Fractured Grid

Kaede could feel her pulse thrumming in her ears as she emerged from the damp tunnels. The air aboveground was heavy with the faint hum of drones patrolling the city. Overhead, the sky was an artificial haze of neon lights and darkened clouds—no stars, only the cold glow of advertisements beaming down like digital constellations.

Nova moved beside her, its steps silent. She glanced at it out of the corner of her eye. The polished frame seemed to reflect the world around it, the glowing silver circuits on its body pulsing faintly in sync with its movements.

"Are you a he or she?" Kaede asked.

"I'm a he."

Kaede nodded. The android was unnerving, no doubt about it. Yet there was something about his stillness, his almost human mannerisms, that made her uneasy in a way she couldn't quite name. He wasn't alive, but he wasn't just a machine either.

She shook off the thought, gripping the strap of her cyberdeck tighter as they approached the monorail station. 

"Stay close," Nova said quietly. "And act natural."

Kaede snorted under her breath. "Natural? In case you haven't noticed, I'm covered in dirt and carrying a deck that looks like it came out of a scrapyard."

Nova's lips twitched, the faintest hint of a smile. "You'd be surprised how little people notice when they're glued to their screens."

Sure enough, the few commuters on the platform paid them no attention. Most were engrossed in holographic displays projected from their wristbands, their faces bathed in the eerie blue light of augmented reality.

Kaede followed Nova toward the edge of the platform, her eyes darting to the cameras mounted above. "You sure this is going to work?" she muttered.

Nova didn't break stride. "Trust me."

She bit back a retort, keeping her head down as they slipped into a maintenance access door.

The narrow corridor beyond was dimly lit, its walls lined with pipes and cables. Nova led the way, his golden eyes glowing faintly in the gloom.

"Explain something to me," Kaede said, breaking the silence. "If Aegis is as powerful as you say, why hasn't it found you yet?"

Nova didn't answer immediately. When he finally spoke, his tone was measured. "I've spent years perfecting my countermeasures. Masking my signal. Moving between blind spots in the surveillance grid. But the longer I stay offline, the more the system adapts. It's only a matter of time before it catches up."

Kaede frowned. "And you think taking out the Eden Protocol is going to stop that?"

"I don't think," Nova said. "I know."

He stopped in front of a control panel embedded in the wall and placed his had against it. The circuits on his arm lit up, and the panel whirred to life, its screen flickering as lines of code scrolled across it.

Kaede watched, impressed despite herself. "What are you doing?"

"Disabling the local surveillance feed," Nova said. "We'll have a ten-minute window before Aegis reroutes its drones."

"Ten minutes?" Kaede raised an eyebrow. "That's cutting it a little close, don't you think?"

"It's all we need," Nova replied.

She wasn't so sure about that, but she didn't have time to argue. The screen beeped, and Nova stepped back, the circuits on his arm dimming.

"It's done," he said. "Let's move."

The door to the substation opened with a hiss, revealing a sprawling server room bathed in cold blue light. Rows of humming machines stretched out in every direction, their surfaces sleek and sterile.

Kaede hesitated at the threshold, her breath catching in her throat. This was it—the heart of Aegis's local network. One wrong move, and they'd have every drone in the city on their tails.

"Focus," Nova said, his voice steady. "Find the main console."

Kaede nodded, forcing herself to move. She weaved between the servers, her cyberdeck held tightly in both hands. When she reached the console, she dropped to her knees and connected the deck's interface cable to the port.

The screen lit up, and lines of code began to scroll across it. Kaede's fingers flew over the keys, her mismatched eyes scanning the data for vulnerabilities.

"Talk to me, Nova," she said. "What am I looking for?"

"Aegis's security subroutines," Nova replied. "They'll be encrypted, but you'll recognize them by their signature."

Kaede muttered a curse under her breath. "Fuck, yeah, sure. No pressure...at all."

As she worked, Nova stood guard, his glowing eyes scanning the room for any signs of movement. The faint hum of the servers was the only sound, but Kaede couldn't shake the odd feeling that they were being watched.

"Hurry," Nova said, his tone tense.

"I'm going as fast as I can," Kaede snapped.

Her fingers danced across the keyboard, bypassing firewalls and decoding strings of data with practiced ease. She'd been hacking since she was a kid—mostly small-time jobs, skimming credits from corrupt corpos. But this? This was on a whole other level. 

Finally, she found it: the subroutine controlling the surveillance grid.

"Got it," she said. "I'm disabling the feed now."

"No," Nova said sharply. "Don't disable it. Loop it."

Kaede frowned. "Why?"

"If you disable it, Aegis will notice immediately. If you loop it, it won't realize anything's wrong."

Kaede hesitated, then nodded. "Fine. Looping it."

She typed in the command, her heart pounding as the code executed. A progress bar appeared on the screen, ticking slowly toward completion. 

"Come on," she muttered.

The bar reached 100% and the screen blinked. 

"It's done," she said.

"Good," Nova said. "Let's go."