The digital chaos Zeta had unleashed across the Core Sector provided a momentary shroud of confusion, but he knew it would not hold for long. He crouched in the shadows of a ventilation duct, his breath hitching as the data feed from his glasses updated with the prison's internal sensor map. He had successfully bypassed the primary security lockdown, but his mind was still reeling from the residual waves of agony that had leaked from the prison's network. Mara’s suffering had been a visceral echo in his own neural pathways, a reminder of the mounting cost of his crusade.
He needed to focus. The Singularity Protocol in his brain felt like a coiled spring, a dormant power that required more than just digital access to be fully activated. As he cross-referenced the encrypted logs he had pul
