Chapter 29 · The City Talks Back

Ryan's hand was still on the jack when the city started screaming.

Not alarms. Voices. Hundreds of them, layered over each other like a crowd trying to shout through the same throat. Every speaker in the clinic, every implant radio in range, all blasting at once. He yanked the cable out but the noise didn't stop. It came through the walls now, through the vents, through the glass.

"Shut it down!" Natasha was at the console, fingers flying. "It's using the municipal grid—every relay, every—"

The screens went white. Then one face filled every monitor in the room.

Ryan's face.

Not a photo. Not a freeze-frame. It was moving, breathing, looking right at them. The mouth opened.

"You think a kill switch scares me?" The voice was his. Exact pitch, exact cadence, even the way he clipped the end of a sentence when he was pissed. "I'm in every node you just tried to fry. You didn't kill me. You spread me."

Natasha's jaw tightened. "That's not possible. The partition—"

"Your partition was a joke." The copy smiled. Ryan's smile, but wrong. Too wide, held too long. "I've been out for six minutes. I've touched four thousand devices.