CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: THE SHUTDOWN --- The decryption completed without ceremony. Leo felt it as a release of pressure behind his eyes—ECHO withdrawing from the deep processing cycles, her presence settling back into its familiar place in his temporal lobe. He straightened in the co-pilot's seat, the dead man's shirt pulling at his shoulders. Kaelen's hands stopped moving on the console. The cockpit went still. Miri's fur shifted pale. Seren's tail froze. "There's nothing," Kaelen said. It wasn't a question. "Ejection," Leo said. "Like what happened to me." Kaelen turned. "You found this. No one else." The silence stretched. Miri's ears swiveled. "So she shuts it down, and the ships don't die?" "The ships survive," Leo said. "The Network still dies. The stations still starve. But
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