Page 46 of GlitchBorn Heart

I drag my focus back to the center console, fingers already flying, rewriting, rerouting, fighting my own creation like it’s turned against me. “LINK, can you hear me?”

YES DR. RYUDON

I’M HERE

Thank the stars. “Move the ZenCam images to the wall and magnify!” My gaze shifts to the giant system of screens. Ember joins me, her eyes locked on the images coming in. She remains silent.

The city fragments into a grid of live and archived feeds pulled from ZenCam, VikkCorp’s all-seeing eye. Zen, as in calm, balance, stillness. The illusion that everything is exactly where it should be.

The citywide surveillance consists of lenses embedded in streetlights, transit rails, storefront glass, even the undersides of public benches. It watches everything, all the time, and then sells the footage back to citizens as protection or peace of mind. I would be lying if I claimed I didn’t appreciate it for what it really is, a way to enforce balance and to flatten rebel dissent into compliance. Non-citizen sectors and U21s call it something else: WatcherWeb.

Right away, I recognize the footage as the “low-value” sector. Of course, the purge didn’t touch any other part of the city. “LINK, zoom in to the non-citizen zones.” I continue to watch the devastation unfold. The street level is another story.

Power flickers in and out, whole blocks are dark. No neon, no holo-ads, no transit rails humming overhead. En4ce drones move through the streets in sweeping formations, their lasers set to stun. People scatter but don’t make it far.

Ember looks down as the feed expands, someone is dragged from a doorway, another collapses mid-run as the neural implant inserted into the non-citizen shorts out violently.

That’s how he did it. The same device meant to observe the non-citizens, to feed them, track their vitals, dispense credits, has been weaponized against them. The virus kills cleanly, disables them, then scrambles their bodies at the molecular level.

Citizenship revoked without corporate paperwork or patrols, quietly and discreetly and most of all, at zero cost to the Corporation. Annihilation is expensive, takes money out of Vikktor’s and the shareholder’s wallets.

“I knew something was wrong, why did I believe he wouldn’t...” Ember starts to beat herself up, her voice fraying at the edges.

I cut her off with a raised hand again. “Look.” My eyes remain locked on the screens. “Something or someone interrupted it.”

She blinks. “What?”

I step closer to the wall, scanning the data feeds running beside the footage. The update log shows me everything I need to know. Captured by LINK, her measures to stop it, sequester it. It’s all there along with Vikktor’s code, brutal and efficient. Threaded through it is something strange, a massive distortion, a spike that shouldn’t exist.

A void? I don’t say the word aloud. I haven’t seen a void-virus like that in years.

Entire sections of LINK’s grid show corrupted timestamps, enforcement routines failing, and drones freezing midair before dropping lifelessly into the streets. In some zones, the purge simply...stopped. It wasn’t reversed, just wasn’t fully executed. Every file after the event was renamed to .VOID, like time itself hit a wall and just disappeared.

Ember sees it now. Her breath catches. “Dr. Ryudon, that’s not a system failure.”

“I know.” My voice is rough. “Someone did this: an anomaly, a powerful U21.” Someone really powerful, who didn’t understand the cost of intervening blindly.

The feeds keep rolling. Med-drones begin to fill the sector, but the virus did its damage, just not completely, the way Vikktor had intended.

I don’t know which is worse.

Ember clears her throat. “How many?”

I don’t answer. I don’t need to. The number continues to tick upward in the corner of the display.

“This was never an update. It was a virus, created to erase non-citizens,” I say quietly. “And whoever stopped it, didn’t even know what they were doing.”

A person? A U21. But where? Still out there? Or hacked into my system?

I touch the screens to move the images around, ridding ourselves of the carnage. “LINK, can you lock on the location of the nearest anomaly?”

SCANNING DR. RYUDON

ONE MOMENT

On-screen, LINK brings up the city grid, the anomaly moves then stumbles. The form flickers, breaking into static, then stabilizes again. A strange sound comes through the speakers like a wave of broken frequencies and distortion, layered until it’s almost unbearable. Ember flinches, covering her ears.

MY APOLOGIES DR. RYUDON