she felt the tiny, hidden electromagnetic pulse.

The answer was there.

Channel activated.

Packet received. Acknowledgment: Salinas Code-4.

Time: 10:17 PM.

Don't repeat the channel. Don't repeat the pattern.

Instructions soon.

Welcome to the other shore.

-A.

Lucía didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

There was a part of her that still expected the silence.

The emptiness.

The punishment is immediate.

But no.

Andrea had responded.

And the way she did left no doubt:

This was real.

The network was awake.

And it was looking at her.

She sank to the floor, her back against the metal wall. The room seemed even smaller. The air was thicker.

She hugged her knees, as she hadn't done since she was a child. As if that could stop the trembling in her chest.

She thought of Bruno.

In the way she looked without speaking.

In the tactless nights, but full of shared code.

She loved him. In some clumsy and nameless way, she loved him.

But now, their paths diverged.

Because Lucía no longer waited for the perfect moment to act.

She didn't trust in abstract plans or future revolutions.

The revolution had begun in her hands.

And maybe that distanced her from Bruno.

Maybe it brought him closer.

She didn't know.

The only thing that was clear was this:

Lucía Vega had leaked the first truth.

And she didn't do it out of courage.

Nor out of anger.

She did it because, for the first time in years, she felt she had something to lose.

And that... that changed everything.

Bruno Ortega had always been the man of control.

Control of gestures, of silences, of thoughts. Control of codes, of routes, of reactions.

But that day-that exact second that name appeared on the screen-he felt something he couldn't remember feeling in years:

Trembling.

Not physical.

Not external.

It was something deeper. An invisible break, like when ice cracks under the weight of a misstep.

The name was there.

Not as an official heading, not as an open file.

It was a seemingly minor coincidence. A mention hidden between obsolete lines of a record closed more than a decade ago.

Iván Ortega.

I07.

Status: unregistered.

That was all.

And at the same time, it wasn't all.

Bruno sat back in his chair, but he didn't take his eyes off the terminal.

The module in which the last mention appeared was one that, officially, no longer existed. An isolation area called 5C, part of a network of containment facilities that NCA had dismantled years ago, or so they said.

But someone had been there.

And had recorded an incomplete biometric reading.

A sign.

A whisper.

A crack through which the past returned.

Ivan.

His younger brother.

His dirtiest, purest reflection.

Sometimes, in his dreams, Bruno could still see him laughing, with scraped knees and disheveled hair, throwing rocks at the gate of a school they both hated.

Ivan didn't know fear.

Or so it seemed.

He was impulsive, passionate, and emotional to a fault.

And that, in the world where they ended up growing up, was practically a sentence.

Bruno, on the other hand, learned to keep quiet.

To hide.

To obey.

He became the ideal cog in the system because he understood that emotion was the easiest code to read... and destroy.

Not Ivan.

Ivan was a fire.

And fires, at NCA, aren't contained: they are extinguished.

The last day he saw him, Ivan's eyes were filled with something Bruno couldn't understand at the time.

"Don't sign that contract, witch doctor. It's a trap," he had told him, with a mixture of rage and tenderness that only he knew how to use.

Bruno didn't respond. He had already signed it.

That night, Ivan disappeared.

For years, Bruno searched discreetly. Nothing official, nothing direct. He learned to read between the lines, to detect absences disguised as closed reports. He knew that if he made too much noise, he wouldn't just not find Ivan: he'd drag him down with him.

So he swallowed the pain.

The remorse.

The silence.

And he became what the system wanted: invisible, efficient, lethal.

But time doesn't erase. It only accumulates.

And that day, in front of that screen, Bruno once again felt something he thought was dead: hope... followed by a fury so pure, so serene, it ached in his bones.

He took a breath and leaned over the terminal again. This time, without fear.

He entered through a secondary route, activated a covert audit protocol, and extracted all the data related to unconfirmed external relocations between the years of Iván's disappearance and the closure of module 5C.

He created a transfer map, tracked false names, and most importantly, he detected a series of permits that didn't match any current supervisor.

Someone else was moving pieces in the shadows.

And it wasn't being done on the orders of the Committee.

It was a parallel operation.

Covert.

Undetectable.

Unless one was searching using the right tools...

Or with a reason strong enough to break every rule.

Bruno leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face.

He hadn't cried in years.

And he wasn't about to start now.

But a knot in his chest reminded him that, no matter how much he wanted to deny it, Iván was still there.

Not alive, maybe.

Not whole.

But there.

Present like a word never spoken, like a broken promise that refuses to rot completely.

"I'm going to get you out of there, brother," he whispered, not realizing he was saying it out loud.

It didn't matter if Iván was no longer there.

What mattered was that someone had made him disappear.

And that truth deserved to be brought to light.

However much it hurt.

Hours later, he ran into Lucía in one of the corridors of Level S2.

She walked quickly, her brow furrowed, her gaze filled with something he was already beginning to recognize: determination mixed with fear.

Bruno didn't speak to her.

He couldn't.

His throat was like stone.

But when he looked at her, she paused for a second.

And for the first time, they didn't look away.

They both knew that silence was the only way to speak with confidence.

But in those eyes-hers, his-there was no longer any room for doubt.

They were both crossing invisible lines.

And there was no turning back.

Bruno never spoke to Lucía about his brother Iván because that wound was sealed with fear and guilt, two feelings that tangled so tightly in his chest that it seemed impossible to untie them.

For Bruno, Iván represented much more than just a painful memory: he was living proof that at NCA, the system could tear a person from their life without a trace, without offering any explanations. Talking about Iván meant opening a door to a past Bruno had tried to bury in order to survive.

Furthermore, Bruno feared that if he spoke about Iván, his vulnerability would be exposed. In a place where strength was synonymous with power, admitting that a piece of his soul was broken could make him seem weak, a weak cog in the machine that the organization could crush without hesitation.

But perhaps most importantly, Bruno didn't know how to explain something so immense and heartbreaking to Lucía without also dragging her into the abyss. The connection they shared already defied the rules; revealing the truth about Iván could put her in danger, or at least force her to bear a weight he felt he alone should bear. There was a silence more powerful than words, an unspoken pact between them: the pain was bottled up, contained, and faced alone.

Bruno was caught between the need to protect Lucía and the desire to trust her, but the past with Iván was too fragile a territory to risk sharing. So he chose to remain silent, believing it was the safest way to protect them both.