.
---
Chapter 15: The Blood in the Signal
The morning after Black Root fell, the skies over Europe crackled with static.
Not lightning.
Not weather.
Something older.
Buried in satellites long since decommissioned, a whisper activated: a dormant Lazarus uplink coded only to respond to one voiceprint.
And that voice?
Was Mercer-02.
---
The Dream Spike
Jax watched him sleep in a broken cot beneath the safehouse’s basement.
No IVs.
No tech.
Just a child wrapped in blankets, twisting in silence, his breath sharp and uneven.
“He’s spiking again,” Sienna said softly, watching the readout from a makeshift neuroband.
Mercer-02’s brain activity was spiking into Lazarus-level protocols. Aggression. Memory override. False combat recall.
“I thought we killed the core,” Jax muttered.
