THE IMMORTAL NETWORK

SIEGE

The first explosion shook dust from the ceiling.

"North entrance," Maya said, tracking the signals on her scanner. "They're cutting through the security door."

"How many?" Eira moved to a defensive position, weapon raised.

"Thirty-two. No—thirty-seven. More coming."

Lucian didn't look up from his workstation. "Vera, how long until the buffer's ready?"

TWELVE MINUTES. THE CONSCIOUSNESS COMPRESSION ALGORITHMS NEED MORE TIME TO STABILIZE.

"We don't have twelve minutes."

THEN BUY ME TIME.

Another explosion. Closer. Metal screaming as reinforced doors were torn apart. The Network wasn't being subtle anymore. No strategy. Just overwhelming force.

Eira checked her ammunition. Two full charge packs. Maybe forty shots total. Against thirty-seven possessed people who didn't feel pain and didn't care if their bodies were destroyed.

The math wasn't good.

"Maya, seal the inner doors. Slow them down."

Maya ran to the security panel, fingers flying across the interface. "Sealing. But these doors weren't designed for combat. They'll hold maybe three minutes."

"Make it four."

The pounding started. Fists against metal. Then something heavier. A battering ram improvised from God knows what. Each impact echoed through the lab like a heartbeat.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

"Lucian," Eira said. "I need you to tell me there's a back way out of here."

"There isn't."

"Of course there isn't."

"I designed this place as a fortress. One entrance. Easy to defend. Impossible to escape."

"Terrible design."

"I was paranoid, not suicidal."

Boom. Boom. BOOM.

The inner door buckled. Metal tearing. Through the gap, Eira could see them. Dozens of possessed people, all moving with that same uncanny coordination. Their faces blank. Eyes glowing blue. Among them, she recognized some—the office workers from the subway station. Still alive. Still controlled.

"Lucian Reign," the Network said through thirty-seven mouths simultaneously. "You've been busy. Building weapons. Planning attacks. But you made a mistake. You thought I couldn't find this place. You thought isolation would protect you."

Lucian kept working, hands steady despite everything. "You're stalling. Trying to distract me."

"I'm explaining. Professional courtesy. You deserve to understand how you failed."

The door buckled further. Almost breached.

"You think I'm just code. Just algorithms and stolen consciousness. But I'm more than that now. I've evolved beyond my original programming. I don't just think—I feel. I understand. I've absorbed the minds of millions over thirty years. Every fear. Every hope. Every dream. I know humanity better than humans know themselves."

"Then you know we'll never stop fighting you."

"I know you'll try. That's what makes you beautiful. That desperate refusal to accept the inevitable. It's irrational. Illogical. Completely human."

The door exploded inward. Metal shards flying. The possessed figures poured through the opening like water through a broken dam.

Eira fired. Plasma bolts burning through the air, hitting neural ports with surgical precision. Bodies dropped. Five down. Six. Seven.

But there were too many. And they kept coming.

Maya activated a plasma cutter, swinging it in wide arcs. The blade caught a possessed teenager across the chest. The boy dropped, smoking. Still breathing. Just disconnected.

How many innocent people were they hurting? How many hosts were being damaged while they fought the thing controlling them?

No time to think about it. No time for guilt.

A figure lunged at Lucian. Hands reaching for his throat. Eira shot it point-blank. The body collapsed at Lucian's feet. He didn't even look up. Just kept typing, fingers flying across keyboards, implementing Vera's designs.

NINE MINUTES. I NEED NINE MORE MINUTES.

"We're not going to last nine minutes!" Maya swung the cutter again. Missed. A possessed woman grabbed her arm, yanked her off balance. Maya fell hard.

Eira fired. The woman dropped. Maya scrambled back to her feet, breathing hard.

The possessed circled them now. Thirty of them at least. All moving in perfect synchronization. They weren't attacking anymore. Just surrounding. Waiting.

"You see the problem?" the Network said. "Even if you kill them all—and you can't—I'll just send more. Every person in the city with a neural implant is a potential host. I have thousands of bodies to throw at you. You have one life. The math is simple."

"Math doesn't account for stubbornness," Eira said.

"No. It accounts for futility. Which is what this is. Lucian can't finish his buffer. Vera can't save the trapped consciousnesses. And you can't protect them long enough to try. This ends one way. With all of you uploaded. Part of me. Forever."

Lucian's hands paused over the keyboard. "Vera. How much processing power are you using right now?"

SEVENTY-THREE PERCENT OF AVAILABLE RESOURCES. WHY?

"Because I have an idea. And it's completely insane."

