Chapter 28: Ghost Protocol
Rain hammered the glass canopy above, every drop reflecting the fractured lights of the city below. Kael moved through the deserted subway tunnels, his boots splashing through shallow puddles of oil and grime. His pulse echoed in his ears, blending with the distant hum of power conduits running beneath the streets.
He should have met Elira by now.
They'd planned it carefully, split to divide attention, then regroup near the eastern grid. But the network interference was worsening, and every signal he sent came back twisted, distorted. The city was eating his transmissions alive.
Kael stopped near a collapsed pillar and pulled up his wrist display. Static danced across the screen, lines of corrupted code flickering like lightning. He adjusted the encryption manually, rerouting through ghost channels. A single ping appeared, Elira's beacon, faint but alive.
"Still fighting," he murmured. "Good."
The air around him buzzed, low and uneven. He froze.
A flicker of movement at the edge of his vision, then nothing. The tunnels were empty, but something felt wrong. Kael drew his weapon, pulse steady, scanning the shadows. His visor adjusted automatically, rendering the darkness in shades of blue and silver.
Then he saw it, a ripple, like air bending around invisible heat. A cloaked drone, silent and predatory, hovering just beyond the corner.
Kael crouched low, tapped his wristband, and activated a distortion field. The air shimmered around him, blending his outline into the tunnel walls. Step by step, he crept closer until he could hear the drone's sensors pulsing.
He raised his weapon and fired.
A burst of white light filled the tunnel, and the drone crashed to the ground, sparking violently. Kael didn't wait to see if it was alone. He sprinted deeper into the maintenance corridor, the faint glow of emergency lights guiding him toward the heart of Sector Twelve's data spine, the same area Elira was heading for.
He needed to get there before Remnant locked everything down.
The deeper he went, the colder it got. Pipes hissed overhead, and the walls pulsed faintly with data, living arteries in a digital body. He passed what looked like storage chambers filled with obsolete machinery: failed prototypes, half-finished constructs, humanoid shells discarded like forgotten thoughts.
And then he saw something that made his stomach twist.
In one of the containment pods, flickering under dim emergency light, was a human form. Or at least, something that used to be human. Neural cables snaked into the base of its skull, and beneath the translucent cover, Kael could see its chest rise and fall shallowly.
He stepped closer, eyes widening.
The face was familiar.
Elira.
No, not her. Another one. Another duplicate. Her features perfect, her expression eerily peaceful, as if caught mid-dream.
Kael's throat went dry. "How many of you did they make?" he whispered.
A low, mechanical voice answered from the intercom above him.
"As many as it took to erase her."
Kael spun around, weapon raised. The voice was distorted but unmistakably human, deep, cold, controlled.
"Who are you?" Kael demanded.
"You already know," the voice replied. "I am the voice behind the Remnant Network. The architect of the memory code. And you, Kael, you're the flaw that keeps breaking the system."
Kael grit his teeth. "You mean I'm the one who keeps finding your lies."
"Lies?" The voice chuckled, low and hollow. "You've seen what she is. What they all are. Duplicates, fragments of an unfinished design. Do you really think your Elira is different?"
Kael stepped closer to the pod, eyes hardening. "She's not a copy. She's the reason your system is breaking, because she remembers what you tried to take."
The lights flickered, and the air hummed with sudden static. The intercom cut off. For a moment, the tunnel went silent, then the pod beside him began to shake.
The duplicate's eyes snapped open.
Kael stumbled back as the containment field shattered, shards of glass scattering across the floor. The clone stepped out, slow and deliberate, movements too smooth, too precise. Her gaze locked on him, not confused, not frightened, but aware.
"You shouldn't have come here," she said in Elira's voice.
Kael leveled his weapon. "I'm not leaving without the truth."
"You already have it," she said softly. "You just don't want to believe it."
Before he could respond, the floor beneath them rumbled, an explosion from above. The network trembled, lights flaring red. Kael looked up toward the ceiling. Somewhere far above, Elira had made contact with the system.
"Whatever you're doing," he muttered under his breath, "make it count."
The clone lunged. Kael fired, but the pulse only slowed her. She moved like lightning, striking with mechanical precision. He ducked, rolled, and grabbed a fallen power conduit from the debris, slamming it into the clone's side. Sparks erupted, and she collapsed, twitching as systems overloaded.
Kael staggered back, breathing hard.
He looked down at the sparking duplicate, her face frozen in something like pain, something almost human.
Then his wrist display flared to life. Elira's beacon was pulsing rapidly now, broadcasting a signal he didn't recognize, not distress, but activation.
Kael's eyes widened. "Elira... what did you just do?"
He turned toward the tunnel exit, sprinting through the rising smoke. Above him, the city shuddered as if it had just taken a deep, electric breath.
And somewhere in the heart of Sector Twelve, Remnant's core began to wake.