The golden light was not light at all. It was raw, unadulterated data manifesting as pure thermal energy. Elian felt his skin blister, a searing, dry heat that stripped away his sense of touch, leaving him suspended in a roar of white noise. He was the bridge. He was the ground. He was the terminal where the grid’s insatiable hunger met the fragility of human biology.
Behind him, Sarah shrieked, a sound of electronic feedback and human terror as the magnetic pulse washed over the room. The Curators, caught in the heart of the discharge, stood like statues for a fractional second before their obsidian shells began to c***k.
Their visors spider-webbed, leaking brilliant white sparks, as the sheer volume of the EMP fried their internal logic processors. They did not fall like soldiers. The
