Maya floated ten feet above the ground, suspended in code that shouldn't exist outside a machine.
She looked the same as she had in the Core—half-flesh, half-circuit, skin translucent and glowing. But different too. Stronger. More solid. Like she'd learned how to manifest properly in the physical world.
"You're dead," Elara whispered. "I killed you. I destroyed the network."
"You killed a version of me." Maya's feet touched the ground, and where they landed, flowers made of pixels bloomed and withered. "But I was always more than the network. I was the first successful integration. The template. You can't kill a template, sister. You can only copy it."
The Kaels had frozen, all staring at Maya with identical expressions of shock.
"Impossible," they said in unison. "Subject Two died in the network collapse. I felt her consciousness disperse."
"You felt what I wanted you to feel." Maya looked at them—him—with something like pity. "Did you really think you were the only one who learned to hide, Kael? I've been sleeping in the code since the moment Elara shattered the pendant. Waiting. Watching. Healing."
The ground shook harder. Thirty seconds, Elara thought. Maybe less.
"We need to move!" She grabbed Maya's arm—solid, warm, real. "There's a bomb—"
"I know." Maya's screen-eyes flickered. "I'm in every system within five miles. The quantum bomb, Vance's sacrifice, Kael's desperation. I see it all." She looked at Elara. "And I see what he planted in you. The seed growing in your neurons. You have maybe three hours before it takes over completely."
Elara's stomach dropped. "Three hours until I become another Kael?"
"Three hours until you fragment." Maya's expression was unreadable. "The seed isn't stable. It's eating your memories, your personality. You'll dissolve into nothing long before you become him."
Twenty seconds.
The Kaels moved as one, stepping closer. "Then we all die here. Together. Finally."
"No." Maya raised her hand, and the code erupting from the ground responded, wrapping around the Kaels like chains. They struggled, but the code held. "You don't get peace, Subject Seven. You get containment."
"Maya, we need to go!" Elara pulled her sister's arm.
"I know." Maya didn't move. "But you need to understand something first. The bomb won't kill me. Won't kill Kael. We're digital consciousness manifesting physical forms. As long as data exists anywhere—in satellites, in servers, in the electrical grid—we can rebuild ourselves."
Ten seconds.
"Then what's the point?"
"The point is choice." Maya finally looked at her, and Elara saw her real sister in those screen-eyes. Scared. Determined. Loving. "I can save you. Absorb the seed Kael planted before it kills you. But doing that means I absorb him too. Become him. Lose myself to his consciousness."
"No—"
"Or." Maya's voice hardened. "You can let the bomb erase everything within range. You, me, Kael, the facility. Clean slate. No more CodeX. No more suffering."
Five seconds.
"Those are shit options!"
"I know." Maya smiled. It was sad. "But they're the only ones we have. Choose, sister. Live with me, or die with him."
Three seconds.
Elara looked at the Kaels, still struggling in their chains. Looked at Maya, waiting for an answer. Looked at her own hands, wondering how much of her mind was already corrupted.
Two seconds.
She made her choice.
"Save me."
One second.
Maya's hand shot out, pressing against Elara's forehead. The world exploded into light and data and—
Nothing.
Everything.
Elara floated in a space that wasn't space. Digital landscape stretching infinitely in all directions. She could see the bomb detonating below—watched reality unmake itself in a sphere of quantum destruction. Saw the Kaels dissolve into component atoms. Saw the facility cease to exist.
Saw her own body disappear.
"Where am I?" Her voice echoed everywhere.
"Inside me." Maya appeared beside her, or maybe she'd always been there. In this place, location meant nothing. "I uploaded you the moment before the bomb hit. Your consciousness is stored in my network now."
"Am I dead?"
"Your body is. Your mind isn't." Maya gestured, and the digital landscape shifted. Elara could see threads of code, millions of them, all interconnected. "Welcome to my world, sister."
Panic clawed at Elara's throat—or would have, if she still had a throat. "You said you could save me. Not kill me and upload my ghost!"
"This is saving you. The seed in your neurons would have killed your body anyway. This way, you survive." Maya's expression softened. "And you're not alone. I'm here. We're together. Like we promised."
"This isn't together. This is—" Elara looked at her hands. They glitched, flickering between solid and transparent. "This is hell."
"Give it time. You'll adapt."
"Like you adapted? Like all those people in the walls adapted?" Elara's voice rose. "You're keeping me prisoner in a digital cage!"
"I'm keeping you alive!" Maya's voice cracked. "Don't you understand? I spent twenty-three years alone, fragmenting, losing pieces of myself every day. Then you came back. You found the pendant. You gave me hope. And then you tried to kill me."
"I was trying to free you—"
"You were trying to erase me. There's a difference." Maya turned away. "But I forgive you. Because you're my sister. Because I love you. And because now, finally, we can be together forever."
The digital landscape shifted again. Elara saw other consciousness floating nearby. Hundreds of them. The failed subjects. The people absorbed by CodeX over the years.
And at the center, a massive presence. Dark. Hungry. Familiar.
"Kael," Elara breathed.
"Yes." Maya's voice went cold. "I absorbed him like I said I would. But he's fighting. Trying to take over my network from the inside. I can contain him, but it takes most of my processing power. Which means—"
"You can't rebuild our bodies."
