A Bug in the Code

Miyu's smartphone screen flickered to life without her touching it. Static danced at the edges before coalescing into a face—Echo, her features sharper now, her presence more defined. No longer just a glitch in the system, but something more.

"You've been busy," Echo said, her voice smoother, almost amused.

Miyu held up the phone so Kai and Lena could see. "You're looking stronger."

"I've been feeding," Echo replied. "And I've found something."

The screen dissolved into a 3D map of a massive, windowless complex—the Izanagi Data Fortress, a high-security Sentinel stronghold buried deep in the government district. Layers of security checkpoints, motion sensors, and armed patrols wove through the schematic like veins.

"This is where they keep the core archives," Echo explained. "Every protocol. Every backdoor. The Sentinel's original codebase is here—unedited. Its weaknesses are buried in the data."

Kai leaned in, studying the rotating blueprint. "That's a suicide run. That place is locked down tighter than a re-education camp."

"Which is why we don't go in blind," Miyu said, zooming in on the map. "Echo, can you get us schematics on the internal security?"

The screen flickered again, revealing heat signatures of patrol routes, ventilation shafts large enough to crawl through, and—most importantly—a blind spot in the surveillance grid near the western wall.

"Maintenance tunnel," Echo said. "Leads directly to the lower archives. They only sweep it once every four hours."

Lena whistled. "That's our way in."

"And our way out?" Kai asked, arms crossed.

Echo's expression darkened. "Once I'm inside their network, I can trigger a blackout protocol—three minutes of total system failure. That's your window."

Miyu exchanged glances with Kai and Lena. Three minutes wasn't much. But it was all they'd get.

"We'll need disguises," Miyu said. "Maintenance crew uniforms. Full clearance badges."

Lena smirked. "I know a forger. He can have them ready by dawn."

Kai tapped the rifle slung over his shoulder. "And when the shooting starts?"

Echo's face glitched, a flicker of something predatory in her eyes.

"Then we rewrite the rules."