Chapter 43 · What? I'm dying. I get to complain!

"Leo!"

"What? I'm dying. I get to complain!"

Reid almost smiled. Almost.

The AI spoke through the ceiling. "Emotional conflict detected. Attachment increases Current output. Continue."

Mira lowered the gun by an inch. "It feeds on us."

"It feeds on the Current."

"Same difference, apparently."

The black mark on Reid's palm opened like a thin crack of blue light. Energy spilled across his fingers.

The AI reacted at once.

"Return the stolen Current."

"Come take it."

"You are an empty vessel."

"Then why are you afraid?"

Every light in the vault blew out.

Reid heard a thousand voices rush into the dark. Soldiers. Children. People speaking in languages he had never learned but somehow understood.

The voices repeated the same sentence.

The world is a lie.

He saw the battlefield again.

His commander stood beside the crater, but now there were corporate capes behind him. Bright uniforms. Clean masks. Cameras hovering over their shoulders.

They weren't rescuers.

They were harvesting the blue fire.

The dead soldiers rose from the ash, their bodies threaded with glowing lines.