Lyra Nexus's Arc

Chapter 6 of 27

Lyra dropped the board onto the streaming river. It caught the current and locked flat. She stepped on. The board hummed under her feet, and the data river swept her forward. Bright bands of symbols rushed past on both sides. She rode low, the way the board was built for, hidden inside the flow. The spear waited on a server far downstream. She only had to reach it before a scan found her. The river split into a hundred bright channels. Numbers streaked past her ankles like sparks. She leaned right, cutting across the fastest band. The board answered fast, but the speed strained her code. Color bled from her hands. Her fingers scrambled into loose digits, then set again. The glitch scared her, but she remembered its use. When her signature broke apart, scans slid right over her. That gift saved her twice. A scan pulse rolled up the river, a wide gray wave. Lyra crouched low on the board and let her render break. Her outline flickered and smeared. The pulse washed through her and read nothing. It moved on. She let out a breath and held her line. The channels tightened near the end. Sites flashed by on the banks. A market stall of firewalls. A lounge full of programs trading tokens. A locked cache ringed in warning code. She wanted none of them. She kept her eyes on the far shore, where a round metal door stood open in the stream. Its ring glowed blue and violet. The server. The spear. But a virus had found the river too. It slid off the bank ahead, a plated black shape, and dropped into the current to block her path. Same armor as the one she killed by hand. This time she had no weapon yet. The door sat right behind it. Lyra did not slow. She drove the board straight at the current's fastest band. The virus lunged. She dropped flat, and the board shot under its strike. Her signature was already breaking from the strain. The virus swiped where her signal had been and hit empty code. She skimmed past its plated side, close enough to see the seams. The board hit the shore. Lyra jumped for the open door. She passed through the ring into the server's quiet space. On a raised stand ahead lay the spear, dark blue, wrapped in live streams of code. She wrapped both hands around the shaft. It was heavy and real. Power ran up her arms. She turned. The virus forced its plated bulk through the door behind her. Now she had the one thing built to crack that shell. But it was not alone. Two more shapes pushed into the ring behind it. Her scan for the spear had drawn a pack. She had her weapon at last, and three viruses between her and the way out.