Lyra Nexus's Arc

Chapter 10 of 27

The four tokens still glowed on the table when Protocol leaned back. Lyra counted the cost in her head. Five signals now, not one. Every scan in the network could read them together. She was about to warn the crew when Protocol looked past her and grinned. "There's a few more than just us," she said, and nodded across the room. Three programs slipped through the crowd and squeezed onto the stools of code around the table. Lyra tightened her grip on the spear. More signals meant more heat. She did not know these three, and she did not know if they were in. The pink one sat first. Her code ran so fast it blurred at her edges. "Pixela Code," she said. "I outrun the scans. Every time. A wall boxes me in here. I want out. Your fight punches holes. I'll take one." She said it flat, then stopped. The green one dropped beside her. Chunks of her code flickered and went dark, then came back wrong. "Syntax." Her voice was clipped. "This system gets wiped soon. I rewrite myself to stay ahead of it. The viruses started the wipe. I want them dead first." Lyra turned to the third. This one made her go still. Black code, green threads crawling across her skin. She watched Lyra the way a hunter watches a mark. "Screenshot," she said. "I read breaches. A cut in the network reads like handwriting to me." She leaned close. "Somebody carved into your memory. Clean edges. No noise. I've seen work that careful once before." Lyra's render flickered. Color bled down her arm. Someone skilled had wiped her earliest logs. She had said so to no one. "You can read who did it," she said. "Show me the cut," Screenshot said. "I'll name the hand." This was it. The whole reason she hunted. Not just the viruses, but the one who erased her. Lyra looked at the seven faces now crowded at the table. Seven signals in one room. A scan pulse could light them all up at once. She knew the risk. She took it anyway. "You're all in," she said. "Then we move as one crew. No splitting." She pushed three more tokens across the code table. "Screenshot, you find who cut me. Pixela, you scout ahead of the scans. Syntax, you rewrite our signals when they lock on." Syntax picked up a token. "A botched rewrite erases me. But a clean one hides all seven." She closed her hand. "I'll manage it." Seven hands came down over the tokens. The bar noise dropped. Behind the glass, a scan pulse swept the street and stopped at the lounge. It held there, brighter than before. Protocol saw it first. "They found the pile," she said. "Seven of us burns like a flare." Lyra stood. The crew was whole. So was the target on their backs. "Then we run before it lands," she said.