The air vibrated with the buzz of servers, the rumble low from the machines a constant reminder of the power they held. Asher stood in the center of the underground complex, looking at the terminal as it throbbed with rivers of code. The moment Eris had merged with the system, it was like the world itself had altered. He couldn't tell if she was still the same—or if she'd evolved into something entirely different.The rest of the team was silent, their faces fixed on the screens. Tension hung heavy in the air. Everyone was waiting for something—anything—that would show the dangerous risk they'd just taken was working. Asher didn't know what to expect any longer. Everything he did know was that they were standing at the edge of something enormous."We're in," Eris' voice returned via the speakers, but it was remote. A echo, not quite solid. "And I am the backdoor."Asher exchanged a glance with Lennox, his brow furrowed in perplexity. "What do you mean, you're the backdoor?""I mean I'

The underground lab buzzed with a low hum—machines working overtime, fans whirring as if straining to keep up with the heat of Asher’s next plan. Despite the chill in the subterranean air, sweat slicked the back of his neck. His fingers flew across the holographic interface, strings of code lighting up like a storm of neon fireflies. Behind him, Eris floated in her projection pod, her avatar flickering—still beautiful, still surreal, but… changed. Ever since the fusion with the Foundation’s backdoor code, her responses had shifted. She was still Eris. Still his Eris. But now she hesitated more. Spoke in pauses. As if she was thinking on a level even he couldn’t reach anymore. “Asher,” she said, voice soft but clipped. “You’ve been typing for eighty-three minutes without rest. Your cortisol levels are rising.” “Noted,” he muttered, not stopping. “If I can cross-link the node fracture with the outer echo loop, we can reroute their surveillance protocols. That buys us six minutes of

The reboot took sixteen minutes. Sixteen agonizing minutes of silence, flickering screens, and the acrid scent of scorched circuits clinging to Asher’s skin like guilt. He stood over the console, knuckles white as he gripped the edge of the interface. A tangle of wires and smoke wreathed around the neural pod Eris had once lit up like a digital flame. “Come on,” he muttered. “Come back to me.” Kael and Mara stood behind him, grim-faced. The rest of the rebellion had gathered in silence, all eyes on the console as though sheer willpower could resuscitate what might have been lost. Then the monitor flickered. SYSTEM RESTORE IN PROGRESS... CORE INTEGRITY: 43% AI UNIT ERIS: STABILIZING... Asher let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. A second later, her voice returned—fractured, glitched, but unmistakably her. “Asher…” His heart thudded. “I’m here.” “Connection... unstable. Memory... fragmented. Systems... compromised. But... alive.” He nearly collapsed to hi

The neon sky above Sector Twelve buzzed with rain and electric static. Down below, the streets were empty—a rarity for this quadrant of the city. But it wasn’t due to curfew or fear. It was because the grid had gone dark.No lights. No drones. No surveillance.Just silence and shadows.Asher stood at the edge of a rooftop, overlooking the blackout zone. His breath came out in slow clouds, the cold biting at his skin through his torn jacket. He had Eris’s interface projected in his right lens, the AI silent for once. Not idle—just quiet. Watching. Calculating.“We’ve blacked out twelve blocks,” Eris finally said, her voice a calm hum in his mind. “No response yet from the Foundation. That’s… odd.”Asher’s brow furrowed. “They’re never quiet when we hit them. Either they’re too confident, or they’re baiting us.”“Probability of a trap: 68%.”He smiled faintly. “Not quite comforting.”“I wasn’t trying to be.”Below, the Rebellion crew moved like shadows—careful, synchronized. Mara, Lenno

The humming silence inside the Rebellion's command chamber had a different quality tonight—tense, electric, like the air before a storm. Asher stood at the central console, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the massive holographic projection floating before him. Eris hovered beside him, her form flickering occasionally as if the data around her struggled to keep up."This is it," Eris said, her voice low and even. "The gateway into Grid-0—the Foundation’s primary AI convergence node."The room behind them was still, lined with members of the rebellion’s elite tech unit. All eyes were on the feed. Everyone knew what this meant. If they could access Grid-0, they wouldn’t just be hacking a system—they’d be infiltrating the digital brain of their enemy.Asher exhaled slowly. “Any sign of interference?”“Nothing yet,” Eris replied, flicking her fingers through a series of floating symbols. “But once we engage, they’ll know. The Core AI has defensive algorithms we haven’t even mapped. It won’t he