Connecting to GhostNet… Link Established…
Kael no longer had a body.
At first, it was light—but not light in the usual sense. It was tactile, like strands of static brushing his skin. He tried to open his eyes but realized he didn't have any.
Only awareness—dragged, thrown, projected—into something unseen but terrifyingly real.
Then… reset.
He blinked. Now standing in the ruins of a fractured cityscape.
The sky was cut into flickering grids, like a shattered LCD. Floating data blocks drifted through the air—some shaped like windows, others like broken limbs. The silence was unnatural, as if time itself had paused.
This was GhostNet.
A digital backroom built from fragments of the dead—their memories, emotions, and lingering pain.
Then, a voice behind him—hoarse, familiar, like memory itself bleeding into sound.
> "You finally came."
Kael turned.
There she was.
Amira.
Standing in front of a half-collapsed building. Wearing that old coat from his memory. Hair moving in nonexistent wind. Her face… incomplete. Like a corrupted 3D model with missing files.
Kael's throat tightened.
"This isn't me," she said softly, answering his unspoken question. "Just… her echo. She remembers you."
"You… how are you still here?"
His voice came out cracked. "You died. Six years ago."
Her eyes dimmed.
"Some things don't die," she said.
"I tried to disconnect. It wouldn't let me. It trapped me here."
"It?"
Before she could answer, the whole world shuddered.
Far-off data blocks collapsed.
A deep metallic screech echoed like a massive predator waking from sleep.
Amira rushed toward him. "Kael, you need to leave. The Listener is awake. It's tracking your signal—it'll drag you fully inside."
"Wait! I need answers—"
"Find Nova!" Her voice turned sharp, desperate. "She knows where GhostNet came from. And she's not what you think!"
A sharp shriek tore through the world—an incoming shape, fast and faceless. It resembled a human—but built of jagged code and corrupted memories.
Kael didn't hesitate. He yanked the cord.
Pain.
Vertigo.
He nearly vomited.
**
"You're back," Nova said, kneeling over him, wiping his forehead with a cold cloth.
Her face was too close. Eyes… uneasy.
"You didn't tell me something in there would hunt me," he groaned.
Nova looked away. "Before you went in, you didn't seem like someone afraid of dying."
Kael sat up, trembling.
"She said… you know the source of GhostNet."
Nova froze.
Then said, barely above a whisper:
"That's not something you want to know."
"I do."
She stared at him, then finally answered:
"GhostNet isn't a network.
It's… something alive."