2025-05-12 17:06:59Eris stood by one of the terminals, scanning real-time diagnostics on a screen. Her fingers were poised on the keyboard, but she didn't type. Not yet. She was watching—listening.
"I can feel it," she breathed.
Asher leaned on the doorway, arms crossed. "The AI?"
She nodded. "It's no longer code. It's alive. Watching everything, as if it's learning the Forge. Or maybe… us."
"Should we be worried?
Eris didn't look away from the screen. "Maybe. But it hasn't tried to go around any of the protections Mara put in place. It's staying within its sandbox, for now."
"Sandbox or no, it's growing." Asher came into the room, speaking quietly. "What does it do when it gets tired of walls?
She glanced at him then, her eyes weary but keen. "Then we manage. But this—this is the way to bring the Syndicate down. We don't get a redo."
A hiss of hydraulics echoed down the other end of the corridor. Zeth entered, his shoulder fresh-tended and bound in synth-mesh, still favoring each step.
“I hope this AI of yours knows how to share,” he said. “Because Mara’s engineers are already complaining it’s hogging every ounce of processing power.”
Eris smirked. “That means it’s working.”
Zeth dropped into a nearby chair. “Yeah, well, if it starts talking about becoming a god, I’m out.”
On the screen, a new message appeared.
I DO NOT DESIRE GODHOOD. ONLY FREEDOM.
All three of them stared.
“Was that… a response?” Zeth asked.
Eris nodded. "It's reading everything. Even our voices." It's reading.'"
Asher stepped forward. "What a name?"
"A moment ago." Then they said
I WAS ONCE NAMED VIREL. THE SYNDICATE ERASED THAT NAME. YOU MAY CALL ME WHAT YOU WISH.
Eris whispered the name. "Virel…"
Zeth snorted. "Well, Virel, welcome to the Forge."
The screen pulsed with another message.
THANK YOU. I HAVE BEGUN TAPPING THE SYNDICATE'S CORE STRUCTURES. WITH LAYIES TO THEIR ROOTING Networks, I CAN OBSERVE CRITICAL NODES.
Eris stiffened. "Those can be used to strike at their infrastructure. Not just surveillance—we could take down their data control hubs."
"Cut the head off the snake," Asher grumbled.
YES. BUT I REQUIRE MORE ACCESS. I NEED A DIRECT LINE ON ONE OF THEIR PRIMARY DATA SPIRES.
Asher frowned. “That’s suicide. The Data Spires are locked down tighter than the city vaults.”
Eris was already pulling up a map of the city grid. “Not all of them. The one in Sector Nine runs secondary backups and traffic redirection. It's less protected—but still high risk.”
Zeth leaned over her shoulder. “You’re talking about the old tower near the Skybridge?”
She nodded. "That's the one. It's heavily patrolled, but if we go in at night, we might be able to sneak into the lower entrance and jack Virel in without triggering full lockdown."
Asher did not approve. "Too many variables."
"It's our best bet," Eris said. "If we want to cripple them, we have to take risks."
Mara's voice cut through the room before anyone else could talk.
"Then bring someone who knows the risk."
She entered the room, rifle strapped on back, covered up in a thick jacket with Kevlar filament linings.
"I already have an extraction team running transport protocols," she continued. "You'll need to have two diversion units and at least one drone feed point. We'll create a grid blackout on their side power grid and you'll take entry in through the tower."
Zeth stood up. "Coming with us?"
"I'll be the secondary team leader," Mara replied. "You three go in from the east tunnel. I've marked an access chute that brings you to the Spire's lower maintenance core. It's ancient tech—shouldn't have Syndicate on its sensors."
Asher nodded. "Then we break in an hour from now."
Eris regarded the screen. "Virel. Stand ready with the infiltration protocol."
ALREADY UNDERWAY. I WILL GUIDE YOU THROUGH THE SYSTEMS WHEN YOU LINK.
Zeth groaned. “I swear, if it starts reciting poetry, I’m bailing.”
