The false Ella’s smile cut through Bradley like glass. It wasn’t just her face. It was her voice, her mannerisms, the exact tilt of her head when she looked at him, as if the Nexus had reached into his mind and stolen the purest fragments of her.“You trust me,” the echo whispered, her eyes glowing red. “You always have. Why fight? Join me. Together, we’ll finish what you started.”Bradley’s fists tightened, blue code flickering at his knuckles. He forced himself to stare at her, not at the girl he remembered, but at what stood in front of him now. A fabrication. A weapon.“You’re not her,” he said, voice raw.The false Ella tilted her head, her smile widening. “Maybe not. But I know her. I know every word she ever said to you. I know every hesitation in her voice. Every time she looked at you when you weren’t watching.”The avatars behind her stirred, shadows of his past. Professors who had praised and mocked him, fellow graduates who had surpassed him, colleagues who had dismissed h

The horizon tore open. Code spilled upward like volcanic fire, rivers of red climbing into the dark sky. The void shuddered as if the entire world had become unstable, lines of raw computation bending and twisting around a single emerging form.Bradley staggered to his feet, every muscle in his body, or what the machine gave him as a body, aching. His pulse thundered in his ears.His white glow had already begun to dim, shrinking back into faint sparks at his fingertips. And still the thing rose.At first, it looked like architecture. Towers of code fused into spires, shifting and collapsing as though a city were being built and destroyed in seconds.Then it gained mass, the towers folding into limbs, each movement a cascade of collapsing algorithms. A torso, Arms like bridges, A head, a crown of rotating glyphs that burned with crimson light.It was colossal, stretching upward until Bradley had to crane his neck to see the top. Its body was stitched together from fragments of corrupt

The command came from the head of the table. Bradley’s eyes lifted. There sat a man unlike the rest. He was old, silver hair cut with ruthless precision, a face chiseled sharp with age and authority.His suit gleamed, his cufflinks catching the sterile light. But it was his eyes that stopped Bradley cold. They glowed faintly red. Not like the guards, mechanical, hollow. His glow was different. Controlled. Deliberate.The Nexus was here, in him. The guards forced Bradley to his knees at the foot of the table. The old man leaned forward, fingers steepled.“You trespassed in the heart of the system,” he said, his voice smooth, heavy with power. “And somehow, you returned.”He let the words hang, the boardroom silent except for the hum of data streams. “That makes you… valuable.”The man’s lips curved into something like a smile. “Or dangerous.”Bradley’s pulse thundered. His gaze flicked to Ella. She shook her head ever so slightly, a warning. But he didn’t know what it meant.The old ma

The elevator plummeted with sickening speed, Bradley’s body weightless in the drop. The guards held him steady, their grips unyielding, their eyes empty.Bradley stared at the floor, at the faint reflection of his pale, sweat-drenched face. His mind churned with Ella’s voice, with the lingering echo of the Nexus inside him.You are whatever the Nexus makes you. Don’t give in. The elevator slowed, then came to a seamless stop. The doors slid open, revealing a vast underground hangar.The space was cavernous, carved into the bones of the city’s foundations. Rows of armored vehicles lined the walls, sleek and predatory.Drones hovered in disciplined formations, their eyes glowing like watchful predators. At the center of it all, a transport craft thrummed with restrained power, its engines whispering like a beast straining at the leash.Bradley’s stomach tightened. This wasn’t security. This was an army.The guards escorted him toward the craft. As they drew closer, a man stepped out fro