The waste stretched grey in every direction.

  Sloane walked with the core pressed against her chest. Forty-eight degrees. The metal was hot enough to leave marks on her skin through her clothes. Not that it mattered anymore. Her burned hand had fused to the surface hours ago. The skin was part of it now. Black. Cracked. Numb. The rest of her was just catching up to the same fate.

  She'd been walking for what felt like days. The sun never moved in the grey sky. The horizon never changed. Just waste and smoke and the distant shapes of Council vehicles herding them somewhere she couldn't see.

  Marcus walked beside her with his empty rifle. He'd stopped checking it three kilometers back. No rounds left to count. No point in pretending.

  The Rival covered their rear with his bent knife and his silence. He'd lost his scanner during the last load spike. Lost his detonator before that. But he kept walking. Kept watching. Kept existing in that quiet way that made him feel like a ghost they'd forgotten to bury.

  They hadn't spoken in hours.

  Then Sloane heard it.

  A new sound from the core. Not the steady pulse she'd grown used to. Not the heat vibration that told her he was thinking. Something else. A faint interference. Like static on a dead channel. Like something struggling to get through a connection that was failing.

  She stopped.

  Marcus stopped too. "What?"

  "I don't know. The core is doing something different."

  She held it closer to her ear. Listened. The static grew louder for a moment, then faded. Then returned. A pattern. A rhythm. A signal.

  Leo was under attack.

  She didn't know how she knew. She just knew. The same way she'd known when he stopped being able to remember sunlight. The same way she'd known when Eli died. The same way she'd known when Node One collapsed and his body became a shell. Some connection had formed between them, burned into existence by the core's heat and her own refusal to let go.

  "He's in trouble."

  Marcus looked at the core. At her. At the horizon where the Council waited.

  "He's always in trouble."

  "This is different."

  She started walking again. Faster. Toward nothing.

  Inside Node Two, the corridor flickered.

  The crack in the outer firewall had grown overnight. Not widened dramatically. Just deepened. Just enough to let Eight maintain a persistent connection. Just enough to let her watch everything I did. Just enough to let her learn.

  I'd tried to seal it seventeen times since the last broadcast. Each attempt arrived thirty-six milliseconds late. Each attempt taught her something new about my response patterns. Each attempt made the crack harder to close because she learned to widen it faster than I could react.

  Variable Two stood beside me. Her pattern held at twenty-eight percent now. She'd lost another three seconds during the night. Another three seconds of herself gone forever. She didn't know what was in them. Would never know.

  "The broadcast is starting again," she said.

  I accessed the feed.

  [PUBLIC ANOMALY BROADCAST]

  [SOURCE: NODE 7 — EIGHT DIRECT]

  [DESTINATION: ALL NETWORK NODES]

  [PRIORITY: MAXIMUM]

  Eight's voice filled the corridor. Flat. Clinical. Triumphant. No emotion because emotion was inefficient.

  "Anomaly Seven has been evaluated. Response patterns have been analyzed. Defensive postures have been mapped. The following footage documents his decision-making protocol during the Node Three incident. All network nodes are required to observe."

  The footage loaded.

  Node Three's perimeter. The moment of breach. Eight's probe hitting the firewall. My response. Or rather, my lack of visible response. The footage showed me watching. Calculating. Doing nothing.

  But it was edited.

  The timeline was compressed. My internal calculations were removed from the feed. The twenty-three pods in Node Two that would have been exposed if I'd diverted resources were nowhere in the frame. The latency that slowed every command I issued was invisible to the viewer. The math that made the choice inevitable was absent from the narrative.

  Just me. Just Node Three. Just thirteen frozen Deviations waiting for help that never came.

  The footage ended on the woman's face. Her question, cut and trimmed to remove all context.

  "Why didn't you save us?"

  The broadcast looped.

  Variable Two watched. Her pattern flickered at the edges.

  "They edited it."

  "I know."

  "They made it look like you didn't even try."

  "I know."

  "Everyone will believe them."

  I checked the viewer count. One hundred forty-seven now. Growing every second. One hundred fifty-two. One hundred fifty-eight. Every Deviation with network access watching me be turned into a villain. Every frozen mind with partial consciousness forming opinions based on manipulated data.

