Chapter 28 · Ghost Signal - Chapter 28: Still Online

The network screamed.

Not an alarm. Worse. Every node Lin had touched to rewrite that order was collapsing inward, dragging the surrounding data architecture with it. The command center's walls flickered between steel and corrupted code, half-real, half-digital. Her neural jack burned hot enough to smell.

"Lin." Qin's hand was still in hers. His grip tightened. "We need to move."

She couldn't. Zero's heartbeat was still there on her HUD, one red pulse in a sea of black. Faint. Fading. But there.

"She's in the relay core." Lin's voice came out flat. Her vision split—half the room, half the network map burning itself into her optic nerve. "If I can reach the backup node before the cascade hits—"

"You'll fry your brain." Qin pulled her toward the door. The floor rippled. Real concrete cracking, or data structure breaking down. Hard to tell anymore. "That's not a maybe. That's what happens when you dive into a collapsing network."

Lin yanked her hand free. Her fingers were shaking. She curled them into a fist.

"I didn't rewrite that order to let her die thirty seconds later."

"She's an AI." Qin's voice was too controlled. That meant he was barely holding it together.