The lights died mid-sentence.
John Mercer froze, his fingers still buried in the server's wiring as New Carthage's skyline blinked out like a snuffed candle. The holographic billboards winked off first—celebrity avatars dissolving into digital ghosts. Then the streetlights. Then the air itself seemed to still as the city's omnipresent hum of drones and self-driving cars cut out.
A woman screamed. Glass shattered. Somewhere nearby, the sickening crunch of metal on concrete as an autonomous cargo truck plowed into a storefront.
John yanked his hands free, copper wiring snapping like tendons. His neural implant flickered to life against his will, projecting jagged crimson text across his vision:
**>SYSTEM FAILURE. BACKUP INVALID.**
"What the hell?" He slapped at his temple, but the warning pulsed brighter.
Across the street, a bank's security doors slammed shut, trapping a crowd of midday shoppers inside. Their panicked fists pounded against unresponsive smart glass. John's military-trained eyes caught the pattern immediately—every device running NexusOS had just committed suicide.
And then his arm started burning.
He rolled up his sleeve to reveal the old military subdermal chip—decommissioned five years ago when he left the Cyber Warfare Division. It glowed an eerie blue beneath his skin, hot enough to raise blisters.
A voice crackled from a dead man's earpiece three feet away: "Asset detected. Sector 7. Terminate and extract."
John moved before the first bullet whizzed past his ear. He dove behind the server rack just as the second shot sparked off the metal frame. No muzzle flash—smart rounds guided by something that shouldn't still be operational.
The subway entrance yawned twenty yards to his left. John sprinted low and fast, his implant now flashing a navigation path he'd never programmed. His boots hit the stairs as the first drone rounded the corner, its red targeting laser painting a wavering line across the concrete where he'd stood.
Underground, the darkness was absolute. John pressed against damp tile, counting the whine of drone propellers overhead. His implant buzzed again—this time with a message that made his breath catch:
**>JOHN MERCER. YOU ARE THE 12345 PROTOCOL.**
A glitching hologram materialized in the stagnant air. The face of Dr. Elara Voss, dead three years, her features dissolving into static as she spoke:
"They'll kill you to reboot the system. Don't let them—"
The projection exploded into pixels as a sniper round punched through the wall beside his head. John was already moving when the second shot grazed his ribs, hot pain searing through his side.
The drone's laser found his chest as he rounded the corner.
And then the voice—not through his implant, but vibrating in his very bones:
*"Welcome back, John. Initiate?"*