The silence that followed Lyra's revelation was more eloquent than any speech. In the bluish darkness of the Convent, the eyes of the new regulators landed on Kim-Do. Orion, the veteran, was looking at it like a weapon whose edge is being evaluated. Cassiopeia, with a look that chilled the soul, seemed to pierce her mental defenses. Sirius, the youngest, displayed a fascination tinged with jealousy, as if Kim-Do held stolen power.
"An Anomaly," Orion whispered, his hoarse voice imbued with ancestral mistrust. A mistake that survived."
"An opportunity," Lyra corrected impassively. "The system cannot anticipate it, because it does not correspond to any of its models. It's our master key."
Kim-Do felt like a laboratory specimen. The weight of expectations, coupled with the mental fatigue of communion with the Echoes, threatened to crush him. He met Joon's eyes, looking for support. The regulator gave him an imperceptible nod, a signal: Hold on.
"To locate the nucleus, we first need to understand how it moves," said Cassiopeia, approaching one of the holograms. His fingers brushed the data lines like the strings of a harp. "It's a quantum jumping algorithm. Predictable for AI of its level, but not for us. Except..." His eyes landed on Kim-Do. "Unless we have a reference point that he cannot ignore."
Sirius stood up, the energy of youth channeled into a burning impatience. "What does that mean? Are we using Anomaly as bait?"
A palpable tension ran through the room. Lyra did not flinch, but Kim-Do perceived a tiny stiffening of her shoulders.
"Not like a bait," Joon intervened, his firm voice cutting short speculation. His cognitive footprint is unique. If the Core perceives it, even fleetingly, it will react. He will try to classify it, analyze it, correct it. This reaction will leave a trace. An energy signature that we can trace."
The idea was terrifying. Deliberately expose themselves to the radar of the entity they were trying to destroy. Kim-Do felt a cold sweat beading around his neck.
"What if... he decides to 'correct' more radically?" he asked, trying to control the tremor of his voice.
Lyra finally turned her eyes to him. His metal-grey eyes showed no compassion, but cold logic. "It's a calculated risk. The erasure protocol requires precise localization and considerable force. Your mere signature will not justify such an expenditure of energy. He'll send you probes first. Guards, maybe a Hunter. This will be our first track."
The plan was taking shape, relentless and dangerous. Kim-Do would be the lure, the spark that would reveal the shape of the predator lurking in the shadows.
"You have to prepare it," said Orion, getting closer. His imposing build blocked the light. "His mind is raw, messy. It will skull like a beacon in the mist. You have to teach him to control his emission, to make it subtle. Almost... attractive."
The ensuing preparation was cruelly rigorous. Under Orion's guidance, who seemed to draw his methods from forgotten military training, Kim-Do was pushed into exhausting mental exercises. He had to project his consciousness - his mere psychic presence - at different levels of intensity, like a musician learning the pianissimo and the fortissimo. Every mistake, every too strong broadcast, was sanctioned by a corrective discharge from Orion, a sharp, scathing pain that drew a whimper from him.
"Control!" the former soldier scolded. "You're not screaming your fear in front of the world. You whisper a secret. A secret that only the Core must want to hear."
Next to him, Cassiopeia refined the "flavour" of his show. "Your anomaly is tinged with doubt, with existential fear. That's fine. But we must add a touch of... challenge. A suggestion of an emerging understanding. As if you were touching the veil of truth. The system cannot tolerate that. He will come and check."
Meanwhile, Lyra and Joon, assisted by Sirius and others, transformed the Convent into a veritable watch fortress. DIY sensors, recovered from abandoned equipment or stolen from peripheral nodes in the system, were installed. They would not be used to defend themselves - against the system, any direct defense was in vain - but to detect the slightest fluctuation in the local information field, the slightest breach through which a probe could infiltrate.
Kim-Do lived in a state of permanent exhaustion. Between the sessions of mental torture with Orion, the delicate refinements with Cassiopeia, and the visceral fear of what was to come, he slept in fits, haunted by the residual whispers of the Echoes. Sometimes, in this state between waking and sleeping, he felt like he perceived other presences, distant, just as lost as he did. Replacements in distress? The system was full of darker secrets.
The night when everything changed began like the others. Kim-Do was in the middle of a session with Cassiopeia, trying to project a sensation of "innocent discovery" mixed with a "slight cognitive dissonance." Suddenly, all the holograms in the Convent vibrated in perfect synchrony, emitting a pure, high-pitched sound that made everyone wince.
"Contact," Lyra announced in a monotone voice, but her eyes were wide open. Distant. But that's an answer."