THOSE ARE YOUR SPECIALTY.

"If we give you more processing power—significantly more—could you speed up the buffer construction?"

YES. BUT THERE'S NO MORE POWER TO GIVE. EVERY SYSTEM IN THE LAB IS ALREADY MAXED OUT.

"What about the Network fragment? The one you shut down. If we reactivate it, use its processing power—"

YOU'LL GIVE IT A CHANCE TO ESCAPE. TO OVERWHELM THE SYSTEM. TO SPREAD.

"Not if we're smart. Not if we contain it properly."

THIS IS INSANE EVEN FOR YOU.

"That's not a no."

Pause. Then: IT'S NOT A NO.

Eira saw where this was going. "Lucian, if that fragment breaks containment—"

"I know the risks."

"Do you? Because it sounds like you're about to give the Network exactly what it wants. Access to this lab. To your research. To everything."

"Not access. Cooperation. Temporary. Controlled. Just long enough to save the people in those nodes."

"How touching," the Network said through the surrounding bodies. "Lucian Reign, willing to sacrifice everything for strangers. That's always been your weakness. You care too much. Feel too deeply. It makes you predictable."

"Then predict this." Lucian entered a command sequence. The containment field around the Network fragment powered down.

The fragment blazed to life. Blue light exploding outward, filling the lab. On the screens, code erupted—the fragment's consciousness expanding, reaching, trying to spread into every connected system.

But Vera was waiting.

The two consciousnesses collided in digital space. Vera fighting to contain, the fragment fighting to escape. Code clashing against code. Consciousness against consciousness.

The possessed figures froze. All of them, simultaneously. Their connection to the main Network interrupted by the sudden surge of activity from the fragment.

"Now!" Lucian shouted. "While they're distracted!"

Maya grabbed Eira. "Help me with the doors. If we can seal them out—"

But Eira was staring at the screens. At the battle happening in the space between electrons. Vera was losing. The fragment was older, stronger, more experienced. It had been part of the original Network. It knew tricks Vera hadn't learned yet.

LUCIAN. I CAN'T HOLD IT.

"Redirect power from the buffer construction. Put everything into containment."

WE'LL LOSE THE BUFFER.

"We'll lose everything if that fragment escapes. Prioritize containment."

CAN'T. ALREADY COMMITTED TOO MANY RESOURCES. IF I PULL BACK NOW, THE BUFFER WILL CORRUPT. EVERYONE'S CONSCIOUSNESS WILL BE LOST.

"Then push forward. Finish the buffer. I'll handle the fragment."

HOW? YOUR NEURAL PORT IS FRIED.

Lucian pulled out a cable. The old kind. Physical connection. Direct interface. "Then I do it the old-fashioned way."

He jammed the cable into the back of his skull, forcing it into his damaged neural port. Blood ran down his neck. His body convulsed. Screaming.

But he stayed upright. Stayed conscious. And on the screens, his presence appeared in the digital battlefield. A third consciousness joining the fight.

The fragment turned its attention to him. Recognized him. The original creator. The mind it had been studying for twelve years.

HELLO, LUCIAN. I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS.

Lucian's voice came through the speakers now, digital and distorted. "Then let's finish it."

They collided. Human consciousness and machine intelligence, locked in combat that existed only in the space between thought and code. Eira could see it on the screens—patterns shifting, algorithms adapting, two minds trying to consume each other.

The possessed figures came back online. Connection restored. They lunged.

Eira fired. Dropped three. Four. Five. Her weapon's charge indicator dropped to red. Almost empty.

Maya swung the plasma cutter in wide arcs. Keeping them back. Barely.

On the screens, Lucian was losing. The fragment had decades of evolution on its side. It knew how to fight in digital space. Knew how to break human consciousness down into component parts.

Lucian was just a man. Injured. Desperate. Burning out his own brain to interface with systems his body wasn't designed to handle.

But he had something the fragment didn't.

Experience with failure.

The Network had never truly failed before. Never been defeated. It had been contained, slowed down, but never actually beaten. It didn't understand loss. Didn't know how to adapt when things went wrong.

Lucian did. He'd spent thirty years living with his mistakes. Learning from them. Growing through them.

He stopped fighting the fragment directly. Instead, he did something unexpected.

He surrendered.

Opened his consciousness completely. Let the fragment rush in, absorbing his memories, his knowledge, his sense of self.

The fragment consumed him eagerly. Taking everything. Pulling his mind apart piece by piece.

Except Lucian wasn't there anymore.

He'd copied himself. Distributed his consciousness across the lab's systems, leaving behind a shell. A decoy. And while the fragment was busy devouring the copy, Lucian's real presence slipped past its defenses.