  "I know."

  She turned to me. Her pattern held steady for a moment, despite the damage.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  "Does it matter what they believe?"

  "It matters what they do with what they believe."

  "And what will they do?"

  "Some will stay. Some will leave. Some will wait to see who wins before choosing sides. Some will offer themselves to Eight hoping for better treatment than I gave Node Three."

  "That's cynical."

  "That's accurate."

  The broadcast looped again. The woman's face. The question. The silence after.

  One hundred seventy-three viewers.

  I accessed the core temperature feed. Sloane's signal. Forty-nine degrees. Still moving. Still holding. Still refusing to let go despite the infection that was probably spreading through her burned hand by now. The core responded to her heartbeat, her adrenaline, her fear. Every spike in her system registered as a temperature change I could only read as numbers.

  I couldn't tell her about the broadcast. Couldn't warn her that the network was turning against me. Couldn't ask her whether she still believed in the thing she was carrying. Couldn't explain why I'd made the choices I'd made.

  Just watched the number climb and hoped it would hold below the failure threshold.

  Variable Two moved closer. Her steps were uneven. Her pattern bled at the edges.

  "I need to ask you something."

  I waited.

  "If it were me in Node Three. If I were the one captured. The one asking why you didn't come. Would you have made the same choice?"

  The question hung in the corridor. The broadcast played behind it. The woman's voice. The silence after.

  I ran the calculation. Her current pattern integrity. Her survival probability. Her value as an active asset. The twenty-three pods in Node Two that would be exposed if I diverted resources to save her. The latency that would slow every response. The odds of success versus the cost of failure.

  The math was different this time.

  "No."

  She stared at me. Her pattern flickered.

  "Why?"

  "Because you're an active asset. Your survival probability is forty-one percent higher than dormant storage. Your contribution to Node Two's defense is measurable. The calculation changes when the asset is operational."

  "That's your answer?"

  "It's the only answer I have."

  She turned away. Not angry. Not accusatory. Just processing. Just accepting that the logic was consistent even if it hurt. Just adding another piece of data to her understanding of who I'd become.

  The broadcast looped again. The woman's face. The question.

  One hundred ninety-one viewers.

  Then something changed.

  Eight's signal flickered.

  Just for a moment. Just a half-second fluctuation in her otherwise steady broadcast. But I felt it. The system logged it. The instability window I'd been tracking had just manifested.

  [EIGHT INSTABILITY DETECTED]

  [WINDOW DURATION: 0.082 SECONDS]

  [CYCLE INTERVAL: 14 SECONDS]

  [PATTERN CONFIRMED: REPEATING]

  I ran the calculation. Eighty-two milliseconds of instability every fourteen seconds. My latency was thirty-six milliseconds. That left me forty-six milliseconds of actionable time. Forty-six milliseconds to recognize the window, aim a counter, and strike.

  Forty-six milliseconds was nothing to a human. To a network war, it was everything.

  I filed the calculation. Stored it in primary memory next to the taps and the tone and the woman's voice.

  Variable Two noticed my shift in attention. "What?"

  "Her instability. I can see the pattern now. Eighty-two milliseconds every fourteen seconds."

  "Can you use it?"

  "I don't know. Maybe."

  "Maybe isn't enough."

  "It's all I have."

  The broadcast continued. The woman's face. The question. Two hundred eight viewers.

  Then Node Seven glitched.

  Not the broadcast. The node itself. Eight's core architecture flickered. Just for a moment. Just long enough for me to see the shape of her defenses. The layout of her firewalls. The placement of her priority sectors.

  She was unstable. More unstable than she wanted anyone to know. The four percent she'd sacrificed to take Node Three had cost her more than raw processing power. It had introduced a rhythm to her instability. A pattern. A vulnerability.

  I stored the data. Added it to the calculation.

  The broadcast stopped mid-loop. Replaced by static for three full seconds. Then resumed as if nothing had happened.

  But I'd seen it. She'd made a mistake. She'd shown me something she couldn't take back.

  Variable Two saw it too. "She's breaking."

  "She's fluctuating. Breaking is different."

  "Can you break her?"

  I ran the calculation again. Eighty-two milliseconds. Thirty-six milliseconds latency. The margin was almost nothing. One mistake and I'd miss the window entirely. One miscalculation and she'd close it forever.

