The foyer of the southern villa was a stage for a tragedy, illuminated by the cold, clinical glow of the security lights. Viktor's laughter was a jagged rasp that seemed to grate against the very air.
"You always were the sentimental one, Yuri," Viktor called down from the balcony, swirling his scotch. "Risking everything for a girl whose father sold her soul to the highest bidder before she could even walk."
Yuri's hand moved toward the silver drive on his neck. I saw the muscles in his jaw ripple. He was playing a game of inches, his thumb positioned over the concealed EMP trigger.
"The drive for the women, Viktor. That's the deal," Yuri said, his voice a lethal monotone.
"Don't do it, Yuri," I whispered, but my mind was already somewhere else. The Ghost Code was screaming. Seeing my mother—seeing the IV drip and the hollow stare—had cracked the final seal. The "Phoenix Protocol" wasn't a ledger of names. It was a genetic map.
As Yuri stepped forward to hand over the drive, I didn't look at Viktor. I looked at the gray-suited UNI representative who had stepped out from the shadows of the medical suite. His presence turned the air sterile.
"The Phoenix Protocol is finally home," the man said, his smile a perfect, terrifying mask of corporate satisfaction. "Thank you for the delivery, Mr. Volkov."
"Now!" Yuri yelled.
He pressed the side of the USB drive. A silent, invisible wave of electromagnetic energy rippled through the room. The floodlights exploded in a shower of sparks. The electronic locks on the doors groaned and seized. The digital detonator in Viktor's hand sparked, biting into his palm, and the balcony lights died, plunging us into a hellish, strobing darkness.
"Go!" Yuri shoved me toward my mother.
I tackled her, knocking the chair over just as Viktor pulled a backup manual trigger. Gunfire erupted—the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of suppressed weapons. We scrambled toward the medical suite, the scent of antiseptic and blood guiding us through the dark.
Inside the suite, the backup generators kicked in, casting a sickly red emergency glow over everything. My mother's eyes drifted to mine. They weren't just glassy; they were reflecting the same blue data-streams I felt behind my own retinas.
"Jessy," she breathed, her voice a fragile reed. "You shouldn't have come. The Protocol... it's not what you think. Your father didn't build it to save us. He built it to hide the truth about the UNI's first experiment."
The words hit a tripwire in my brain. My vision fractured. I wasn't seeing the white marble walls anymore. I was seeing a scrolling directory of files titled 'Generation Zero.' Names of children from twenty years ago. Dates of 'accidents'—car crashes, house fires, falls.
I wasn't the first. I was the successful iteration.
"Focus, Jessy! We have to move!" Yuri's voice cracked like a whip. He was pinning a UNI agent against a cabinet, his knife buried in the man's shoulder.
But I couldn't move. The world was dissolving into binary. I realized with a sickening jolt that the collision hadn't installed the Ghost Code. It had woken it up. I wasn't the host. I was the manifestation. My entire life—the marketing exams, the suburban house, the UNI application—had been a simulation designed to see if the hardware could hold the soul.
"They didn't put the code in me, Yuri," I whispered, my voice sounding like a thousand voices overlapping. "I am the code."
The UNI representative in the gray suit didn't look afraid. He looked like a gardener watching a prize rose finally bloom. "Correct, Jessica. And now, it's time for the harvest."