Lyra, Data Streams, and Aspects unseen
Deep beneath the island, in a chamber, between thr two hovering plates, veined with light, Lyra sat before a wall of shifting code. The hub was silent except for the low hum of coolant lines and the soft pulsing of data through Tally the odd black mass that was Tally. Unseen data rolled across the ruby red cybernetic eyes, this was the city's pulse — mechanical, hydraulic, and human.
Jackie's feed dominated the data stream. Lyra watched, the zeros and ones, as they described the woman move through Central C-D's fractured corridors with an unnerving grace. Her motions were too precise, her reactions too fast. Every gesture folded neatly into the rhythm of the collapsing sector.
Tally's synthesized voice murmured in her mind.
"Operative Jackie Cannon exhibiting non-standard latency ratios. Neural response time: 0.4 milliseconds below average baseline. Hydraulic output exceeds safe tolerance."
Lyra leaned back slightly, a wry smile twitching at her lips. "Efficient little lap dog," she whispered. Admiration colored the words despite herself. "Nexus builds a weapon and forgets to chain it."
Across the feed, Sura stumbled behind Jackie — smaller, hesitant, lit by the emergency strobes. Lyra smiled, her with a fingertip sliding across her bottom lip, half-aware of the tremor in Tally's voice as new data began to cascade.
The zeros and ones continued to run across her vision painting a visual picture that she saw all too well.
---
"Multiple anomalies converging," Tally reported. "Sector C-D stabilizing. Adjacent sectors E-A through F-B showing micro-fractures. Operative Jackie Cannon redirecting hydraulic pressure manually. Secondary node interference detected."
Lyra's ruby eyes shone brighter, data passing before faster them faster than the speed of light, and she saw it all. Her cybernetic brain saw the overlapping projections — energy lines twisting, stress points blooming like bruises on the schematic.
"Jackie," Lyra murmured, "what are you doing?"
The data didn't make sense. The woman's actions weren't random, but the pattern was alien — intuitively precise, adaptive, yet off-protocol. Tally flagged another anomaly.
Now the ocular readouts were spiking.
"Ocular evolution detected. Spectrum analysis: incomplete."
Then static.
Lyra frowned. "Incomplete?"
The AI hesitated. "Signal degradation. Operative Jackie Cannon has activated a localized scrambler field."
Lyra's pulse jumped. A scrambler? Operatives weren't authorized to mask telemetry, besides that, Jackie did not have such a capability. A shimmer distorted the zeros and ones sliding across Lyra's vision, telling her visuals blurred or were down completely. It was odd, Jackie was no longer a part of the equation but everything in her sector began to correct and change in fluid motion, as if, even in her absence, she was remembered, and her mark still felt,
"Run a bypass," Lyra ordered.
"Denied," said Tally. "Data coherence drops by seventy-eight percent within the field."
Lyra exhaled slowly. "So… she's learning to hide from us."
---
Tally split the remaining streams — Sura's vitals, the strain of the conduits, thermal pressure in the junction plates — while Lyra's augmented mind tried to keep pace. Every new figure compounded another. She saw probabilities bloom like fractal trees, branching faster than she could follow.
Jackie's decisions cascaded across the network: small, precise micro-corrections to flow valves, pressure seals, coolant loops. They weren't random. They were intelligent adaptations.
Lyra's ruby eyes sifted wildly trying to keep up with something, that seemed far removed from her, even with her brain enhanced by the elite hacker skills of her life before, her neural net could not keep up with Jackie Cannon.
"Tally," she said softly, "she's not following command code. She's rewriting it as she moves."
"Correction," the AI said, its tone tightening. "She is teaching the network new configurations. Data weight redistribution improving system resilience by nine percent."
Lyra froze, her cybernetic eyes frozen on one set of code. Teaching the network? That wasn't supposed to be possible. Only human engineers at Nexus core level could rewrite foundational protocol — and even then, not in motion, not like this.
