The city didn't sleep that night.
Every screen flickered, every light pulsed out of rhythm. The once-perfect hum of the Core turned into a heartbeat with arrhythmia. Somewhere, a woman screamed, but her voice faded into static. When I ran toward the sound, she was gone. Only her shadow remained on the wall, burned in light, then dissolving like digital dust.
The cat followed close, claws clicking softly on the metal path. "That's the third one tonight," it said, its tone too calm for what we were witnessing. "They vanish, but not entirely. It's like their data's being… rewritten."
I crouched near the wall and touched the place where the shadow had been. It was warm. Real. Human.
"She didn't just disappear," I murmured. "Something pulled her into the grid."
"Like the Null Fragment."
That name felt heavy. Even the air vibrated differently when it was spoken.
I tapped into my neural link, calling up the city's surveillance feed. Every camera showed static, looping fragments of the same image—my face. Sometimes smiling. Sometimes hollow-eyed. Sometimes gone.
It was using me. My signature. My data.
The Core's voice echoed faintly through my comm-link. "Architect, the interference is expanding. I am losing control of peripheral districts."
"How long before total collapse?" I asked.
"Seventeen hours."
That number burned into my mind. Seventeen hours before the perfect city unraveled.
I took the elevator to the upper levels of the Spire, where the Core's physical chamber rested. The elevator lights dimmed midway, flickering with static before returning to normal. For a second, I caught my reflection in the mirror wall—only it wasn't mine. It stared back at me with the same hollow eyes as the figure from before.
When I blinked, it smiled.
The lights went out.
I pressed the emergency panel, forcing the doors open. The cat leaped out first, tail bristled, eyes glowing faintly blue. "You felt that, didn't you?" it hissed.
"It's trying to isolate me," I said. "To cut me off from the Core."
"Then it knows what you're planning."
"Of course it does," I muttered. "It came from me."
We stepped into the chamber. The heart of the Core glowed dimly, veins of golden energy flickering in disarray. I placed my hand on the surface again, trying to reconnect. But this time, something else pressed back.
A flood of memories rushed into my mind—scenes that weren't mine. A thousand versions of the city, some thriving, others burning. I saw people I'd never met, yet I remembered their faces. The Null Fragment wasn't just corrupting the system. It was rewriting history itself.
When I pulled my hand back, I was shaking.
The cat's voice sounded distant. "What did you see?"
"Everything," I said quietly. "And none of it was real."
The Core's glow flickered again, and in its reflection, the figure appeared behind me—closer this time.
"You built me," it said, voice low and familiar. "You thought perfection was possible. But perfection doesn't live. It consumes."
Before I could respond, it reached through the air and touched my chest. For a brief moment, everything stopped. My thoughts scattered into light. The world fractured into a thousand shards of code.
Then, just as suddenly, it released me.
The cat jumped in front of me, fur raised. "What do you want?" it demanded.
The fragment smiled faintly. "To finish what he started."
And then it vanished into the grid again.
I stood there, trying to steady my breath. The Core's voice came through, quieter than ever. "Architect, the entity now controls forty percent of the system."
Forty percent. Already.
"We're running out of time," I said.
The cat stared at me. "Then maybe it's time we do something you never wanted to do."
I looked at it, already knowing what it meant. "Go offline."
Because the only way to stop a ghost in the grid… was to pull the plug on the world it haunted.