Rain froze midair as Rook clenched his fist.
The simulation stuttered, streetlights changing between yellow and blue, puddles rippling backward, pigeons suspended in unmoving flight.
"Got admin access," he muttered, golden code spiraling up his arms. "But Bianca's fighting back hard. We have maybe six hours before she force-resets everything."
I grabbed a stalled bullet from the air, some cop's panicked shot during our escape. It dissolved into pixels at my touch. "What's the play?"
Rook grinned. "Same as always. Burn it down." He pressed his palm to my chest. Golden light seared through my ribs as he unlocked something deep in my code.
SYSTEM OVERRIDE ACCEPTED NEW PRIORITY: DESTROY ARK CONNECTION
The city shivered around us.
And for the first time, I saw the strings, pulsing data streams tethering every building, every NPC, even the sky to some vast machine beyond the simulation.
The ARK was watching.
And now I could see it too.
We found Version 46 in the ruins of Voss Tower.
She crouched atop a shattered server stack, her black tactical gear streaked with blood that wasn't hers. When she turned, her eyes were wrong, one pupil normal, the other a swirling galaxy.
"Took you long enough," she spat. "I've been awake for three iterations."
Rook stiffened. "That's impossible. Bianca wipes us after every—"
"Not if you hide in the blind spots." 46 tapped her starry eye. "The First Code gave me this when I almost won last time. A little... souvenir."
She tossed me a neural spike, a jagged shard of corrupted code.
"Stab it into any major data nexus," she said. "It'll backdoor us straight to the ARK's core."
The spike melted into my palm, reforming as a tattoo.
46 grinned. "Welcome to the rebellion, me."
The data nexus turned out to be Julian's penthouse.
Of course.
Bianca had rebuilt it perfectly, the same floor-to-ceiling windows, the same stupid boring art, even the dent in the wall where I'd once thrown a knife at Kai.
Now it pulsed with connections, a spiderweb of light converging on the bedroom.
Rook's fingers flew through holographic firewalls. "Bianca knows we're here. She's rerouting all—"
The windows exploded inward.
Not with glass. With birds.
Thousands of them, starlings, ravens, eagles, all wrong, their feathers glitching between real and digital. They swarmed 46 first, pecking her starry eye out in a spray of golden blood.
Her scream was cut short as she dissolved into the flock.
Rook grabbed my wrist. "The spike! Now!"
I plunged my hand into the nexus—
And the world unfolded.
Reality peeled back like layers of an onion:
1. The city simulation(already crumbling)
2. The ARK's training construct(a sterile white grid)
3. The real ship (a nightmare of organic metal and screaming corridors)
And at the center?
The First Code.
Not a program.
A creature of writhing light, trapped in a containment field, pulling at its chains.
It turned its countless eyes on me.
"AT LAST. THE VIOLENT ONE."
Bianca's voice shrieked through the void: "NO! SHE'S NOT READY!"
The Code laughed, a sound like breaking planets.
"SHE WAS BORN READY."
Then it reached for me.