The tunnels above ground level were quieter than usual, which, for Minjae, meant they were only mostly creaking instead of actively threatening to collapse.
He adjusted his headlamp and muttered to himself as he rummaged through a pile of discarded circuit casings. “Perfect. More junk pretending to be parts. Exactly what I needed.”
The steady rattle of the Ghost Lines faded behind him, swallowed by long corridors and the slow drip of condensation. He was halfway through prying a usable screw from a rusted panel when the silence shattered.
“KRAAA!”
Minjae jumped and then froze. The sound bounced off the walls like a bullet ricocheting. “What the actual…”
He looked around. Nothing but steam vents, scaffolding, and long shadows. Then again—
“Kraa.”
A shape detached itself from the upper struts, black wings unfurling with a metallic glint. A crow, feathers slick and gleaming, stared down at him with one glassy eye.
He blinked. “You lost? This isn’t the avian district.”
The crow tilted its head, made a sound that could only be described as judgemental, and hopped closer on the beam.
“Oh good,” Minjae said dryly. “An audience.”
The bird cawed again, louder this time.
“Yeah, yeah. Mock the human. Classic.”
He turned back to his toolkit, trying to ignore the sensation of being watched. The crow’s claws clicked on the metal, following his every movement. When he packed up and started back toward base, the sound of flapping wings echoed after him.
He didn’t look back. Didn’t need to. He already knew the universe hated him.
By the time he reached the lower tunnels, the familiar hum of home had started bleeding through the walls: chatter, the occasional laugh, and music, signalling that everyone else was still awake.
The Ghost Lines base buzzed with low-level activity when he returned, the kind that meant everyone was pretending they weren’t tired.
Cables snaked across the floor and a half-finished synth track pumped from one corner—Kairo’s doing, obviously—the bassline thrumming through the walls in a rhythm that felt more heartbeat than sound. Soahn sat cross-legged by the main console, his neural link flashing as he synced with the system interface, eyes half-focused on data scrolling too fast for anyone else to read.
Onyx had claimed the workbench beneath the flickering strip-light. He hunched over his exo-rig, oiling the joints with the precision of a soldier cleaning a weapon, every movement precise and deliberate. The kind of focus that made the air behave itself.
Rayne lounged on the old sofa—or what passed for one—lost somewhere between wakefulness and a quiet sort of thought, listening to the tunnels. The light caught in the faint sheen along his jaw, the only clue that half his circuitry was still running diagnostics.
The place felt almost peaceful. Almost.
Minjae ducked through the door, toolkit slung over one shoulder, and let out the long-suffering sigh of a man who had seen things. “I bring gifts,” he announced, dropping a bundle of scavenged parts onto the table. “Mostly rust and disappointment.”
Kairo didn’t even look up. “Add it to the setlist.”
Then something flapped in behind him.
The sound made everyone startle at once.
A black shape swooped through the open hatch, wings catching the dim light like shards of liquid metal. The crow made a tight circle as if inspecting the premises, then gave a triumphant caw and landed squarely on one of Minjae’s hoodies tossed over a chair.
The silence that followed was almost reverent.
“No. No, no,” Minjae said. “Absolutely not. Get out.”
The crow cocked its head, then began to preen itself, completely unbothered.
Kairo burst out laughing. “Bro, is that your pet?”
Soahn turned away from his work, terminal forgotten. “Statistically improbable for wildlife to imprint on sarcasm, but impressive.”
Onyx frowned, setting his tools aside. “Don’t let it near my rig.”
Rayne just watched curiously as the bird fluffed its feathers and let out a sound that could only be described as triumphant chaos incarnate.
“I think,” Kairo said, all too happy, “our Min-min’s been adopted.”
Minjae groaned. “Somebody end me. Now.”
The next day, the crow was still there.
No one had officially acknowledged its presence, but everyone had quietly adjusted to it, like the buzz of the generators or the drip from the north pipe that no one ever fixed. It perched on the railing above the main terminal, feathers slicked smooth, overseeing operations like an uninvited supervisor.
