Every corner of the city seemed to whisper his name now.
Ren couldn't tell if it was the corrupted AI, the Hunters, or just his own mind fracturing—but Kenji was everywhere.
Old mission logs with his voice. Messages glitched into walls. Even enemy troops muttered his tag like a warning.
KenjiSato… still alive.
They reached a facility in Sector 10—an old Resistance base now overtaken by Konran's data miners. Inside, they found a black room filled with memory echoes.
Ghosts.
Digital shadows of Kenji running through corridors, firing at bots, laughing through comms.
"It's not him," Aiko said. "Just residual code."
"I don't care," Ren replied. "It means his presence hasn't faded."
Botan stood watch as Ren copied the files. Somewhere in all these fragments, there was a path.
And he would follow it to the end.