The stasis pod hummed.
Ethan stood in front of it, watching frost creep across the glass. Inside, Aria's face was serene—eyes closed, expression slack, like she was sleeping instead of dissolving from the inside out.
The medical readout was less kind.
COGNITIVE FUNCTION: 0.3%
NEURAL DEGRADATION: CRITICAL
ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETE FRAGMENTATION: 4 HRS 17 MIN
Four hours.
Less time than it took to watch a movie. To sleep. To—
"Boss."
Lira's voice cut through his thoughts. She stood in the doorway of the med bay, tablet clutched against her chest, and her expression was the kind of carefully blank that meant very bad news.
Ethan turned. "What?"
"Helix just activated Phase Three."
He went still.
"Phase Two was the orbital strike," Lira continued. Her voice was steady, clinical—the tone she used when she was barely holding panic at bay. "Phase Three is... worse."
She tapped her tablet.
The holo-display lit up between them, showing Shanghai's LE grid in real-time. Normally it pulsed blue—steady, rhythmic, the city's heartbeat rendered in light and energy.
Now it was flickering.
Red.
Orange.
Black.
"What am I looking at?" Ethan asked.
"Cascade failure." Lira zoomed in on the downtown sector. "Helix didn't just launch kinetic strikes. They seeded the Network with something—a virus, maybe, or a logic bomb—doesn't matter. Point is, it's spreading. Corrupting nodes faster than I can quarantine them."
She swiped. The display shifted to a graph.
Ethan's chest tightened.
The degradation curve was exponential.
"How long?" he asked.
"Five hours, forty-two minutes until the downtown grid collapses completely." Lira's jaw clenched. "After that? Domino effect. Eastern sectors go dark in another hour. Western sectors thirty minutes after that. Full city blackout in—" She paused. Recalculated. "—seven hours, sixteen minutes."
Ethan stared at the numbers.
Seven hours.
140,000 people in the downtown sector alone.
No power meant no water pumps. No hospitals. No climate control in a city where summer temperatures hit 42°C.
No LE meant no civilization.
"Can you stop it?" he asked.
Lira didn't answer immediately.
That was answer enough.
"I can slow it," she said finally. "Buy maybe two extra hours. But stop it?" She shook her head. "I'd need direct access to the Helix source code. And that's buried so deep in their black site servers that—"
"Where?"
"What?"
"The servers. Where are they?"
Lira blinked. "Ethan, even if I knew—"
"Where, Lira?"
She stared at him. Then sighed.
"Beijing. Helix Central Operations. Sub-level twelve, behind biometric locks, quantum encryption, and approximately two hundred armed guards." She crossed her arms. "Also, it's a fourteen-hour round trip. We don't have fourteen hours."
Ethan's mind was already moving.
Beijing. Fourteen hours normal transit.
But if he burned his LE core—full output, no safety limits—he could cut that to eight. Maybe seven.
(And kill yourself in the process.)
(Irrelevant.)
"I need a transport," he said.
Thorn, who'd been silent in the corner, finally spoke. "You're not serious."
"Do I look like I'm joking?"
"You look like you're suicidal." Thorn stepped forward. "Boss, even if you make it to Beijing—and that's a big if—you're talking about infiltrating Helix's most secure facility. Alone. With no intel, no backup, and—" He gestured at the med bay. "—while your sister is dying three thousand kilometers away."
Ethan's jaw tightened.
"You have a better idea?"
"Yes. We evacuate. Pull back to the outer sectors, let Helix take downtown, regroup and—"
"140,000 people."
"—who are already dead if the grid collapses, and throwing yourself into a suicide mission won't change that!"
Silence.
Ethan could hear his own heartbeat. The hum of the stasis pod. Lira's breathing, shallow and tight.
(Thorn's right. This is stupid.)
(Aria would tell you the same thing.)
(But Aria's not here.)
He looked at the stasis pod.
At his sister's face, frozen and still.
(She saved 140,000 people.)
(What have I saved?)
"I'm going," he said quietly.
Thorn exhaled through his teeth. "Then I'm coming with you."
"No."
"Boss—"
"I need you here. If I don't make it back, someone has to coordinate the evacuation." Ethan met his eyes. "That's you."
Thorn's expression was unreadable.
