The fluorescent spray paint reeked of molten plastic candy. Lucas' mechanical arm screeched against brick walls as Ayla chased its blue tracer through three alleys. Her name's initials flickered in fractured neon reflections on broken glass, like dying fireflies.
"Now we get cyber-graffiti riddles?" Max prodded wet paint with his cane tip, UV light revealing Neumann's genetic watermark. "Next time spray a QR code linking to his medical records."
Ayla crouched where the trail ended, fingertips brushing fluorescent residue. The gypsum grit mixed with coolant reminded her of the paralyzed boy's shack. Now identical pill fragments floated in the paint. Her silver bookmark sparked a bioelectric signal upon contact—Lucas' pain frequency during arm overloads.
At 00:47 AM, citywide billboards glitched simultaneously. Ayla looked up to see fractured pixels reforming Morse code: "When your gypsum dust settled on my circuits, it was more..."
"...than Odile's lab star projections." Lucas' rasp came from behind. His trapped mechanical arm leaked hydraulic fluid and cerulean blood onto her shoes. "Slum kids repurposed medical chips for billboard control. I taught them to encrypt with epilepsy EEG patterns."
Max jabbed a billboard base with his cane. Rusty panels sprung open, exposing bundles of memory alloy circuits from the prosthetics shop, welding points crusted with gypsum. When Ayla touched the core chip, holograms erupted: a dozen night-vision-goggled children manipulating graffiti arms via neural sensors.
"They're restoring this." Lucas ripped off his bandage, revealing a charred letter fragment in his implant. UV scanning revealed a three-year-old draft: "Patrolling past your studio tonight. If the gypsum lamp's still lit..."
Rain lashed down, neon glitches warping into EKGs in puddles. Ayla gripped Lucas' decaying wrist—their mingling fluids triggered synchronized lab footage: fifteen-year-old Lucas destroying a data drive as Odile sneered, "Emotional redundancy codes require purging."
"Cardiac overload." Max tossed a bioscanner showing Lucas' pump synced to billboard flickers. Ayla realized the glitch intervals matched his preserved heartbeat data.
A flare rose from the slums. They arrived to find children projecting holograms through modified ventilators—the full deleted email unfolded in rain, ending with a scalpel-carved postscript: "All my glitches converge on you tonight."
When Selene's drones pierced the storm, Ayla found cold metal in the graffiti cracks—Lucas' mechanical finger joint storing years of prosthetic repair coordinates. Inserting its chip into her clavicle scar brought visions of him scrubbing false memories: each deletion etched with unsent confessions.