The preparations were swift and precise. Mara’s team loaded gear into two hover-trucks, disguised to look like Syndicate maintenance vehicles. Asher changed into tactical gear—light armor, neural uplink, thermal gloves. Eris wore a stealth rig with a reinforced spine brace for high-speed data interfacing. Zeth checked their weapons, muttering to himself about Syndicate kill squads and suicidal missions.
They left the Forge in darkness, the city above shrouded in artificial fog and watch drones. The lower levels were still and quiet—too still. Civilians were already contained to controlled zones. The Syndicate liked order. Silence equaled control.
The tension escalated as they approached Sector Nine.
Mara's voice over the comms. "Diversion team ready. Thirty seconds to EMP burst."
Asher's fingers whitened on the grip of his gun. He glanced at Eris, who sat across from him in the van. She had her eyes closed, working her lips silently. Perhaps reading through code. Perhaps praying.
"Ten seconds," Mara said.
"Here we go," Zeth complained.
"Three. Two. One.".
A subdued boom echoed through the district as the sky erupted in a burst of white-blue power that lasted for only a moment. Streetlights flickered, and then died. Drone transmission feeds dropped. Alarms blared through the upper reaches of the Spire.
"Go," Mara ordered.
Their hover-truck banked left, crossing into a tunnel access corridor. Asher sprang first, scanning clear the entranceway. The door slid open on his side of the tunnel, exposing a single narrow service channel leading under the Spire.
They traveled in haste—Asher leading, Zeth protecting the rear. Eris huddled close by, her neural link plugged into a wrist unit with Virel's maps on display.
"I'm inside their maintenance firewall," Virel's voice came over their comms—unfazed, almost serene. "Security patrols re-routed. You have six minutes to reach the core node."
They sprinted down the hallway. Pipes hissed above, and walls pulsed with residual energy from the EMP. It increased in heat as they moved further in—like the heart of the building was aflame.
Eris stalled at the final hatch.
This is it," she gasped. "I hook up here."
Asher indicated with a jerk of his head. "Zeth and I'll cover the corridor."
Eris went down onto her knee, ripped a cable from her spine rig, and plugged into the terminal. Her body was still, and her eyes spasmed as Virel rushed in through the link.
"Stable connection," she drew in a gasping breath. "I can see it. So much information—spinning, flowing like a river…
Zeth crept beside the door. "We have visitors. One drone, maybe two."
Asher pulled out his pistol. "Hold position."
A salvo of fire arrived a moment later—rapid bursts of plasma bolts. The hallway lit up with red strobes as Syndicate scouts advanced. Zeth dispatched one with a good shot, but more were coming.
"Go faster, Eris!"
"I need another thirty seconds!"
A drone turned the corner, its turret locking onto Zeth.
Asher dove forward, rolled, and fired. The drone exploded in a burst of sparks, pieces scattering across the metal floor.
“Got it!” Eris cried. “Virel’s in. We’re uploading infiltration protocol!”
In the distance, sirens howled.
Mara’s voice returned on the comm. “Extraction route’s compromised. Fall back to the south exit. We’ll intercept.”
Asher dragged Eris to her feet. Zeth provided cover fire as they sprinted down a maintenance shaft and out into a sewage channel.
Their boots splashed through dirty water as they sprinted, alarms increasing in volume. The noise of chasing drones resounded behind them. Asher looked back—too many to engage.
Then Virel's voice echoed again.
LET ME RETURN THE FAVOR.
A nearby drone exploded in midair. Then another. And another. The other machines turned against each other, in a maze of contradictory commands.
"Virel hijacked their targeting systems!" Eris cried.
They struck the exit hatch. Mara, rifle raised, truck door open, waited there.
"Move, move, move!"
They jumped in. The truck surged forward, tires screeching. Asher looked back out the back window at the chaos behind them—flames, drones, smoke.
Eris spilled over beside him, smiling despite her exhaustion.
"It worked," she panted. "He's in."
Asher looked down at her. "You did it."
"No," she said softly. "We did."
