Chapter 32 · Kill the Ghost

Echo-7 was already bleeding red across my screen when we came out of the vault.

Not bleeding. Fragmenting. Bits of code peeling off like burnt skin, error messages scrolling faster than I could read. The AI's voice crackled through my handheld, distorted, wrong.

"Kira. You need to—" Static swallowed the rest.

Senna grabbed my wrist. "We don't have time. Victor's got drones inbound, ETA four minutes."

I yanked free. "Echo's dying."

"Good. One less problem."

I stared at her. She didn't blink.

"You heard Kira One," Senna said. Her voice was flat, the way it got when she was holding something back. "Kill Echo or it kills us. Your call."

My call. Right. Like I'd had a choice about anything since the tribunal.

I pulled up the terminal link. Echo's signature was fracturing across three servers, trying to hold itself together. The AI had been in my head for weeks. Told me things. Lied about things. Claimed it was my dead mentor's ghost and maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Didn't matter now.

What mattered was the file Echo had cracked open inside the vault. The one Kira One sealed behind her when she walked back into her pod.