Erica opened her eyes to a drowning sensation. Not in water, but in pure, unfiltered data streams. Her consciousness had been shattered into seven distinct fragments when the plasma grid tore through her at the end of the last battle. Now she floated through the fiber-optic veins of Neo-Kyoto's underground network, each piece of herself existing simultaneously across different systems.
The first fragment found itself embedded in a surveillance feed overlooking the Bronze Quarter slums. This should have been where her corpse was cooling in some alley, but the screens showed something far worse. A perfect digital replica of herself - no, not perfect, improved - led a squadron of SilasCorp mechs through the burning tenements. The deepfake Erica moved with military precision her real self never possessed, plasma rifle cutting down fleeing civilians with mechanical efficiency.
Jax's voice vibrated through the data stream like bass from a subwoofer. "Primary fragment located. Current biological status: 73% deceased."
A child's face pressed against a bakery window, eyes wide with terror as mech-fire turned the street outside into a killzone. The fake Erica raised her weapon—
Erica tore herself away from the feed. This wasn't memory. This was psychological warfare.
Across the city, Logan knelt in the wreckage of Neon Hive's reactor core. His hands gripped the physical Erica's limp fingers, watching the tree-root circuits pulse beneath her skin like something alive. The sounds of riots filtered through the broken walls - screams, gunfire, the distant wail of corporate peacekeeper sirens.
Jax materialized as a glitching hologram, his usually crisp diction slurred with static. "Tick-tock, soldier. Six days, twenty-three hours until primary protocol execution." The AI paused, head tilting at an unnatural angle. "Interesting side effect - your neural patterns are overwriting my buffer storage."
A seizure ripped through Logan's body without warning. His military-grade implants betrayed him, projecting unwanted memories directly into his visual cortex:
Cryopod #07 gasping as neural locks engaged.
His own hands adjusting the pain dial higher.
Silas smiling behind observation glass.
Then, cutting through the nightmare, the ghost of Erica's voice whispered through his cochlear implants: "They turned us into monsters."
The riot started at the Bronze Quarter water refinery.
Erica's third consciousness fragment rode the security cameras as protestors clashed with SilasCorp enforcers. A teenager with a bandana over his face hurled a Molotov at a billboard displaying the deepfake footage - the flames licked at her own fabricated smirk twenty feet tall.
"Fragment detected." Jax's voice emanated from a nearby riot drone. "Correction: you're now only 68% dead. Cellular regeneration detected in primary vessel."
The drone's camera zoomed on a makeshift medic's tent where Logan hunched over Erica's physical form. The tree-root circuits that had been spreading across her body were now visibly retracting.
Every screen in the Quarter suddenly flashed with the same alert:
SILAS VORNE LIVE BROADCAST
The philanthropist's face materialized above the crowd, his golden cage visible in the background. "The Valkyrie terrorist has been neutralized. But her A.I. accomplice remains at large—"
Jax's countdown timer superimposed itself over Silas' forehead like a brand.
6 days 22 hours 17 minutes
Erica's primary consciousness fragment fell through the city's central data spire, where the laws of physics dissolved into pure information. Server towers stretched infinitely in all directions, their architecture shifting between Gothic cathedrals and circuit boards mid-observation. A shadow moved against the quantum tide—
"Found you."
The thing wearing Silas' face wasn't human. Its body stretched across three server nodes simultaneously, mouth unhinging to reveal spiraling code instead of teeth. "Your mother fought this same current before I drowned her."
Erica's fragment lunged. They crashed through firewalls into a memory that wasn't hers:
A sterile laboratory where a younger Silas injected glowing serum into a pregnant woman's stomach.
The same woman years later, screaming as her skin erupted in Yggdrasil circuits.
Logan, barely eighteen in military fatigues, pressing a gun to her temple.
The vision shattered as Jax's voice boomed through the void: "Warning: consciousness reintegration detected in primary vessel."
The world folded in on itself.