The alarm howled like a banshee.Alex Chen grumbled and slapped his hand onto the nightstand, wildly waving until at last the ear-piercing noise stopped. His fingers struck the broken face of his phone—a held-together device supported by tape and good wishes.6:42 a.m.He was already behind schedule."Shit."He emerged from bed, the chill of the morning air biting at his flesh. His grimy apartment did not have central heat, and the broken window he had been meaning to block up last winter still sent cold air whistling into the room.Still dressed in yesterday's jeans and hoodie, Alex splashed water on his face and glared at his reflection in the mirror. Thin pale face, tangled black hair, and the dark circles under his eyes could have delivered groceries.You look like you coded through a war zone.Which wasn't too far from the truth.After four hours of debugging another person's spaghetti code for a VR pet simulator, he'd finally crashed at 2 a.m. Freelance work paid trash, but it w

The city's skyline rose in wavering Holographics above Alex's head—neon dragons twisting through artificial clouds, scales blinking with advertisements. The Neo-San Francisco never slept. It hummed, like a computer operating under strain, never actually at rest.Alex stood at the edge of District 17, hood pulled over his head, watching out for the fastest route to Sector 23.The System had focused on Dr. Rachel Kim's most recent known location: Arcadia BioCorp, a biotech facility repurposed as a blacksite lab after its sudden takeover by SynTech's shell corporation three years prior. Officially, it was "under reconstruction."Unofficially, it was a ghost zone."Find Rachel Kim – Active QuestDestination: Arcadia BioCorpTime Recommended: NightRisk Level: ModerateReward:???"Alex breathed deeply and entered the transit pod station.Twenty minutes afterward, he was in the still ruins of Sector 23.This area of the city looked as if time had forgotten it—overgrown metal structures, bli

The shuttle rattled its way across the midnight-blue firmament, its thread-thin shell groaning as it cut through the polluted Windstream for Sector 31—a rust belt wasteland concealed beneath piles of corrupted information and dead infrastructure.Alex Chen leaned his elbows on the cracked glass, his eyes scanning the digital map sliding across the surface. The Deep Grid Archives were miles beneath the surface, concealed beneath piles of dead tech, locked doors, and electronic ghosts."We're going into a digital graveyard," Lyra complained, strapping herself into a rusty chair beside him.He looked at her. "Is this where the second fragment is kept?"Lyra nodded. "Rachel stashed it in a sealed subgrid. An old data vault. Thing is, the Deep Grid was abandoned for a reason. No system dares to go down there anymore.""Why not?"She hesitated. "Because things down there. don't stay dead."The shuttle groaned as it landed on top of a destroyed tower overgrown with vines of glinting cable. T

The church was silent, each tick of the clock echoing in the stillness. Alex leaned against a cold stone pillar, trying to put together everything that had happened in the last 48 hours.Rachel. The System. Viktor.All the pieces were finally coming together, but the picture they formed was far from clear.He felt Lyra beside him before she asked, "You okay?"Alex exhaled slowly, gazing at her. "Not exactly."She nodded, stepping closer to turn on the terminal. The soft whir of the machine cut into the heavy air, as though the church itself was breathing in held breath.Elias was busy at the other end of the room, monitoring a number of screens covered in streams of information Alex couldn't even begin to understand. His weathered face was illuminated by the light, his cybernetic eye scanning the information as if it held no secrets."Your head clear?" Lyra's voice was soft but insistent."I don't know if it ever will," Alex growled, his gaze straying to the swirling rivers of code ru

Viktor's citadel of chill, antiseptic air pressed in around Alex from every side. His footsteps resounded in the dark, empty hallways, the sound amplified in the huge, empty space. The only disturbance in the air was the hiss of the servers against the walls, their steady, pulsating beat the only sign that they were at the hub of something infinitely greater than themselves.Alex's heart pounded in his chest, but he clenched his teeth and restrained himself. Lyra, Elias, and the rebellion soldiers kept close behind him, their presence an unspoken support that steadied his nerves. The further they progressed in the complex, the closer they came to Viktor's inner sanctum—and the stronger Alex felt the System's pull, reaching out to him, tempting him to connect.He resisted the urge, his thoughts on the work instead. They had fifteen minutes before Viktor's AIs detected that they'd been compromised. The clock was already running.Elias, who was keeping stride alongside him, halted and gl