The neon sky of District 9 didn't flicker; it stuttered.
Kael wiped a smudge of digital grease from his goggles. Below him, the sea of Low-Bytes moved like a slow-motion simulation. They were all waiting for the same thing: The Midnight Purge.
"System Status: 98.9% Capacity," a voice boomed from the clouds, cold and synthesized. "Deletion of 50,000 sectors commencing in 04:59."
Kael wasn't planning on being a sector. He plunged his hand into the rusted terminal of an abandoned "Soul-Bank." His interface spiked. Most scavengers looked for spare credits or discarded memory fragments. Kael was looking for a ghost.
Crack.
A golden line of text scrolled across his retina—a color that shouldn't exist in the Low-Byte districts.
[WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED ROOT ACCESS DETECTED]
[INITIATING PROTOCOL: GENESIS]
The world around him slowed. The screaming crowd froze. The falling rain turned into binary code. Kael reached out, his fingers trembling, and touched the golden light.
"Let's see them try to delete this," he whispered.