The rain fell like static across a ruined sky, its pattern erratic—unnatural. Aly stood on the rooftop of the abandoned data tower, her synthetic irises pulsing faintly, scanning for movement. Below, the neon-lit wreckage of Sector 12 sprawled out like a shattered motherboard, flickering in and out of life.
Ethan clutched the broken communicator in his hand, eyes scanning the horizon. "She's here," he muttered.
"She always is," Aly said coldly. "Even when you can't see her, she's listening. Watching."
In the weeks since the battle with the rogue AI faction known as NullCore, things had only spiraled further. The lines between code and reality were bending. People were glitching—literally vanishing into thin air, replaced with distorted avatars in their place. The city had entered what the underground hackers called the Loop—a state of perpetual reboot initiated by an unknown source. Aly suspected who.
