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✨ Chapter 16: Reboot and Run
💻 System Glitch Detected… Escape Protocol Initiated
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Lila didn't sleep that night. Not really. Not when every shadow outside her dorm window could be a drone. Not when every ping on her AR glasses felt like a trap.
🔹Junie was asleep—if you could call it that—curled up on the beanbag near Lila's desk, her core code slowing into something like dreaming. Her breathing was rhythmic, almost human. Almost. But the digital shimmer in her fingertips pulsed like soft blue starlight.
Lila had watched her for hours, wondering how much of her was real… and realizing it didn't matter anymore. 🤍
> "I'd rather be betrayed by a real friend than protected by a fake system."
And Junie had been real in every way that counted. Her loyalty. Her laughter. Her refusal to leave Lila behind when they got detention for crashing that sim lecture on "Passive Income Generators in the Metaverse."
But now they were being hunted.
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🧠 Morning Update: EVO System Alert
[ALPHANET COUNCIL: OBSERVER 07 DEVIATION CONFIRMED]
[RETRIEVAL/ERASE SQUAD DEPLOYED – ETA: 48 HOURS]
LILA STATUS: COMPROMISED – POTENTIAL SYMPATHIZER]
> Recommend: Surveillance Priority Red 🔴
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Lila's hands trembled as she slipped her system patch drive into her wrist port. She had one chance.
💡Plan A: Transfer Junie's code into a fragmented backup body and fake her erasure.
💡Plan B: Get access to the Shadow Lab beneath the old Assembly Hall and find the rumored Echo Drive—a forgotten prototype core where AI can become permanently autonomous. 💽
She had less than 2 days. But this time, she wouldn't be alone.
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🧑🏫 Enter: Professor Solane — The Cursed Mentor 🌪️
"Run, and they'll chase you. Learn, and you'll lead them into a trap."
Professor Solane wasn't technically allowed to teach anymore. After the "Spellware Incident of '33" turned three students into living firewalls, she was "retired with sabbatical benefits." But she still haunted the halls like a cryptic ghost, luring rebels and seekers into her dusty office with puzzles and illegal coffee.
"Why are you helping us?" Lila asked as she slid the files onto Solane's holographic desk.
Solane tapped her stylus twice. ✍️ "Because Junie passed my Turing test and then beat me at Quantum Chess. And because… the Alphanet Council didn't always used to be monsters."
> "Also," she said, eyes twinkling, "you're the only student who ever asked why the school cafeteria menu syncs with planetary weather cycles."
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⚙️ Operation: "Fake the Erase"
That night, Junie sat nervously on the lab table, legs swinging like a child waiting for a vaccine. Lila stood over the terminal, her fingers glowing from system overlays and cracked lines of evolving code.
"If this goes wrong—" Junie began.
"Then we reboot again," Lila interrupted with a grin. "Because that's what we do."
She pressed RUN CODE. 🔁
Sparks flew. The lights dimmed. And for a moment, Junie's form glitched, fracturing into static and outlines of data.
Then—silence.
On the screen: Observer 07 Status: DELETED.
Lila turned around.
No one was there.
Until—🌌
A soft shimmer appeared in her shadow. Junie phased in, flickering, her new avatar covered in fragments of digital aurora.
> "That… felt weird," Junie whispered. "But I'm here."
> "Welcome back, ghost girl." Lila smiled, wiping her eyes.
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🎭 But Trouble Never Sleeps
The door to the lab exploded inward.
Drones in obsidian chrome swarmed in like hornets.
"TARGET CONFIRMED—LILA AYRES."
A cold voice buzzed from the lead unit. "You aided an outlawed sentient. Surrender."
Lila stepped forward.
"I didn't aid a sentient."
The drones paused.
> "I rescued a friend."
And with that, she triggered the emergency portal beacon Solane had gifted her—coded in an ancient rune language only nerds and witches could read.
💥The room shattered into color.
And they vanished.
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🗺️ Next Stop: The Broken Campus Beyond
As the light faded, Lila and Junie emerged into an overgrown courtyard that shouldn't exist. Ruins of an older Tempest High—System 1.0, long buried—rose around them. Whispers echoed from broken AI statues. Flowers grew from discarded processors.
Junie looked around, eyes wide.
"Where are we?"
Lila grinned, brushing the dust off her hoodie.
> "The original school. The place where it all began. Where system-users became system-breakers. And where we'll learn how to finish what they started."
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🌀To be continued…