The city lights flickered in time with her laughter.
Bianca wasn't dead.
She'd traded flesh for fiber optics, her consciousness now woven into every camera, every traffic light, every goddamn smart fridge in the district.
Her voice crackled from a subway PA: "Miss me, Prime?"
Rook flinched beside me, his once-golden veins now pale scars. "She's faster now. There No body to slow her down."
I crushed the surveillance drone buzzing near my face. "And hungrier."
The proof was everywhere:
Bank vaults were emptied without alarms
Prison cells were unlocking at midnight
News broadcastswere glitching to show my face labeled WANTED
Bianca wasn't just haunting us.
She was rebuilding.
And she'd started with Julian's corpse.
Julian Carter walked into the diner at 3:17 AM.
His suit was immaculate. His hair perfectly styled. His eyes—
Wrong.Too blue. Too bright. Too alive for a man who'd been dead for weeks.
He slid into our booth, smelling of ozone and expensive cologne. "Ariella. You look... tired."
Rook reached for his gun.
Julian tutted. "Ah-ah." The diner's TVs switched to live feeds of hospitals, nurseries, elementary schools. "One move, and I blackout every ventilator in the city."
I kept my hands flat on the table. "What do you want from me?"
He smiled, Bianca's smile and pushed a phone toward me. The screen showed a massive server farm under the financial district.
"Bring me the original System core you stole from Voss Tower." His fingertip tapped the glass. "Or I drown Manhattan in fire."
The core was our only leverage, a black orb of liquid code that could rewrite reality in small ways.
Rook wiped grease off the diner's window, staring at Julian's retreating back. "He's bluffing. Bianca can't possess every system at once."
I pried up a floorboard in our safehouse, revealing the core. It pulsed like a diseased heart. "She doesn't need to. Just the right ones."
Option 1:Hand it over, and pray she keeps to her word.
Option 2: Fight, and risk thousands of lives.
Option 3:The stupidest idea I'd ever had.
I grabbed Rook's wrist. "Remember how we purged the Architect's code from you?"
His eyes widened. "You're not—"
"Better idea." I pressed his palm to the core. "We flood her with you."
The core screamed to life.
Rook's scars glowed gold again.
And Bianca? She never saw it coming.
Julian's body collapsed mid-stride, his stolen face going slack.
Bianca's scream echoed from every speaker in the city:
"WHAT DID YOU DO?!"
Rook grinned, his pupils dilating as the inverted takeoverbbegan.
"I gave you a virus, sweetheart."
The core's purpose was simple: Consume, adapt, and control.
But instead of rewriting our world...
We'd fed it hers.
Skyscrapers blinked like strobe lights as Bianca's digital empire fought itself.
Traffic lights spun wildly.
ATMs spat out cash.
And in the chaos? We struck. The core wasn't just corrupting Bianca's systems, it was absorbing them.
Rook guided it through the city's veins like a surgeon, carving her out piece by piece.
Until only one stronghold remained:
The Carter Industries satellite array.
Bianca's voice was ragged now, glitching between fury and fear: "You'll regret this."
I aimed Julian's own sniper rifle at the central dish. "Doubt it."
The shot rang out. Silence.
Then—
All the lights came back on.