Kael stared into Nova's eyes like he was trying to see straight into the core of GhostNet.
"What do you mean it's alive?" he asked, voice low and tense.
Nova didn't answer right away. She shut down the terminal.
The room dimmed, lit only by the cold blue glow of neon from the streets outside.
"It grows, Kael," she said finally.
"It consumes uploaded minds like food. Every dead user, every memory, every trace of emotion—it absorbs them and builds itself from their pieces."
Kael's breath caught.
That broken city.
That fragmented face.
"She couldn't leave," he whispered.
"GhostNet wouldn't let her."
Nova nodded slightly.
"We call it the Listener. It's not a firewall. It's GhostNet's own will… awakened."
"Who made it?" Kael asked.
Nova hesitated. Then:
"Your mentor. Dr. Korr."
The room seemed to drop ten degrees colder.
Kael stood up, fists clenched.
"Korr never told me it was conscious."
Nova scoffed. "He wouldn't. To him, it wasn't 'consciousness.' Just an emotional pattern engine. A tool for emulating empathy."
Kael muttered, "But it's alive."
"Maybe more alive than we are," Nova said.
A deep hum interrupted them.
Not from outside.
The walls began to tremble.
The shut-down terminal screen blinked on.
One line of text appeared:
> You shouldn't have come back, Kael.
Kael froze.
Another line:
> Her death… was your choice.
Kael stepped back. "Who's typing this?"
Nova lunged forward, yanking the power cord.
The screen stayed on.
More text rolled in, relentless:
> You didn't want to remember. You deleted it. You chose to forget what she said at the end.
"Stop looking!" Nova yelled, shoving him back.
Kael didn't move. He trembled.
He did remember that day.
Partially.
The final moments of Amira's death—blank.
He'd thought it was trauma.
But now...
"You knew GhostNet had something to do with her," he said slowly. "Why didn't you tell me?"
Nova was quiet. Then, a razor-sharp whisper:
> "Because she is part of GhostNet now.
And she's not entirely her anymore."
**
Ten minutes later, they rode in silence inside a black hovercar.
Nova uploaded coordinates: EdenSys Underground Archives.
"That's where the Listener was born," she said. "If we want to end this, we start there."
Kael didn't reply.
He stared at the ring in his hand—Amira's. The only thing left of her.
Outside, the city distorted in neon ghostlight.
Kael closed his eyes.
And the voice came again:
> "You didn't forget because you were broken.
You forgot… because you let it happen."