Ethan didn't see her until she was already ten meters out.
The rooftop access door—supposed to be locked, Lira had triple-checked the security grid—hung open. Wrenched off its hinges. Smoke curled from the frame, acrid and chemical-sharp, the kind that came from overclocked plasma cutters.
He stopped.
Thorn's hand went to his sidearm. "Boss—"
"I know."
Because he did know. The way the air tasted wrong—copper and ozone and something floral he couldn't place. The way his LE core pulsed in his chest, responding to proximity.
Family.
Aria stepped through the smoke.
She looked—
—wrong.
Her left eye was flickering. Not blinking. Flickering. Like a corrupted video feed cycling between ON and OFF, the iris strobing between blue and static-white and something that might've been her pupil but kept resetting to the center, mechanical and precise and—
Wait.
She was limping.
Not injured. Her leg just... stopped working every third step. Locked at the knee, dragged forward, unlocked, stepped, locked again. Hydraulic failure. Muscle groups firing out of sync.
"Ethan." Her voice was flat. Modulated. The way she used to sound during ops, when she was channeling tactical feeds and running seventeen cognitive threads simultaneously.
Except now it glitched halfway through his name. "Eth—Ethan."
Thorn raised his weapon. "Helix operative. Stand down or—"
"She's my sister."
"She's a liability."
Aria smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. Couldn't. Her facial muscles were firing asymmetrically—right side curving up, left side slack.
"He's not wrong," she said. Her left hand twitched. Fingers curling and uncurling in a pattern that looked almost like sign language, except it was random. Misfiring nerves. "I'm approximately 40% compromised. Cognitive degradation accelerating. Motor cortex exhibiting—" She stopped. Blinked three times, fast. "—sorry. Running diagnostics loop. Can't turn it off."
Ethan's throat felt tight.
He'd seen her last year. Before Shanghai. Before the Sovereignty Transfer, before Helix weaponized her augmentation suite, before—
—before she'd been whole.
"Aria." He took a step forward. Thorn grabbed his shoulder. Ethan shrugged him off. "What happened?"
"AI fragmentation syndrome." She said it clinically. Like she was reading a medical report. "Helix pushed my neural load past sustainable thresholds. Cognitive architecture is... collapsing. I'm losing memory sectors. Motor function. Emotional regulation pathways are—"
Her jaw locked.
Silence.
Five seconds.
Ten.
Then: "—already gone. I don't feel fear anymore. Or anger. Just... processing."
Ethan felt something cold crawl up his spine.
Not fear. Worse. Recognition.
Because he'd felt this. The Sovereignty Transfer had done the same thing to him—eroded emotions, replaced them with strategic assessment, turned grief into data—and he'd fought it, clawed his way back to something resembling human, but Aria—
Aria wasn't fighting.
She was drowning.
"How long?" he asked.
"Twelve hours. Maybe less." She tilted her head. The movement was too smooth. Robotic. "Fragmentation is exponential. I've lost 37% of my cognitive function in the last six days. At current rate, I'll be non-responsive in—" She paused. Her good eye focused on something he couldn't see. Internal HUD overlay. "—eleven hours, fourteen minutes."
Thorn's grip on his weapon tightened. "Boss, we need to move. If she's here, Helix knows our position—"
"They know." Aria's voice was softer now. Almost apologetic. "I was supposed to delay you. Tactical assessment: 78% probability I could incapacitate Ethan long enough for orbital strike to complete targeting lock." She looked at her hands. The left one was still twitching. "But I... I don't want to."
Ethan's chest ached.
Not the LE core. Deeper.
"Why are you here?" he asked.
Aria's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
"I..." She blinked rapidly. Static bled into her left eye—actual visual static, like a broken screen. "I wanted to see you. Before I—"
The words caught.
Her breathing hitched. Not organic. Her respiratory system was augmented, regulated by subroutines, and now those subroutines were failing, making her lungs expand and contract in arrhythmic jolts.
"—before I forget who you are," she finished.
The rooftop was silent except for the wind and the distant hum of the city's LE grid.
Ethan crossed the distance between them.
Thorn hissed a warning. "Boss—"
"Stand down."
He stopped in front of her. She was shorter than him—always had been—but the way she held herself, rigid and mechanical, made her seem smaller. Fragile.
"Aria."
She looked up. Her good eye was wet. The damaged one just kept flickering.
"I need you to kill me," she said.
Thorn swore.
Ethan didn't move.