Then: "You're a bastard, you know that?"
"So I've been told."
Lira cleared her throat. "If—and this is a massive if—you actually pull this off, what's the plan? Storm the server room, plug in a USB, hope for the best?"
Ethan almost smiled.
"Something like that."
"That's insane."
"You have a better idea?"
Lira was quiet for a long moment.
Then she pulled something from her pocket.
A data chip. Small. Matte black. The kind of hardware you didn't bring out unless you were planning something very illegal.
"This is a Fracture Key," she said. "Custom-built. Took me six months and most of my savings. It's designed to crack Helix's quantum encryption—if you can get physical access to their servers."
Ethan took it. The chip was warm.
"How does it work?"
"Plug it in, wait thirty seconds, and pray." Lira's expression was grim. "Fair warning: it's a one-shot device. The moment it starts running, Helix's security AI will detect it. You'll have maybe ninety seconds before they lock down the entire facility."
"Ninety seconds."
"Give or take. Depends on how fast their countermeasures spin up."
Ethan slipped the chip into his pocket.
"Good enough."
Lira stared at him. "You're really doing this."
"Yeah."
"You're going to die."
"Probably."
She shook her head. Then, unexpectedly, she stepped forward and hugged him.
It was brief. Awkward. Lira wasn't the hugging type.
"Don't be a hero," she whispered.
Ethan's chest ached.
"Too late."
The transport was a stripped-down LE courier—fast, light, and barely atmospheric-rated.
Ethan climbed into the pilot's seat. The controls lit up under his hands, interface syncing with his neural implants, and for a moment he felt the familiar rush of connection—man and machine, thoughts translated to thrust vectors, intent to acceleration.
Thorn appeared in the hatch.
"Last chance to rethink this."
Ethan powered up the engines. The cabin vibrated.
"I'll be back in seven hours."
"You'll be dead in seven hours."
"Then make sure the evacuation's ready."
Thorn was quiet.
Then: "Aria would hate this, you know. You throwing your life away for—"
"Aria threw hers away for 140,000 people she'd never met." Ethan looked at him. "I'm just trying to make sure it mattered."
Thorn's jaw worked.
He stepped back.
Saluted.
Ethan returned it.
Then the hatch sealed, and the transport launched.
The sky over Shanghai was orange.
Not sunset. Smoke.
Ethan could see it as the transport climbed—pillars of it rising from the downtown sector, black and oily, the smell seeping through the cabin's recycled air. Fires. Structural collapses. The grid wasn't even fully dead yet, and the city was already tearing itself apart.
He pushed the throttle higher.
The LE core in his chest hummed, synchronizing with the transport's propulsion system, and he felt the familiar trade-off—his life force converting to kinetic energy, cells burning faster than they could regenerate.
Sustainable output: 40%.
He was running at 85%.
(Fourteen hours becomes eight. Maybe seven.)
(And you burn out halfway through.)
(Don't care.)
The transport broke atmo.
Below, Shanghai was a sprawl of light and shadow. Beautiful. Fragile.
Dying.
Ethan's hands tightened on the controls.
"Lira, you there?"
Her voice crackled through the comm. "Yeah. You're already at 87% output. Ease off before you cook yourself."
"Can't. Need to shave another hour off transit time."
"Ethan—"
"How's the grid?"
A pause. Then: "Degrading on schedule. Five hours, nine minutes until downtown collapse."
Five hours.
He was cutting it so close.
"And Aria?"
Longer pause.
"No change. Still 0.3%."
(Still dying.)
(Still there.)
"Keep her stable," Ethan said.
"I'll do my best."
The comm went silent.
Ethan closed his eyes.
(This is insane.)
(You're going to die in Beijing, and Aria's going to die in Shanghai, and 140,000 people are going to die because you weren't fast enough, smart enough, good enough—)
His LE core pulsed.
And buried deep in the rhythm, he heard it.
Aria's fragment.
0.4% of her consciousness, scattered across the Network like digital ghosts.
He couldn't understand it. Couldn't communicate with it.
But he could feel it.
A whisper.
Don't give up.
Ethan's eyes opened.
(Not yet.)
He pushed the throttle to 90%.
The transport screamed forward.
And Shanghai fell away behind him.