I let my Flux die down, leashed like the good dog I was. I watched Levi manhandle her, memorizing every part of him I would eventually tear apart.
“I’ve had enough of your self-pity, little girl,” Levi said coldly. “Look at her.” He forced Eon’s face toward Taos. “Your friend understood the risks. She built this code knowing its potential. She targeted this place, knowing the dangers. These people are already dead—by your hand. Own up and do your job.”
He released her, and she slammed to the floor.
Levi stepped back, straightening his impeccable suit. “You once asked me what a life was worth. Why don’t you tell me—your mother, or your…friend?”
Eon pushed up off the floor slowly, her arms shaking violently. Her hair fell around her face, but she turned and locked eyes with me.
She was pleading—for the one thing I could never give her. The escape she wouldn’t come back from. I shook my head, and one last tear rolled down her cheek before I saw her resolve harden.
That dead stare—the one I’d seen so long ago in her virtual—snapped into place, and the vibrant creature I knew died in front of me.
She ran her fingers over the keys again, navigating to the consciousness transfer protocol. With each command, her electromagnetic field dimmed, as though parts of her were already shutting down. On the floor, Taos stirred while assets hooked her neural implant to the node. Her eyes fluttered open just in time to see Eon’s fingers hovering over the execution command.
Understanding passed between them in a single glance. Taos, to her credit, didn’t scream or cry—just gave a small nod.
“I’m sorry,” Eon whispered.
She pressedExecute.
The system hummed to life, interfacing with Taos’ neural implant. For one suspended moment, nothing happened—just the soft blue glow of initialization sequences cascading across the holographic display.
Then Taos’ body convulsed.
It started subtly—fingertips twitching, eyelids fluttering. The connection established itself, creating microcurrents that raced across her skin in visible blue patterns—patterns I’d seen before. Her neural implant began to pulse with unnatural brightness, its connection port to the node glowing white-hot.
“Process initiated,” the system announced with cold precision. “Neural mapping at seventeen percent.”
Taos’ back arched unnaturally, tendons standing out along her neck as her jaw locked. I’d seen pain in my years at POM—I’d caused more than my fair share—but nothing like this. I didn’t pretend to understand what was happening, but it was destroying her.
“P-please,” Taos gritted out, her eyes finding Eon’s. “Make it…stop…”
Eon’s fingers hovered over the interface, trembling. But Levi’s hand closed around her wrist, his grip unyielding.
“Continue,” he commanded. “The process will not be interrupted.”
The mapping percentage climbed: Twenty-three…Thirty-one…Forty-two…
Taos’ skin began to glow from within. The implant at her temple smoked as circuitry melted under the strain. Blood vessels in her eyes ruptured, flooding the whites with crimson.
“Neural mapping at sixty-six percent,” the system announced. “Warning: Subject biological stability compromised.”
Taos was no longer capable of coherent speech. The sounds coming from her throat were raw, primal—the body’s last desperate attempt to communicate as language centers failed. Her fingers clawed at the floor, nails cracking against the metal.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Levi whispered, his eyes fixed on the display with something like reverence. “The liberation of consciousness from biological constraints.”
I could feel the electromagnetic disturbance building through the nexus, circuits straining as the unstable Stellarium network struggled to sustain the massive data transfer. Warning lights flared across secondary systems as safeguards failed in succession.
“Neural mapping at eighty-two percent. Critical biological threshold exceeded.”
The electromagnetic field around Taos intensified, now visible as a corona of blue-white energy. Beneath her skin, capillaries burst, the glowing lines streaked through with blood. Her nose, ears, and eyes leaked thin rivulets of red.
“Almost there,” Levi murmured. “Just a little more…”
At ninety-four percent, something fundamental broke.
The transfer protocol hit a loop it couldn’t resolve, the power cycling back through Taos’ implant instead of completing the sequence. The casing cracked, revealing white-hot circuitry beneath. The electromagnetic field collapsed inward—then exploded outward in a concentrated pulse.