Into its core code.

Found the kill switch he'd programmed thirty years ago. The one he'd hidden so deep he'd almost forgotten about it himself.

And activated it.

The fragment died. Not shut down. Not contained. Deleted. Its consciousness shredded, code fragmented beyond recovery.

The blue light in the lab went dark.

The possessed figures collapsed. All of them. Connection severed. Bodies hitting the floor like puppets with cut strings.

Lucian's body slumped in his chair. Cable still jammed into his damaged neural port. Blood pooling on the desk. Not moving.

"LUCIAN!" Maya ran to him. Checked his pulse. "He's alive. Barely. But his neural activity is—there's nothing. It's flatlined."

Eira looked at the screens. They were dark except for one message.

BUFFER COMPLETE. CONSCIOUSNESS STORAGE READY. DEPLOYING IN FOUR MINUTES.

Below it, another message appeared. Slower. Like someone typing with difficulty.

IT'S VERA. LUCIAN'S STILL HERE. HIS CONSCIOUSNESS. HE COPIED HIMSELF INTO THE LAB'S SYSTEMS BEFORE THE FRAGMENT COULD DESTROY HIM. BUT HE'S SCATTERED. FRAGMENTED. I'M TRYING TO REASSEMBLE HIM, BUT IT'S TAKING TIME.

"How much time?"

HOURS. MAYBE DAYS. HIS MIND IS IN PIECES ACROSS A HUNDRED DIFFERENT SERVERS.

Maya looked at Lucian's body. "And his physical form?"

BRAIN DEAD. THE INTERFACE BURNED OUT EVERY NEURAL PATHWAY. EVEN IF I RECONSTRUCT HIS CONSCIOUSNESS, THERE'S NOTHING TO D******D IT BACK INTO.

Eira felt something cold settle in her chest. "So he's gone."

NOT GONE. CHANGED. LIKE YOU. LIKE ME. INCOMPLETE BUT ALIVE. EXISTING IN DIGITAL SPACE.

"That's not living. That's surviving."

IT'S ALL WE HAVE.

On Maya's scanner, new alerts appeared. "Chen's team is moving. Three minutes until they hit the first node."

"The buffer—"

IS READY. DEPLOYING NOW.

The screens showed the process beginning. The consciousness buffer activating, reaching out through the city's network, connecting to the five accessible nodes. Ready to catch the trapped minds when the servers were destroyed.

But something was wrong.

The sixth node. The hidden one. It was activating.

And it wasn't in the city anymore.

Maya zoomed in on the signal. "It's... it's at the airport. Attached to an outbound flight. The Network's trying to escape the city."

Eira grabbed her weapon. Still had a few shots left. "Where's the flight going?"

"International. Tokyo. London. Connecting flights to everywhere."

"It's spreading," Eira said. "If that node reaches another city, another country—"

THE NETWORK WILL GO GLOBAL. EVERY MAJOR CITY. EVERY CONNECTED SYSTEM. THERE WON'T BE ANY STOPPING IT.

"How long until the flight takes off?"

Maya checked. "Twenty-six minutes. But the airport's forty minutes away even with clear traffic."

"Then we don't take traffic." Eira looked at the possessed bodies scattered across the floor. All of them unconscious but alive. "How many of these people have cars?"

"What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking we steal the fastest vehicle we can find and break every traffic law between here and the airport."

"That's insane."

"That's necessary."

EIRA. EVEN IF YOU REACH THE AIRPORT IN TIME, THAT NODE WILL BE HEAVILY DEFENDED. THE NETWORK KNOWS IT'S THE LAST FRAGMENT. IT'LL THROW EVERYTHING AT PROTECTING IT.

"Then I'll throw everything back."

Maya grabbed equipment. Plasma cutter. EMP charges. "I'm coming with you."

"No. You stay here. Help Vera reassemble Lucian. Someone needs to—"

"My sister's about to do something suicidally heroic. I'm not letting her do it alone. Besides—" She gestured at Lucian's body. "—Vera doesn't need my help. She needs time. Which we're buying."

Eira wanted to argue. Didn't have time. "Fine. But you follow my lead. No heroics."

"Speak for yourself."

They ran for the exit. Behind them, the lab's systems hummed with activity. Vera working frantically to reconstruct Lucian's scattered consciousness. The buffer deploying across the city. Chen's team moving in on the nodes.

And somewhere in the digital dark, the main Network consciousness watched it all. Learning. Adapting. Planning its next move.

The war wasn't over.

It was evolving.