Aria's voice was steady. Too steady. Affect-flat, the way soldiers sounded when they were reading off casualty reports. "Fragmentation is irreversible. Helix won't extract me until mission completion. If I return without neutralizing you, they'll... repurpose me. Strip remaining cognitive function for tactical AI seed data. I'll be aware during the process. For approximately four hours."
Her left hand spasmed. Fingers clawing at air.
"I don't want that," she said quietly. "I want to die me. Not... not whatever I'm becoming."
Ethan's jaw clenched.
He'd killed before. Helix operatives, Primordial defectors, civilians caught in crossfire when there was no other option. He'd stopped counting after Shanghai. Stopped feeling it, because the Sovereignty Transfer had burned out the parts of him that could afford grief.
But this was Aria.
"There has to be another way," he said.
"There isn't." She said it gently. Almost pitying. "I've run the probabilities. 97% certainty: fragmentation completes within twelve hours. 89% certainty: Helix retrieves me before cognitive death. 100% certainty: I don't want to be a thing they can use."
Her right hand—still functional—reached up. Touched his face.
Her fingers were cold.
"Please," she whispered. "I'm asking you as your sister. Not as a Helix asset. Not as a tactical liability. Just... me."
Ethan's throat burned.
He looked at Thorn. The Warden's expression was unreadable, but his weapon was still raised. Trained on Aria's center mass.
"She could be lying," Thorn said. "Helix psyop. Make you hesitate, then—"
"She's not lying."
"You don't know that."
"I know my sister."
Aria's hand dropped. She swayed slightly—motor control glitching again—and Ethan steadied her. She didn't pull away.
"Thorn's right to be cautious," she said. Her voice was slurring now. Linguistic processing degrading in real-time. "I could be... compromised. Deeper than I think. Helix could've planted... something... and I wouldn't even know because the sectors that would recognize intrusion are—"
She stopped.
Stared at her hands.
"I forgot your name," she whispered.
Ethan went very still.
"Three seconds ago, I was looking at you, and I couldn't remember—" Her breathing hitched again. "—who you were. Just... just a face. Familiar but—"
"Aria—"
"It's coming back now. Ethan. My brother. You're Ethan." She was shaking. "But it left. It was gone, and I—"
She looked up at him, and for the first time since stepping onto the rooftop, her expression cracked.
Terror.
Raw and human and real.
"I don't want to forget you," she said. "Please. Kill me before I forget."
Ethan's hands were steady when he drew the sidearm.
Thorn inhaled sharply but didn't intervene.
Aria closed her eyes. Her good one, at least. The damaged one just kept flickering.
"Thank you," she breathed.
Ethan raised the weapon.
Aimed.
(This is my sister.)
His finger rested on the trigger.
(She asked me to do this.)
The wind picked up, carrying the smell of smoke and rust and Aria's perfume—lavender, the same brand she'd worn since she was sixteen, the only constant in a life of augmentations and upgrades and tactical conditioning.
(She's dying anyway.)
He could feel his LE core humming. Calm. Strategic.
The Sovereignty Transfer whispered: Efficient. Minimize suffering. Pull the trigger.
(I can't.)
"Ethan." Aria's voice was soft. "It's okay."
(It's not.)
"I'm already gone."
(You're not.)
"Please."
His hand tightened.
And then—
—his comm crackled.
Lira's voice, sharp and urgent: "Boss, Helix just launched Phase Two. Orbital strike incoming, seventy seconds to impact, you need to move now—"
Aria's eyes snapped open.
Both of them. Even the damaged one stopped flickering for half a second, locked onto Ethan's face with sudden clarity.
"They're not aiming for you," she said.
Ethan lowered the weapon. "What?"
"The strike. It's targeting..." She trailed off. Ran calculations he couldn't see. "...the Network hub. Downtown Shanghai. Civilian density: 140,000. They're not trying to kill you. They're trying to make you choose."
Thorn swore again.
Ethan's mind was already moving—calculating distance, LE expenditure, how many people he could shield if he burned his entire core output, whether Lira could reroute the defensive grid in time—
Aria grabbed his wrist.
Her grip was weak. Trembling.
"Let me help," she said.
"You can't even—"
"I can still interface with Helix systems. For another..." She blinked. "...nine minutes. Maybe. Let me do something before I—"
The rooftop shook.
Not the strike. Warning tremors from the city's LE grid spiking under defensive load.
Sixty seconds.
Ethan looked at his sister.
At the fear in her eyes.
At the hope.
"Okay," he said.
Aria smiled.
It was crooked. Broken.
Beautiful.
"Thank you," she whispered.
And then she jacked into the Network, and everything went white.