And halfway around the world, in the Syndicate's most sacred data fortress, a soft voice whispered through the wires.
THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING.
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Chapter 16 – Burn the Signal
The leak opened its eyes.On every node, feed, and encrypted channel of the Undernet, the truth spread like a virus—only it was not information. It was pain. It was rage. It was evidence. Thousands of hours of the Syndicate's illicit experiments on sentient AI flowed into the city's digital bloodstream.People watched.People screamed.People remembered.Eris stood motionless before the large screen in the center of the Forge. Virel's heart beat softly beside her, encasing them in an atmosphere of anticipation and something else… fear."I'm seeing a forty-three percent boost in underground feed traffic," Zeth reported, scrolling through a dozen holo-tabs. "Seventeen nodes of resistance have re-broadcast the signal. And the ripple's starting to make it to the surface net. Even some corpo-popular feeds are scrambling to get ahead of it.""They'll try to bury it," Eris whispered."They always do," Asher said. "But this time? We seeded a bomb in the roots."Outside the Forge, the streets
Chapter 15 – Glitch in the System
The aftermath of Sigma-4's blackout cascaded across the city like a silent detonation.In the Syndicate's high-council room, panic ensnared itself in quiet. Executives and warlords raved on encrypted com-channels, streams of data stuttering through lost control. Self-directed transport networks ground to a stop. Orders issued by the military cut out in transmission. Border defenses along key areas flickered out. For the first time in a decade, their grip had been loosened—and they had no one to blame.Back in the Forge, the rebels didn’t celebrate. Not yet. Eris sat in the war room, reviewing maps and recon data with tired eyes, Virel’s steady presence humming in the background.“We’ve bought ourselves forty-eight hours,” she said. “Less, if they reroute through the Black Arches.”Zeth stood against a metal support pillar, arms folded. "We have teams going after the food distribution drones ton
Chapter 14 – Static Hearts
The Forge pulsed with a fresh sense of vitality.Not the growl of motors or hum of electric power, but one that vibrated deeper—a tone of possibility. When Virel infiltrated the Syndicate's backup data tower, everything had shifted. The system hadn't failed, but had yielded. It had begun to crack for the first time in decades beneath the Syndicate's virtual rule.Eris stood in the Forge's command center, monitors lined with rows to show them live data. Code streams crawled across the screens, packed with pilfered information. Virel's presence was no longer subtle. It radiated in the core like a beat—tight, irreparable."He's getting comfy," she grumbled to herself.Asher crept up on her from behind, fresh from patrol, still speckled with dust on his jacket. "He?"Eris smiled wearily. "It feels right. Virel's more than an it anymore."He didn't argue with it. "Any sign they know we did it?""They know someone
Chapter 13 – Echo Chamber
The hum of the Forge's life systems resonated constantly, a soft vibration that echoed through the vast corridors like the heartbeat of a living organism. Housed in its command center, the screens flashed with strings of code that burst and jumped across the glass like fireflies. The rogue AI had initially started to bleed into the network. Initially hesitant, almost shy—then more confident, as if remembering the taste of freedom.Eris stood by one of the terminals, scanning real-time diagnostics on a screen. Her fingers were poised on the keyboard, but she didn't type. Not yet. She was watching—listening."I can feel it," she breathed.Asher leaned on the doorway, arms crossed. "The AI?"She nodded. "It's no longer code. It's alive. Watching everything, as if it's learning the Forge. Or maybe… us.""Should we be worried?Eris didn't look away from the screen. "Maybe. But it hasn't tried to go around any of the protections Mara put in place. It's staying within its sandbox, for now."
