The blast knocked Marrin off her feet. For a moment, everything was light—blinding, white-hot, and endless. Then came the ringing in her ears, the weightless silence that followed an explosion, the kind that stretches seconds into forever.
When she opened her eyes, the world had changed.
The facility was gone, replaced by an ocean of shifting code and fractured geometry. Neon grids stretched into infinity. The air shimmered with digital static. Her mind reeled as she realized—she wasn't standing in the real world anymore. She was inside the system.
She'd been pulled into the data field.
"Marrin?" Calvin's voice cracked through her comm. "Talk to me. What the hell happened?"
She tried to speak, but her voice came out distorted, mechanical. "Connection—unstable. I'm… inside."
"Inside w