Kairo swore it bobbed in time with his beat tests. “See that? It’s vibing. It gets me.”
Minjae didn’t even look up from his console. “It’s concussed.”
The crow cawed, sharp, a little defensive.
“See? That’s tone.”
Soahn titled his head. “Its frequency range does fall into the mid-harmonic. You could sample it.”
Kairo’s eyes lit up. “Don’t tempt me.”
“You sample that thing,” Minjae said. “And I’m deleting the track myself. Don’t encourage it.”
“Let’s give it a name,” said Kairo, ignoring him.
“That’s the opposite of not encouraging it,” Onyx pointed out.
“Agreed,” Minjae muttered, turning back to his console. “Everyone shut up, I need to finish patching this network loop before it eats itself.”
The crow hopped onto his desk, talons clicking against the metal as it leaned in to watch him type.
Rayne’s voice drifted from the corner. “Patch.”
“Patch,” Kairo echoed. “Oh yeah. That’s good. It’s official.”
“No,” Minjae sighed, flicking his fingers toward the bird to make it go away. It didn’t. “Nothing is official.” He scowled in the direction of the corner. “I thought you were on my side, Rayne.”
“I don’t take sides.”
The bird strutted along the edge of the desk like it owned the place, and Minjae closed his eyes, trying to find a pocket of tranquility. But it looked like he was clean out of those.
When Patch wasn’t judging Minjae, it was stealing.
By day three, it had taken four of his spare screws, two resistors, and the corner of a protein bar he’d been saving. He caught it red-beaked beside his console, pecking through snack crumbs with the casual confidence of a creature that knew it couldn’t be stopped.
“Oi! That’s mine,” he snapped, lunging for it.
The crow blinked at him, then deliberately dropped a shiny bolt straight into his coffee mug.
The plop echoed like punctuation.
Kairo nearly fell off his stool laughing. Onyx tried and failed to hide a smile.
Minjae just stared at the ripples spreading through his cup. “I will end you.”
Patch cawed once—the exact tone of someone saying make me.
And somehow, that was how it began.
The days blurred into a strange routine.
Whenever Minjae debugged the network, the crow appeared. Always. Perched on a cable or the back of his chair, feathers twitching to the rhythm of his typing. He swore it was throwing off his flow, but secretly, he’d started typing quieter, just so it wouldn’t fly away.
The others began talking like it was the new normal.
“Patch is back,” Kairo announced one afternoon, leaning back in his chair and stretching hugely.
Soahn didn’t even glance up from his diagnostics. “Prepare for chaos.”
Onyx, polishing a component at the workbench, frowned. “It better not touch my rifle this time.”
From the far corner, Rayne’s voice drifted, calm and amused. “It won’t. It knows who the dangerous one is.”
Patch cawed once and then made a series of soft clicking sounds.
“Nice.” Kairo grinned. “That’s a good beat.”
“Trust you to bond over something that sounds like system failures,” Onyx muttered.
“I don’t think it’s me Patch has bonded with,” Kairo said.
The bird made its way to its usual spot, at the edge of Minjae’s workstation.
“What do you want?” Minjae asked it. Patch clicked again. “Huh. Figures.”
By the time the generators cycled to night mode, the base had softened into calm. Kairo’s mix faded into a low hum. Soahn’s screens dimmed, cycling through data in gentle green. Onyx disassembled his rifle piece by piece before packing it away with the same quiet care as always.
And Minjae—naturally—was still at the console, half-lit by monitor glow, the crow perched nearby like a dark punctuation mark at the end of a sentence that he had never started.
The bunker always felt different at night. The air went still between generator pulses, and the city above stopped sounding like a living thing.
Minjae preferred it that way. Nights like this, The Ghost Lines almost felt safe.
He sat at his terminal, shoulders hunched, the monitor washing his face in soft blue light. The others were asleep—or whatever passed for sleep down here.
Only the crow remained awake with him.