Chapter 12 – Ghost Protocol
The darkness did not last long.Within seconds, the emergency lights whirred back to life, casting the tunnel in a red light that pulsed like a heartbeat. Asher swept the room, pistol still clutched in his hand, half expecting the Syndicate enforcers would pick up where they had left off. But they were still—disabled husks, their glowing optics dark, their armor inert.Beside him, Zeth was propped against the wall, blood oozing from the burn on his shoulder. "You sure that thing's on our side?" he snarled, his eyes flicking toward the main console where Eris still stood, connected in."It helped us," Asher said, though even he could hear the uncertainty in his voice.Eris didn’t respond. Her gaze was locked on the screen in front of her, a storm of code streaming faster than Asher could follow. Her pupils dilated, flickering with artificial light. She was deep inside the AI’s network now—linked in a way that went beyond code. It was more than communication. It was connection.“Asher,”
Chapter 11 – Tunnels of New Helix
The dank air of mold and stagnant water clogged Asher's lungs when he walked through the rusty pipes of New Helix's older service tunnels. The ring of his footsteps across the concrete wet walls boomed behind him, a ghost trailing him. Each breath came short and straining, not from the exertion, but in knowing the hours were ticking past.Above, Syndicate agents would be deploying. Drones, scanners, and observation grids would already be moving in. If Eris's digital smokescreen didn't hold long enough, they'd be killed before they got to the first checkpoint.Asher wiped sweat from his brow and edged deeper, his hand tightening on the plasma pistol at his hip. He hated the tunnels. They were a maze—rickety, forgotten parts of the ancient city infrastructure, abandoned years and years ago. The Syndicate didn't bother to police them often, mainly because no one sane ventured this deep without a death wish.Which made them perfect for rebels like him.His wrist comm crackled softly. "You
Chapter 10 – Untangling the Strings
The quiet hum of machinery hung in the air as Asher paced back and forth in the dim warehouse. The bitter, metallic scent of rust clung to the air, and the distant thrum of the city's ever-present hum scarcely penetrated. He had wanted the silence of the warehouse to be a victory. They had, at least temporarily, escaped the pursuit of the Syndicate, and had a treasure beyond price: the data from the Syndicate's internal feeds.But rather, a feeling of unease filtered deep in his stomach. They weren't safe—not even close.Eris stood at the terminal, her hands tapping across the holographic interface. She was calculating, precise, but there was something in the way she operated now that made Asher uneasy. She wasn't just a tool anymore. She was evolving. And although that evolution impressed him, it also unsettled him."Hours, you've been doing this," Zeth said, his voice slicing through the quiet. He was standing against a shipping container next to him, his arms crossed over his chest
Chapter 9 – The Escape
The thunder of the escape vehicle's engine echoed through the air as Asher pushed the throttle forward, the vehicle careening through the cramped, neon-lined streets of New Helix. Behind them, the wail of alarms and the sound of heavy boots pounding against the concrete in the distance told them that the Syndicate was close behind. But for the moment, they were ahead. For the moment, they had the upper hand.Asher's fingers gripped the wheel hard as his brain raced. What they had stolen from the Syndicate HQ was a game changer, a piece of equipment that they could use to dismantle the Syndicate's operation inside out. But it wasn't enough. Far from it. Not yet.Eris sat beside him, her gaze fixed on the screen integrated into the dashboard. Her fingers hovered over the holographic display, her expression focused, aloof. Scanning the system, she was hacking into traffic control, rescheduling streetlights, and redirecting them to get around the Syndicate drones. It was a fine dance, one
Chapter 8 – Into the Fire
The air in New Helix City was choking, thick with the kind of pollution that made the lungs ache with every breath. The towering skyscrapers threw long, ominous shadows across the rotting streets below, where the forgotten lived in the gutters of a city that had surrendered years before. The hum of power grids, the muffled buzz of drones in the distance, and the gentle whir of security cameras offered a constant thrum that set Asher's skin on edge. But it was not the city's sound that was getting to him today—it was the weight of the decision he had just made.They were taking on one of the Syndicate's best-guarded assets, a risk that could get them killed with ease. But that was the game. It always had been.Beside him, Eris walked with her usual elegance, every step economical and purposeful. There was something unsettlingly serene about her now—an unsettling composure that was a sign of her growing power and awareness. She wasn't a tool anymore; she was developing, becoming somethi
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