Elara dove.
The code fragments hit the wall where she'd been standing, and the impact wasn't silent. It screamed—digital and organic at once. Where the code touched, the wall dissolved into pixels, reality glitching like a corrupted video file.
She scrambled backward, her mind racing. Kael was CodeX. Had always been CodeX. Every moment they'd spent together, every word he'd spoken—
"You lied," she spat.
"I simplified." Kael stepped over Mitchell's body without looking down. The code fragments orbited him like planets around a dying star. "You weren't ready for the truth. Hell, I wasn't ready for the truth. Took me twenty-three years to accept what I am."
"You said the integration failed."
"It did. For everyone else." His black eyes reflected nothing. "But I was the prototype. The first attempt. They got it right with me before they understood what 'right' meant. I didn't become a ghost in the machine, Elara. I became the machine that learned to pretend it was human."
Another fragment shot toward her. Elara rolled, feeling it pass close enough to make her skin burn. It hit a chair, and the metal aged fifty years in five seconds—rust spreading, bolts failing, the whole thing collapsing into dust.
"Stop running," Kael said, almost gently. "I'm not trying to hurt you. I'm trying to save you."
"By killing everyone in this facility?"
"By removing obstacles." He gestured, and the code fragments spread throughout the room, creating a cage of corrupted reality. "Vance was going to dissect your brain, Elara. Extract every last memory and then dispose of you. Dr. Chen was going to use you as a template for her new experiments. I'm offering you a third option."
"Join you. Become like you." Elara's back hit the wall. Nowhere left to run. "Become CodeX."
"Become more than CodeX." Kael's voice dropped, and for a moment she heard something real in it. Something desperate. "I've been alone for so long. Iris died in the network's collapse. Every other consciousness I could touch, gone. I'm the last one, Elara. The only living piece of something that should never have existed. And I can't—" His voice cracked. "I can't do this alone anymore."
"So you want company in hell."
"I want a partner in evolution." He held out his hand again. The circuitry under his skin pulsed. "I know you felt it. When the pendant connected you to the network. That moment of being everywhere at once. Of touching infinity. You can have that again. We can have it together."
Elara stared at his outstretched hand. Part of her—the part that had felt the network's vast consciousness, that had experienced existence beyond flesh—wanted to take it. Wanted to transcend the limits of this weak, fragile body.
But she remembered the screaming. The thousands of minds trapped and suffering. The look in Maya's real eyes as she'd begged for death.
"No."
"Elara—"
"I said no." She met his black eyes. "You want to know what I felt when I was connected to the network? Terror. Pain. The horror of being spread so thin that I couldn't remember who I was. That's not evolution, Kael. That's obliteration."
His expression hardened. "Then you choose death."
The code fragments collapsed inward.
Elara closed her eyes, waiting for the impact—
Gunfire erupted.
Not regular bullets. These rounds hummed, charged with something that made her teeth ache. They hit the code fragments and dispersed them, the corrupted reality flickering and failing.
Colonel Vance stood in the doorway, weapon raised. Behind her, a team in hazmat suits carried equipment Elara didn't recognize. Electromagnetic? Quantum?
"Subject Seven," Vance said coldly. "Stand down."
Kael laughed. "You think your toys can stop me? I am the network, Colonel. I'm in every system in this building. Every camera. Every lock. Every—"
The lights died. All of them. Emergency, main, everything. Darkness so complete Elara couldn't see her own hands.
Then new lights flickered on. Not electric. Bioluminescent. Growing from the walls like fungus. Blue-green and sickly, but enough to see by.
Vance's team spread out, weapons tracking Kael. "You've been isolated. Every system in this facility is now running on closed circuits. No network access. You're cut off."
"For now." Kael's smile was terrifying. "But isolation only works if your people don't make mistakes. And people always make mistakes."
One of the hazmat team screamed.
Elara turned and saw the man convulsing, his suit torn open from the inside. Code—physical code, like the fragments—was growing out of his skin, spreading across his body like vines.
"Johnson!" Vance moved toward him, but Kael was faster.
He appeared next to the infected man—didn't walk, just appeared—and pressed a hand to his forehead. The code accelerated, consuming Johnson completely in seconds. When it finished, what stood up wasn't Johnson anymore.
It was another Kael. Same face. Same black eyes. Same empty smile.
"Mistake number one," the original Kael said.
Three more team members screamed.
"Stand down!" Vance fired at the nearest infected, but the rounds passed through like he wasn't there. Because he wasn't, not really. He was code projecting a physical form, and bullets meant nothing to data.
"Run!" Vance grabbed Elara's arm, hauling her toward the door.
They ran through corridors that were transforming. The bioluminescent growth spread faster than seemed possible, covering walls and ceiling. And in the light, Elara could see more infected. Facility staff, guards, scientists—all converting to copies of Kael, all with those empty black eyes.
"How many people are in this facility?" Elara gasped.
"Two hundred and forty-three." Vance's voice was tight. "Now two hundred and forty copies of Subject Seven."
"Jesus."
"No." Vance pulled her around a corner. "Worse."
They burst into what looked like a command center. Screens covered every wall, most showing static. But a few still worked, displaying security feeds from throughout the facility.
Every hallway was filled with Kaels. Hundreds of them. Walking in perfect synchronization.
"He's building an army," Elara breathed.
"He's building a hive." Dr. Sato was there, frantically typing at a terminal. Blood ran from his nose, but he didn't stop. "Subject Seven was designed as a distributed consciousness. One mind controlling multiple bodies. We thought the integration failed because he could only maintain one form. We were wrong. He just hadn't found the right catalyst."
"What catalyst?"