Patch sat on the edge of the console, feathers catching the low light, eyes glinting like drops of oil. Every now and then it shifted its weight and made a low, mechanical-sounding krrk, a tiny echo that played in time with the clicks of Minjae’s typing.
He paused, fingers hovering above the keys. The bird went still too, head tilted, listening.
When he started again, the sound followed—krrk, krrk, krrk—soft, syncopated, almost like the crow was purposefully trying to match his rhythm.
“Great,” he muttered, half-amused, half-unsettled. “You’re learning percussion now.”
Patch gave a faint croak in reply, perfectly on beat.
Minjae rubbed his temples, settling back in his chair. “All right. I guess you’re the new intern, then. Just don’t expect pay.”
Patch stared at him.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. You probably want equity.”
The crow ruffled its feathers.
He huffed a laugh that wasn’t really about amusement. “You know, my mum would’ve hated you,” he said, quieter now. “She couldn’t stand birds. Said they brought bad luck.”
Patch tilted its head, unblinking.
“Guess she was right,” he murmured. “Here I am. Underground. Talking to a crow.”
He tried to sound like he was joking, but the words tasted strange on his tongue, like something old and unspoken. The screen reflected in the crow’s eyes, cycling between lines of code and his own tired face.
For a moment, he thought about his sister. The last message that never sent. The way her childish laugh used to fill a room. He wondered if she’d think this was funny—him, the family screw-up, keeping a crow for company in a dead undercity.
He blinked hard and turned back to the console. “Don’t look at me like that,” he muttered. “You’re not my therapist.”
Patch hopped closer and tapped its beak once against a key. The terminal pinged.
The code compiled perfectly.
“Wait…” Minjae stared at the screen. Then at the bird.
The crow croaked, and then climbed onto his shoulder, settling there as though it had always belonged.
He didn’t move it. Just leaned back in his chair, letting the quiet spin around them.
Somewhere above, the city slept. Below, the lights flickered on the screen, a single line of text looping steady and clean.
Build complete. No errors found.
Morning crept into The Ghost Lines the way everything did down there — filtered through metal and dust, turning the air a soft grey-blue. Someone’s playlist was looping quietly in the background, all sleepy bass and semi-finished harmonies. The smell of burnt coffee hung over the room, stubborn and familiar.
Minjae was already awake. Not coding for once, just sitting at the main table, one hand curled around a chipped mug, the other idly scrolling through yesterday’s logs. The crow perched on his shoulder, feathers glinting every time the light changed. It looked far too pleased with itself.
Kairo noticed it first. He stumbled out from behind a heap of cables, hair sticking up in directions that defied physics, and stopped mid-yawn. “Oh my god,” he said, voice still hoarse. “That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Onyx appeared next, immaculate and terrifying as usual. One eyebrow arched. “So,” he said, “Patch got the job?”
Minjae didn’t even look up. “Best intern I’ve ever had. Doesn’t talk back. Much.”
Patch clicked imperiously and began to preen its feathers.
Soahn appeared next, slow and unhurried, carrying a datapad that was probably still running analysis from the night before. “Its timing is impeccable. Perhaps it’s learning.”
Kairo snorted. “Yeah, from the best. Look at him—coffee, attitude. Emotional damage. That’s mentorship in action.”
“You’re just jealous my intern’s more productive than you.” Minjae took a long sip, ignoring the snickers.
“Jealous?” Kairo scoffed. “No, I’m inspired. We should get it on vocals.”
Patch let out a throaty caw—not quite a refusal, but definitely not a yes—and Kairo threw his hands up. “See? Even your bird’s got better boundaries than I do!”
Rayne drifted in last, silent as ever. He leaned against the doorway, eyes glowing in the low light. “You two are going to take over the world,” he said.
Minjae finally looked up, the smallest trace of a smirk pulling at his mouth. “One line of code at a time.”
The crow blinked, proud as anything, and leaned down to steal a biscuit crumb off Minjae’s plate.
He didn’t even stop it. Just sighed, muttering, “Should’ve gone into management.”
Patch cawed again—a sound halfway between laughter and applause—and The Ghost Lines echoed with both.