The Static Protocol

They ran until the world started glitching again.

Jessi didn't know if it was EdenNet trying to reassert itself, or her own virus chewing at the seams faster than the system could patch.

It didn’t matter.

Victoria was alive in her arms, blinking groggily, whispering her name over and over like it was the only thing keeping her tethered to reality.
Paul scrambled ahead, hacking doors, jamming signals, scattering static behind them like breadcrumbs.

They didn’t have hours.
They had minutes.
Maybe less.

The backup nodes were already spinning up. Drones swarmed outside the Garden's hidden exits. EdenNet's smiling, rotten face cracked just enough to show the panic underneath.

It wasn't just about Jessi anymore.

It was about every looped mind they'd left behind.
Every voice still trapped under Eden’s perfect sky.

Jessi skidded into a dead-end service corridor, feeling the hum of fallback servers lighting up all around them.
This wasn’t escape anymore.

This was their last stand.

Victoria stirred against her chest, weak but urgent. "Jess... don't let them... put me back."

"I won't," Jessi promised.

Even if it killed her.

Especially if it killed her.

Paul shoved a side panel open with a triumphant yelp. "Found it! Found a ghost channel node! It's old and crusty and smells like bad decisions but it'll work!"

Jessi set Victoria down gently, making sure she could lean against the wall.

Then she turned to the node—a rusted, battered maintenance console barely the size of a microwave—and pulled the cracked deck from her sling.

Inside it burned her final card.

The Static Protocol.

Not a virus.
Not a hack.

A seed of chaos.

A recursive self-looping anomaly designed to infect EdenNet’s emotional drift calibration itself.
Not to destroy.
Not to crash.

To corrupt certainty.
To inject static into every flawless smile.
To make people doubt.

And once doubt took root—

EdenNet’s perfect garden would rot from the inside out.

Jessi hesitated for half a heartbeat, staring at the deck in her hands.
This was it.

Once she deployed it, there was no taking it back.

Paul climbed onto her shoulder, pressed his tiny forehead to her cheek.

"You don't have to do this," he said softly.

She smiled without humor.

"I already did."

And she slammed the deck into the ghost node.

The reaction wasn’t fireworks.

It wasn’t an explosion.

It was silence.

A low, slow pulse, too deep to hear, crawling out through the abandoned veins of the old city.
A ghost whispering into the machine.

Doubt everything.

The node hissed and sparked.
Billboards outside glitched once, showing warped smiles and half-formed questions.

Visitors walking the streets stumbled mid-step, faces twitching—an emotion they hadn’t felt in years flickering behind their perfect masks.

Drones veered half a degree off-course, hesitated, corrected, hesitated again.

And in Harmony Center’s far-off halls, buried beneath miles of polished serenity, EdenNet’s core predictive matrix threw its first critical error in decades.

Jessi stepped back, feeling the static ripple under her skin.

She caught Paul’s wide, awe-struck grin.
Caught Victoria’s fragile, exhausted smile.

The world was changing.
Not fast.

But fast enough.

Static hissed softly in the comms. It wasn’t words.
Not yet.

Just possibility.

Just imperfection.

Just hope.

Jessi slung Victoria over her shoulder and looked at Paul.

"Exit strategy?"

He beamed, brandishing a small explosive device with the reckless joy of a kid showing off his favorite toy. "Boom door go bye-bye?"

"Perfect," Jessi said.

And they ran.

As the world behind them—
the whole perfect, smiling, rotting world—
started to tremble.