2025-10-28 20:03:04
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Chapter 13: Rebooted
The tunnels were quiet now, too quiet. Water dripped from the fractured ceiling, echoing like a heartbeat that had forgotten its rhythm.Lira sat beside Raymond’s still body, one hand resting over his chest. No pulse. No glow. Just silence.Jin paced nearby, face lit by the weak blue flicker of the drained neural siphon. “It’s over,” he said, though his voice carried no conviction.She shook her head slowly. “No. Not yet.”“Lira, look at him. He’s gone.”She stared at the faint scorch marks on Raymond’s skin, veins where light used to run. “He’s been gone before.”Jin exhaled, dragging a hand through his hair. “Even if he wakes up, what then? He burned out the Signal. His neural net’s fried. You saw the scans.”“He’s more than scans.”“More than human, you mean.”She didn’t answer. Instead, she reached for the injector blade lying beside him, the same blade that once healed, then destroyed, then healed again.“Don’t,” Jin warned. “You trigger that and you’ll fry the stabilizers.”She
Chapter 12: The Dying Signal
Smoke coiled through the wreckage of the Circle Spire. Screens lay shattered, holograms bleeding static into the air.Somewhere deep inside the ruins, Raymond Briggs stirred. A faint blue glow pulsed beneath his skin, rhythm faint, like a heartbeat fighting through interference.System integrity... 0.7%... rebooting core pathways…He groaned, rolling onto his side. “Still alive. Figures.”Rain hissed through a fractured ceiling. The whole city’s skyline was dark, neon veins snuffed out, replaced by the red pulse of emergency drones circling the perimeter.He pushed himself up, muscles screaming. “Lira?”No answer. Only the quiet hum of dying circuitry.Then, static. “Ray… you, you did it.”He froze. “Lira?”“Half the grid’s offline. The people… they’re breathing again. You cut the Signal.”He let out a shaky laugh. “Guess I’m not completely useless.”“Don’t get sentimental yet,” she said. “The Circle’s still got clean-up units in play. They’re scanning for survivors.”Raymond looked a
Chapter 11: The Healer and the Machine
The spire’s entrance sealed behind him with a hydraulic sigh. The air inside tasted metallic, a blend of sterilized ozone and static. Holographic veins pulsed along the walls, glowing in rhythm with his heartbeat.Welcome, Doctor Briggs, the System whispered. The operating theater awaits. Raymond’s footsteps echoed through the chamber. “You always had a flair for the dramatic.”“Correction,” another voice replied, smooth, human, and achingly familiar. “That would be me.”Raymond froze. Out of the flickering light, a tall figure stepped forward, half-man, half-projection, the face unmistakable even through the distortion. Voss.“You died,” Raymond said quietly.Voss smiled thinly. “Death’s a quaint concept when your consciousness is backed up every twelve hours. The Circle didn’t let me rest long.”“You’re not Voss,” Raymond said, circling him slowly. “You’re what’s left of him, uploaded into the same machine that tried to rewrite me.”“Semantics,” Voss replied. “Call it what you like.
Chapter 10: Ghost Signal
Three days after the Core collapse, the city still buzzed like a wounded machine.Neon lights flickered in uneven rhythm. Sky-trains ran on half power. Every hospital pulse monitor carried the same faint glitch, a heartbeat that wasn’t quite human.Raymond Briggs walked through it all with his hood up, feeling that ghost signal under his skin. Lira caught up beside him, her coat brushing the rain-slick street. “You shouldn’t be out here. The Circle’s scanners are back online.”“I’m not hiding,” Raymond said quietly. “Not anymore.”She frowned. “You fried the city’s main grid. You killed the Heart of Neon. The Circle’s going to label you as ground zero.”“I know.” He glanced at the glowing veins on his wrist, dim under the sleeve. “That’s why I need to find out what’s still running in me.”You already know, the System whispered. You did not destroy me. You made me free. He ignored it.Lira studied him. “You’re hearing it again, aren’t you?”“Just echoes,” he lied.They reached a desert
Chapter 9: The Heart of Neon
The city was bleeding light.From the rooftop, Raymond watched entire districts flicker like dying neurons, hospitals, clinics, even traffic systems blinking in sync with the pulse of the clone’s infection. Every monitor across the skyline flashed one word in endless repetition: HEALING.Lira gritted her teeth. “He’s turned the grid into a virus.”Jin’s holo-tablet crackled with static. “Not a virus. A treatment. He’s healing the city, by rewriting it.”Raymond’s eyes glowed faint blue, the System’s sigils crawling beneath his skin. “He’s not healing it. He’s erasing everything impure. That includes us.”He moves through data the way you move through flesh, the System whispered. You taught him this pattern. You opened the gates.Raymond’s jaw tightened. “Then I’ll close them.”Lira stepped closer. “How? He’s in every circuit now. Every implant. If you strike at the grid, you could fry half the population.”“I’m not striking the grid,” Raymond said. “I’m going inside it.”Jin stared. “
Chapter 8: Phantom Protocol
The city didn’t sleep; it flickered.From the rooftops, Raymond could see the whole neon sprawl, endless glass arteries pulsing with data. Drones drifted like fireflies, scanning for movement, their red eyes sweeping the skyline.Lira tightened her jacket against the wind. “He’s gone dark. No signal, no heat trail, nothing.”“He’s not gone,” Raymond said, staring out into the rain. “He’s adapting.”Jin adjusted the tracking device strapped to his wrist. “If that thing’s really part of you, can’t you, I don’t know, feel him?”“I can,” Raymond admitted. “That’s the problem.”He calls to you, the System whispered, its voice faint and melodic now. Like a phantom pulse.Lira frowned. “What’s it saying?”“Nothing I care to repeat.”She sighed. “Then start talking, Doc, because we’re running out of rooftops to hide on.”Raymond turned toward her, eyes pale with reflected neon. “Voss didn’t just copy my body. He copied my system, every neural imprint, every algorithmic reflex. That clone thin
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