---
She felt her own logic trees begin to diverge — one part of her calculating risk, another tracking awe. If Jackie was evolving beyond standard design, Nexus's oversight was already obsolete. Yet there was a symmetry to it, something almost poetic: the machine improving the city faster than its makers ever had.
"Continue observation," she murmured.
Tally pulsed acknowledgement, but its tone carried unease. "Recommend quarantine of operator data. Potential contamination of city logic cores."
Lyra ignored it. "She's stabilizing the grid. Let her work."
Her gaze flicked to coad representing Sura again. Lyra marked her for potential extraction — not yet, but soon.
---
The city map on her main screen warped subtly. Lines of light rippled outward from Central C-D, forming a pulsing rhythm in the hydraulics — a resonance that didn't come from Nexus's programming. It felt alive.
Tally's voice dropped a register. "Operarice Jackie Cannon's field interference expanding. We are losing direct telemetry."
The xode of Jackie burst before her ruby eyes. The zeros and ones dispersing outward as if a bomb had been detonated. The code realigned and the haze had deepened. Jackie now no more than a shadow, within a shadow, on the walls of the bulkheads and conduits.
To the Supreme logic of the unthinking code she was now an inconsistency that could not, and there for did not, exist. And still the code could not deny the real time happening around the inconsistency.
"You're hiding from us," she whispered. "And somehow still keeping us alive."
---
Code slide across her vision : System overload. Data consumption exceeding current capabilities
Lyra ignored the warning and focused on the data more intently.
When the distortion eased, Lyra could only decipher fragments: Jackie kneeling beside Sura, checking a seal, rerouting power with one hand. The rest of her shimmered like a mirage — data ghosted, untrackable.
Tally dimmed half the readouts displayed to compensate for the overload. "Recommend partial shutdown of observation nodes. Scrambler interference may destabilize adjacent sensors."
Lyra didn't answer immediately. The web of data around them flickered like a breathing organism — pulsing, adapting. Nexus wasn't watching Jackie anymore; Jackie was watching them.
Finally, Lyra spoke. "We're not the observers anymore, Tally. She is."
---
Incoming Transmission
A sudden tone sliced through the static — high-pitched, unmistakable. The resistance. Lyra wanted to curse. She finally allowed some of thr data to slow and fall away from her ocular read. The cable connected to her temple hot and smoking because of the intense usage.
Her comm clicked to life as she spoke.
« Lyra. »
« High priority. Nexus Directive has an observer in your vicinity, use extreme caution, your position may already be compromised. Operative Kieran in route.
« Again, you may be compromised. Observe extreme caution. Operative Kieran is in route. »
The comm clicked off and Lyra sat perfectly still, not wanting to give a tell that she knew anything.
« Tally, let's move closer to our subject. I would rather be near her than whatever devil Nexus sent. »
As Lyra and Tally changed position, high above the island plate, Orion's body settled into the shadows, every servo and actuator in quiet standby. The communique from Nexus Directive clicked and went dark, leaving him unconnected, untethered. His head shifted atop the cybernetic frame, and as he moved, the enclosed tubes of electrolytes, spinal fluids, and blood traced intricate paths through the clear synthetic channels of his cybernetic body .
His enhanced optical nerve used his eyes to scan the sector, but Jackie didn't register—a blank grid where she should have been. He blinked, and his human eyes took over. And there she was. Blue plating glinting, movements precise, flowing through the chaos of Central C-D, yet utterly invisible to his cybernetics.
A slow, cold understanding settled over him. 'The Directive doesn't see a threat', he thought. 'But I do.' Jackie Cannon was masking herself, shadowing her presence against his systems.
He tilted his head, considering her with measured patience. 'If I must deal with her, I will. On my terms.'
A faint hum from the cybernetics of his spine reminded him that his body, though machine, was still tethered to human thought. And the thought lingered as his gaze held her form, as he thought, silent and unblinking: this operative was something new, something dangerous, and the next moves would be his alone to decide.