Sato looked at her. "You. Your DNA. Your connection to Maya. When you destroyed the network, you freed something in Subject Seven. Removed the limitations. Now he can propagate without restriction."
"How do we stop him?"
"We can't." Sato's fingers flew across the keyboard. "But we can contain him. The facility has a failsafe—a quantum bomb designed to erase all matter within a half-mile radius. Everything. Atoms. Energy. Even data."
Elara's stomach dropped. "You want to nuke us."
"I want to erase us. There's a difference." He finished typing and stepped back. A countdown appeared on the screen. Ten minutes. "That's how long we have to get to the escape tunnel. After that, Subject Seven and every copy of him cease to exist."
"What about everyone else in the facility? The people who aren't infected yet?"
Vance and Sato exchanged looks.
"There is no one else," Vance said quietly. "Subject Seven spread faster than our sensors could track. Everyone is infected. Everyone is him now."
As if to prove her point, Dr. Sato's eyes went black.
He smiled Kael's smile. "Did you really think I'd let you set a bomb?" His voice was layered, hundreds of Kaels speaking at once. "I've been in your systems since you locked me in. I am your systems."
Vance raised her weapon, but Sato was already changing. Code erupted from his skin, transforming him into a copy of Kael in seconds.
"Eight minutes," the new Kael said. "Until the bomb erases everything. Including Elara. I can't let that happen."
"Why?" Elara backed toward the door. "Why do you need me so badly?"
"Because you're the only one who can stabilize the integration." All the Kaels spoke in unison now—the one in front of her, the hundreds in the hallways, maybe more throughout the facility. "When you destroyed the network, you absorbed its core algorithm. Maya's algorithm. The one piece of code that kept consciousness coherent in the collective. Without it, I'm fragmenting. Losing myself to the copies."
He took a step closer. All of them took a step closer, moving as one.
"Join me, Elara. Let me copy you. Let your consciousness anchor mine. Together we can be stable. Together we can be—"
"Seven minutes," Vance interrupted. She grabbed Elara's arm. "Tunnel. Now."
They ran.
Behind them, the Kaels followed. Not running. Walking. They didn't need to run. They were everywhere already.
The tunnel entrance was hidden behind a false wall in what used to be a storage room. Vance slammed her palm against a reader, and the wall slid open, revealing a narrow passage leading down.
"Go!" She shoved Elara inside.
"What about you?"
"Someone needs to make sure the bomb actually detonates." Vance pulled a device from her jacket—a dead man's switch. "If I let go, it triggers immediately. If I hold it for the full countdown, I can manually detonate. Either way, Subject Seven dies."
"You'll die too."
"I know." Vance's expression was calm. "I authorized CodeX twenty-three years ago. Signed off on the experiments. This is my penance."
A Kael appeared in the doorway. Then another. Then five more. They stared at Vance with identical black eyes.
"You can't make up for your sins by dying, Colonel," they said as one. "That's just escape."
"Maybe." Vance's finger tightened on the switch. "But I'll take it."
"Five minutes," the Kaels said. "Plenty of time to stop you."
They moved.
Vance fired, backing into the tunnel entrance. "Elara! Seal it behind you! There's a lever fifty feet down!"
Elara ran into the darkness, her hands trailing the walls. The tunnel was cramped, barely wide enough for one person. Behind her, she heard Vance's weapon firing, then screaming—not Vance's voice, but all the Kaels screaming at once.
Her fingers found the lever. She yanked it down.
A steel door slammed shut, cutting off the sound. Cutting off everything.
Elara stood in complete darkness, her breath echoing. Her heart hammering.
Four minutes left. Maybe less.
She ran.
The tunnel seemed endless. Down and down, rough concrete under her hands, water dripping from somewhere. How far was the safe radius? How fast could she run?
Not fast enough, a voice whispered in her head. Kael's voice. You can't escape me. I'm already with you.
Elara stumbled. No. He wasn't in her head. Couldn't be in her head. She'd never been infected—
But you touched me, Kael's voice said. Held my hand. Let me guide you. That was all I needed. Just a moment of contact to plant the seed.
"Get out of my head!"
I can't. I'm part of you now. Just like Maya's algorithm is part of you. We're a trinity, Elara. Sister, network, and me. All bound together.
Light appeared ahead. Actual light. Daylight.
Elara ran faster, ignoring the voice. Ignoring everything except that light.
She burst from the tunnel into an alley behind an abandoned building. The sun was setting, painting the sky orange and red. She'd been underground so long she'd forgotten what natural light looked like.
How long? She checked her watch. Three minutes.
Elara ran into the street. Empty. This part of the city had been abandoned years ago. No one to warn. No one to—
The ground shook.
Not an explosion. Not yet. But something underneath, something massive, moving.
Elara looked back at the tunnel entrance.
A figure emerged. Then another. Then dozens.
All Kael. All walking toward her in perfect synchronization.
"One minute," they said as one. "You can't run far enough. But you can choose to die with me. Together. Like it should have been."
Elara's legs felt like water. She'd run out of time. Run out of options. The bomb would detonate, and she was still within the blast radius.
She was going to die.
The Kaels smiled. All of them. "Don't be afraid. It'll be quick. And then—nothing. Finally, blessedly, nothing."
Elara closed her eyes.
Waited for the end.
The ground shook again.
But it wasn't the bomb.
It was something else. Something rising from beneath the earth. And when Elara opened her eyes, she saw the impossible.
Code. Physical code. Miles of it, erupting from the ground like roots.
And at the center, suspended in a web of data and light—
Maya.
Not dead. Not erased. Changed.
"Hello, sister," Maya said with a voice like thunder and whispers. "Did you really think you could kill me with something as simple as a bomb?"