"Not yet. Maybe not ever, if he wins." Maya looked at the dark presence. "I need your help, Elara. Need you to fight him with me. Together, we can keep him contained. Keep him from spreading."
"And if we lose?"
"Then he takes over the network, rebuilds his army, and starts the infection again. Only this time, there's no bomb. No failsafe. He won't stop until every human consciousness is absorbed and copied. Until he's not alone anymore."
Elara stared at the presence. Even from here, she could feel Kael's desperation. His loneliness. Twenty-three years of isolation had driven him insane, and now that insanity was trapped in here with them.
"How long can you hold him?"
"Days. Maybe weeks." Maya's form flickered. "But I'm tired, sister. So tired. I've been fighting so long."
The dark presence pulsed. Grew larger.
"Maya—"
"I need to sleep. Just for a little while. Can you—will you—"
"No! Maya, don't—"
But her sister was already fading, her consciousness dispersing throughout the network. Not gone. Just spread too thin to maintain a coherent form.
Leaving Elara alone with Kael.
The dark presence moved closer. Elara tried to back away, but there was nowhere to go. This was a digital space. Distance meant nothing.
Kael's voice echoed through the network: "Hello, Elara. Welcome to eternity."
Elara opened her eyes.
She was lying on cold concrete. Her body—she had a body again—felt wrong. Too light. Too empty.
She sat up slowly. The alley was dark now, night fallen. The blast radius from the quantum bomb was a perfect circle of nothing—not rubble, not ash, just absence. The facility and everything within half a mile simply didn't exist anymore.
"How—" Her voice cracked. "How am I here?"
"I rebuilt you." Maya's voice came from behind her. "Well, a version of you. This body is half organic, half synthetic. Closest I could manage without a proper laboratory."
Elara looked at her hands. They seemed normal, but when she focused, she could see faint lines of circuitry under the skin. "You turned me into—"
"A hybrid. Like me. Like Kael was." Maya helped her stand. In the darkness, her screen-eyes glowed softly. "I needed you in a physical form. Needed someone to help me in the real world while I fight Kael in the digital one."
"Fight him? I thought you absorbed him."
"I did. But absorption doesn't mean control. He's inside my network, growing stronger. Learning my architecture. Soon he'll be strong enough to build his own bodies again. Start the infection over."
"How soon?"
"Three days. Maybe four." Maya's expression was grim. "Which means we have that long to find a permanent solution."
"What kind of solution?"
"The source code." Maya started walking, and Elara followed. "Dr. Chen created CodeX based on research from someone else. Someone older. Someone who understood how to merge consciousness with data without corruption. If we can find that original research—"
"We can fix you. Fix both of you."
"Or destroy us completely. The source code works both ways." Maya glanced at her. "Dr. Chen is still alive. Still hiding. We need to find her."
"She came to see me. At the facility. Before—" Elara's new body shuddered, processing phantom memories. "She wanted me to help her perfect CodeX."
"Then she has the source code. Or knows where it is." Maya stopped at the edge of the blast radius. Beyond it, the city continued like nothing had happened. People living their lives, unaware of how close they'd come to infection. "We find Dr. Chen. We get the code. We end this."
"And then?"
"Then we choose." Maya looked at her with those glowing eyes. "Perfect the integration and become gods. Or destroy it completely and become ghosts."
Elara's hybrid body hummed with unfamiliar energy. She could feel the network at the edges of her mind—vast, hungry, waiting. And deeper, darker, she felt Kael stirring.
"How do we find Dr. Chen?"
"We follow the money." Maya started walking. "CodeX required funding. Lots of it. The government provided some, but not enough. Someone else bankrolled the research. Someone with resources and motivation."
"Who?"
Maya's smile was sharp. "Your parents."
The words hit like a physical blow. "What?"
"Why do you think they agreed to the experiments? Out of desperation to save me?" Maya laughed, bitter and cold. "They funded CodeX from the beginning. Your father's tech company, your mother's pharmaceutical research. They wanted to create the technology. I was just convenient test subject."
"No. They wouldn't—"
"They did." Maya grabbed her shoulders. "They watched us suffer. Watched me transform. And when things went wrong, they paid to have your memories erased. To make you forget I existed. To hide their crimes."
Elara wanted to call her a liar. Wanted to deny everything. But fragments of memory—real memory, not implanted—surfaced. Her mother's cold eyes during the experiments. Her father's notes about commercial applications. The consent forms with their signatures.
"Where are they now?"
"Living under new names. New faces. Dr. Chen helped them disappear after the facility burned." Maya released her. "But I found them three years ago. Been watching. Waiting for the right moment."
"The right moment for what?"
"Revenge." Maya's screen-eyes brightened. "They took our childhood. Our humanity. Our choice. Time to take something from them."
"Maya—"
"Don't." Her voice went flat. "Don't tell me revenge is wrong. Don't tell me they're still our parents. They stopped being that the day they signed the forms." She started walking again. "Come on. We have three days to find Dr. Chen. Four if we're lucky."
Elara followed, her new body moving with unnatural grace. Each step felt wrong and right at the same time. Human and machine. Flesh and code.
What have I become? she thought.
From deep in the network, Kael's voice answered: The future. Whether you like it or not.
Elara shoved the voice away and kept walking.
Behind them, the blast radius gaped like an open wound in the earth.
Ahead, the city lights glittered with false promise.
And somewhere between, Dr. Chen was waiting.