The Main Brain was an ocean of pure, cold logic, a fortress of crystalline code. I was the storm breaking against its walls.
My psionic assault slammed into the station’s core systems. It wasn't a hack in the traditional sense; there were no keystrokes, no data streams. It was an act of violation, a forced intrusion of a living mind into the sacred heart of a machine. The AI’s firewalls flared like dying suns, layers of quantum encryption and logic gates designed to repel any attack. But they were designed to repel other machines, other programs. They had no protocol for raw, weaponized grief.
Pain, sharp and blinding, lanced through my skull. My vision swam in a sea of red. I felt a warm trickle of blood from my nose, a hot trail down my upper lip. The strain was immense, like trying to
