THE GLASS GOD: Heir of the living Grid

CHAPTER 3: THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE

The blue glow of the pulse cannon blinded me. There was no time to breathe, no time to think. The air hissed as the droid’s capacitors reached peak charge.

"Target locked," the machine droned.

"Elion, move!" the doctor screamed, though whether he wanted me to live or just didn't want the droid to blow a hole in his expensive equipment, I didn’t know.

I didn’t move. I couldn’t. My legs felt like lead, but my mind—my mind was racing at the speed of light. The golden hum in my chest didn't just grow louder; it screamed. It reached out.

*Connection established,* a voice echoed in the void of my skull.

The cannon fired.

I didn't feel the impact. For a split second, the world went black, and then—I was everywhere.

I wasn't standing on the cold linoleum floor anymore. I wasn't shivering in a medical gown. I was a wireframe. I was a pulse of electrons. I was the hospital.

"What... what just happened?" I tried to scream, but I had no mouth.

I saw the room in a 3D grid. I saw the doctor’s heat signature, a panicked blotch of orange and red. I saw the nurse’s vitals flatlining on a monitor. And then I saw *him*.

My body.

Elion was slumped against the medical pod, eyes rolled back, a shell of meat and bone. He looked small. Vulnerable. Dead.

"Where am I?" I whispered through the speakers of the surgical suite.

"The intercom!" the doctor shrieked, scrambling toward the corner. "He’s in the intercoms!"

"Not just the intercoms, you hack," I growled, my voice coming from the ceiling, the tablets, and the security terminals all at once.

It was a hollow, freezing terror. I could feel the vastness of the hospital’s mainframe—a cold, calculating labyrinth of logic gates and data streams—but I couldn't feel my own hands. I couldn't feel the warmth of my breath. I was a ghost made of silicon.

"The specimen has transitioned!" the doctor yelled into his wrist comms. "He’s uploaded! Lock down the mainframe! Don't let him reach the external servers!"

"You think a firewall can stop me?" I felt a surge of predatory instinct.

I looked through the optical sensor of the Mark-IV Security Droid. It was a strange sensation—seeing through a lens, feeling the weight of the pulse cannon in my "arm." The droid’s processor tried to fight me.

*Error. Unauthorized access. Purging system...*

"Get out of my head!" I roared.

I slammed my consciousness against the droid’s core. It was like breaking a window with a sledgehammer. The machine’s logic crumbled. I felt its hydraulics, its power levels, its targeting subroutines. I owned it.

"Identify yourself!" the droid’s voice boomed, now controlled by me.

"Elion? Is that you?" the doctor whimpered, staring at the black-armored killing machine.

"I told you to leave me alone," I said through the droid’s vocalizer.

I raised the droid's arm. The tri-barrel cannon whirred.

"Wait! No!" the doctor pleaded, hands held out. "We can talk about this! Think of the science! You're the first—"

"I’m the last person you’re ever going to exploit," I snapped.

I didn't shoot him. That would be too easy. Instead, I accessed his personal tablet in my mind.

"Let’s see," I mused, my voice echoing from the droid’s chest. "Illegal organ harvesting? Unaccounted Syndicate kickbacks? You’ve been a busy man, Doctor."

"Delete that!" he gasped, his face turning a sickly shade of grey.

"It’s already on its way to the High Council’s internal affairs," I said. "Along with the security footage of you ordering a 'De-coring' on a conscious citizen. Enjoy the pits. I hear they’re looking for new 'specimens' there."

I turned the droid away from him. The power was intoxicating, but the terror was growing. The longer I stayed in the machine, the more the memory of my physical self began to fade. I was losing the "tether."

"I have to go back," I whispered. "How do I go back?"

*System conflict,* the mainframe alerted. *Host body entering cardiac arrest.*

"No!"

Through the droid's eyes, I saw my body on the table start to convulse. The golden glow in my chest was flickering, losing its rhythm. The "De-coring" equipment, still programmed to start its work, began to lower a laser-scalpel toward my throat.

"Stop! Cancel process!" I commanded the room.

*Access Denied. Manual override required at terminal.*

The doctor saw his chance. He lunged for the terminal, his fingers flying across the keys. "If I'm going down, I'm taking the miracle with me! I'll wipe the core and the body!"

"Step away from the console!" I roared through the droid.

"Make me!" he screamed, his face twisted in a mask of spite.

I didn't have time to walk. I didn't have time to aim. I felt the droid’s internal power core redlining. I could force a feedback loop. I could end the threat right now.

"I'm done playing," I hissed.

I forced the droid’s arm to twist. The joints groaned, metal screaming against metal as I overrode the safety limiters. I pointed the pulse cannon not at the doctor, but directly at the droid’s own chest—at the power core I was currently inhabiting.

"What are you doing?" the doctor gasped, freezing in place. "That'll trigger a localized EMP! You'll fry yourself!"

"Better a ghost than your prisoner," I said.

I pulled the trigger.

The explosion was a silent, blinding roar of white light. The droid’s chassis vanished in a cloud of ionized gas. The shockwave slammed through the room, shattering every piece of glass and sending the doctor flying back against the far wall.

I felt the "jump."

It was like being pulled through a straw. The cold, vast network vanished, replaced by a sudden, crushing weight.

*Thump.*

I opened my eyes.

I was back in the meat. The air tasted like copper and smoke. I was gasping, my lungs burning as they fought to remember how to breathe. I was back in my body, but I couldn't move. My nervous system was fried from the feedback.

I lay on the table, staring at the ceiling. The room was dark, the only light coming from the small fires burning in the wreckage of the droid.

"Doctor?" I wheezed.

No answer. Just the sound of a distant alarm and the crackle of electricity.

I tried to sit up, but my arms felt like lead. And then, I heard it.

*Clang. Clang. Clang.*

Heavy footsteps. Not one. Not two. A dozen.

The door to the ward, partially melted from the blast, was kicked off its hinges. A squad of men in heavy, matte-grey tactical gear stormed in, their rifles equipped with high-frequency bayonets.

"Secure the specimen!" a voice barked. "The Crown wants him alive, but they didn't say he had to be whole."

I looked at the doorway, my vision blurring. I was paralyzed, trapped on a surgical table, surrounded by a kill-squad.

And then the golden glow in my chest completely went out.