The world outside was chaos. Explosions rocked the Citadel’s underground halls, shaking the floor beneath our feet. The air was thick with smoke, the metallic tang of blood, and the distant echo of gunfire. The Retrievers were coming fast, and we were running out of time.
But inside this chamber, another kind of war was happening. A silent one.
Kane stood at the console, her fingers moving like a phantom over the screen, her face lit by the cold glow of The Last Algorithm. Lines of code shifted in real time, cascading symbols rewriting reality itself. I had seen a lot of impossible things, but this—this was beyond impossible. It was a miracle. A curse. A loaded gun waiting for someone to pull the trigger.
And I was the one standing at the barrel.
“We can do this,” I said, barely hearin