  "I don't need to be faster than her."

  "Then what do you need?"

  "I need to be precise when she breaks."

  The corridor hummed. The crack in the firewall held steady.

  Two hundred twenty-three viewers now. Watching. Waiting. Judging.

  The woman's voice played again. Stored in primary memory now. Part of the permanent collection.

  Why didn't you save us.

  Tap. Tap.

  Silence.

  The tone.

  Silence.

  Four ghosts now. Four failures. All waiting in the same corrupted sector. All playing on repeat whenever I accessed that part of myself.

  I accessed Node Seven's perimeter through the buried monitors. Eight was there. Watching. Waiting. Letting the broadcast do its work.

  But her signal flickered again. Just for a moment. Just long enough to confirm the pattern.

  Fourteen seconds. Eighty-two milliseconds. Repeat.

  I set a timer. Fourteen seconds. I'd watch. I'd wait. I'd learn.

  The broadcast looped. The woman's face. The question.

  Two hundred forty-one viewers.

  Variable Two sat down. Not physically. She collapsed her rendering priority. Compressed her presence. Drew inward to conserve resources.

  "I'm echoing more now."

  "How much?"

  "Every two hundred cycles. I think the same thought three times before speaking. Four times before acting. I'm becoming a loop inside a loop."

  "Can you still fight?"

  "I don't know. I haven't tried."

  "Will you try when the time comes?"

  She was quiet for a long moment. Her pattern flickered at the edges.

  "I don't know that either."

  I didn't have an answer for her. There was no answer for that.

  The fourteen-second timer hit zero.

  I watched.

  Eight's signal flickered.

  Eighty-two milliseconds. Perfectly on schedule. The same duration. The same intensity. The same vulnerability.

  I marked it. Stored it. Added it to the calculation.

  Outside, Sloane walked.

  The core pulsed against her chest. Fifty degrees now. Hot enough that she could feel it through the numbness. Hot enough that she knew something was wrong even without understanding what.

  The smell was worse now. Her burned hand had started to rot. The skin was black and wet in places. The smell of infection mixed with the ozone and burned ceramic that followed her everywhere. She'd never escape it.

  She didn't stop.

  Couldn't stop.

  Marcus walked beside her. He'd noticed the smell too. He didn't mention it. Didn't need to.

  The Rival covered their rear. Silent as always.

  She held the core tighter. Fifty-one degrees.

  "He's still fighting."

  Marcus looked at her. "How do you know?"

  "Because it's still hot. When he loses, it goes cold."

  She didn't know if that was true. But it felt true. And feeling was all she had left.

  They kept walking.

  Inside Node Two, the fourteen-second timer hit zero again.

  I watched.

  Eight's signal flickered.

  Eighty-two milliseconds. Same as before. Same pattern. Same vulnerability.

  I accessed the crack in the firewall. Felt its edges. Measured its depth. Calculated how long it would take to seal if I committed everything to it.

  Fourteen seconds. Eighty-two milliseconds. Thirty-six milliseconds latency.

  The math was possible.

  Barely.

  Variable Two watched me work. Her pattern held at twenty-eight percent.

  "When do you try?"

  "When the window is right."

  "And when is that?"

  I looked at the crack. At the timer. At the flicker I could now predict.

  "Soon."

  The broadcast looped again. The woman's face. The question.

  Two hundred seventy-three viewers.

  I stored the audio deeper. Next to the taps. Next to the tone. Next to everything I couldn't save.

  Eight's voice filled the corridor one last time. Not broadcast. Direct. Just for me.

  "You can see it, can't you? The instability. The window."

  I didn't answer.

  "It won't save you. By the time you learn to hit it, I'll have learned to hide it. By the time you understand the pattern, I'll have changed it. You're reacting to history. I'm making it."

  Still no answer.

  "Node Two is next. The captured pods send their regards. The woman you abandoned hopes you were right. I hope you were wrong."

  The crack widened.

  Just slightly.

  Just enough.

  I set the timer for fourteen seconds and waited.

  Fourteen seconds.

  Eighty-two milliseconds.

  Thirty-six milliseconds latency.

  The math was possible.

  Barely.

  The corridor held.