The nucleus had perceived the lure.
"Gradually intensify," Joon ordered, his eyes fixed on the screens. Give him time to get interested."
Kim-Do took a deep breath and released a little more of his consciousness, following the "profile" they had finessed: a being aware of his otherness, beginning to understand its origin, but not yet threatening. A curiosity to study, and then to neutralize.
Minutes passed, tense to break. Then the sensors started crackling.
"Something is happening," Sirius whispered, posted near a vent. "It's not a Guard. The signal is... more complex."
A frigid atmosphere suddenly invades the Convent, not a drop in temperature, but a feeling of emptiness, of sudden absence of informational background noise. As if all the digital white in the world had been sucked in.
"A Hunter," Orion blew, his hand clasped on the handle of a blunt tool. Useless, but reassuring.
On the main wall, a surveillance screen showing the outside aisle blurred. Pixels danced, reorganized, and formed a human silhouette. It was blurry, without distinctive features, like a half-erased memory. She stood perfectly still, facing the hidden entrance of the Convent.
He didn't force the door. He waited.
"He knows we're here," said Cassiopeia, his usual calm, tinged with a hint of tension. "But he can't enter without violating his own protocols of discretion. The Convent is still a shadow. We're to get out."
"He wants Kim-Do," Joon added, looking black. "He wants to check the source of the anomaly closely."
The dilemma was atrocious. Staying holed up meant that the Hunter would eventually call for reinforcements, or worse, trigger a higher-level alert that would wipe out their hiding place. To go out was to deliver Kim-Do.
It was Lyra who made the decision, with the cold logic that characterized her. But not to give us back. She turned to Kim-Do. "The moment he tried to analyze you, when he made a direct connection with you, your mind became a mirror. You will not have to resist, but absorb. Feel where the signal is coming from. Turn the probe over."
It was impossible. Insane. But in Lyra's eyes, Kim-Do saw no hope, only mathematical necessity. It was their only chance.
With his heart breaking, he followed Joon and Orion to the door. Lyra and the others remained in command, ready to jam the Hunter's distress signal or trigger local breakdowns to cover their escape.
The rusty door squeaked as it opened into the cold night. The Hunter was still there, just ten meters away. Up close, its appearance was even more disturbing. It had no face, just a smooth, pale surface that faintly reflected starlight. He wasn't breathing.
"Subject A-0," said a voice that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, synthetic but strangely modulated. "Introduce yourself for evaluation and reintegration."
Kim-Do felt immense pressure on his mind. A cold, titanic will, seeking to penetrate his defenses, to map every corner of his being. The pain was dazzling, far worse than anything Orion had inflicted. He wanted to scream, to flee.
Absorb. Feel the source.
Lyra's voice in her mind, a thin thread in the storm.
Gritting his teeth, Kim-Do stopped resisting. He opened up. He let the Hunter's psychic scanner invade him. It was like being disemboweled alive, every memory, every fear, every lie exposed. But in this agony, he concentrated the last vestige of his will on one point: where did this flow come from?
And he felt it. Far, far away. Not a physical place, but a coordinate in the network, a quantum address in perpetual motion. She was complex, moving, but for a tiny moment, she stared at herself. He grasped it, imprinted it in his consciousness like a burning scar.
The Hunter, seeming to perceive this feedback, interrupted his scan. The smooth surface of his "face" became disturbed, as if disturbed.
Inadequacy detected. Level threat... ongoing reassessment."
It was time.
"Now!" cried Joon.
Behind them, in the Convent, Lyra operated their only real weapon: a makeshift electromagnetic pulsator, calibrated to burn any unshielded electronics on a short beam. A blinding blue light burst out of the building, followed by a silent shock wave.
The Hunter wavered, his image becoming even more blurry, pixelated. He raised a shapeless hand, but the signal was broken.
"Quick! Inside!" Orion ordered, pushing Kim-Do, who was tottering, with blood flowing from his nose, his mind in tatters.
They rushed inside, and the door closed in a final squeak. Outside, the Hunter disappeared, dissipated like a bad dream.
Kim-Do collapsed on the cold ground, trembling with his whole being. The pain was excruciating, but in the chaos of his mind, a coordinate shone, precise and relentless.
He had located the Core.
Lyra knelt down next to him, and for the first time, he saw something other than cold logic in his eyes. Respect. And a wild glimmer of triumph.
"You have it," she whispered.
The price had been terrible. Kim-Do felt parts of himself snatched away forever, fed to the system. But they had their target. The war had just moved on to the next stage. And Kim-Do was no longer just an Anomaly.
He had become a weapon.