Chapter 57
The confirmation snap is immediate—a haptic jolt in my wrist, then a full-bore, all-system panic in my chest. The shutdown sequence doesn’t wait for second thoughts.
It howls through the node like a banshee.
The terminal’s screen flashes from bloodred to blinding white; every LED on the rack strobes at a frequency that slashes straight through the optic nerve and into the pain centers.
The current finds my bones, my fillings, the slivers of memory-implant in my occipital, and sets them all on fire.
I want to scream, but the world cuts my throat before I can draw breath. Instead, I convulse against the console—one last desperate spasm as the entire chamber detonates around me.
The EM field is no longer a hum; it’s a tsunami.
I’m dragged under, skull packed with ice and electricity.
My vision goes double, then negative, then whiteout.
Somewhere overhead, the containment rods shear from their housing—steel groaning, resin popping in seismic cracks.
Every error code I ever wrote is racing across the interface, cascading so fast I can’t even parse the letters.
The node is in freefall, and I’m falling with it, skin crawling in a rain of subatomic needles.
Blue-white energy arcs from the server racks and claws down my spine. My hands fuse to the plastic—one in the act of confirming, the other clawing at the edge of the console, nails tearing out by the root. My eyes roll back, but not before the world splits open and I see the chamber shatter.
The air goes unbreathable. The ozone spike is so thick I taste it in my lungs, acid and sweet, a glass of peroxide poured down my windpipe.
Blood—mine or Kang’s, I can’t tell—pools between my teeth.
My mouth is too dry to spit. I’m aware of my bladder letting go, shame and terror and ecstasy fusing into one overwhelming supernova of sensation.
This should be where the reel of my life spins out, the Authority-mandated last montage. But that’s not what I get.
Instead, I get Helena.
I see her. She’s the only thing in focus.
Tiny pink toes pressed to my palm, smaller than a single pipette bulb.
Her skin is soft, unscarred, still translucent in the light.
I’m rocking her, crooning a melody that doesn’t have words, just hums and vowels, something from my own mother that survived a thousand Authority wipes.
Helena’s hands reach for me, fists uncurling, and her eyes—my eyes, but better—lock on to mine with an intensity that is pure animal need.
The pain recedes, not because it’s over, but because this vision muscles it aside.
I watch as Helena’s first steps happen on a floor I recognize—a slab of reclaimed oak, burn scars from a million coffee spills, the place I once called home.
She toddles forward, arms up, and I catch her just before she falls.
The weight of her in my arms is more real than any Authority memory, more real than the ache in my own body.
I can smell her—baby powder, milk, the faintest trace of sour formula.
It’s perfect, and it hurts more than the shutdown ever could.
The node chamber tilts, a lateral G-force slamming my side against the bench.
Glass explodes in crystalline sheets, the shower of it pinwheeling through the hot, ionized air.
The edge of the console carves into my ribs, but I don’t flinch—I’m too busy watching Helena’s birthday, her third or maybe her seventh, the ages stack together like overexposed film.
Kang is there, face clean, shirt open at the neck, and he’s laughing—a sound I’ve almost forgotten.
He’s holding Helena up by her armpits, swinging her around, and she’s shrieking, delighted, drooling down the front of his Authority-issue jacket.
The chamber cracks at the welds, ceiling sagging as the EM overdrive chews the supports to dust. Cables and insulation rain down like gray confetti, burning holes in my sleeve, my scalp, my cheek.
My body is spasming now, the viral override turning every nerve to a live wire.
But I still see Helena, every flicker of her life racing past my ruined eyelids.
There’s a picnic—yes, a goddamn picnic—in the green between the old reactors.
Helena is sitting on a blanket, knees tucked under, face smeared with something purple.
She is smiling, gap-toothed and bright, and I know without knowing that the jam came from berries we foraged together, maybe even from the Safe Zone, maybe even illegal.
Kang is there too, his hand on my knee, the two of us pretending like we’re just another Authority family, just another set of parents who never did a single fucked-up thing to survive.
In the real world, I’m sobbing now. Not the pretty kind—this is full-on, snot-dragged, eyes-rolled, ugly sobbing. My tears run hot as plasma, salt scoring tracks down my filthy cheeks. I can’t move my arms, but my fingers still twitch with the urge to hold Helena, just one more time.
Next vision: Helena on her first day of school, Authority standard-issue jumper too big for her frame.
She stands in front of me, looking up, one hand tangled in my coat.
She’s scared, and I want to tell her it’ll be okay, but I know that’s a lie.
I know what happens to kids who stand out in the system.
But I say it anyway—”You’ll be fine, sweetheart.
You’re so much stronger than they are.” She nods, but I can see the fear behind her smile.
The chamber comes apart in slow motion. Metal tears like silk; the stench of scorched insulation is so strong I gag.
The node’s field collapses, an audible pop that detonates in my eardrums and leaves a ringing, high-pitched and infinite, like the death-scream of a dying star.
My tongue is thick with blood. My vision is fading at the edges, but I see one more thing:
Helena, grown. A woman now. Her hair is long, black like mine, and she’s standing at the edge of a crowd.
She wears Authority blue, but she’s not broken, not like the others.
She stands tall, fist in the air, and leads a chant I can’t hear.
It’s a protest. A rebellion. Maybe even the start of something that might one day matter.
I see myself in the crowd, older, battered, but alive.
I see Kang, his arm around my shoulders. I see us together, proud.
And then the vision fractures — her face dissolving into white fire, her voice scattering like dust — and the pain drags me back
I gasp, mouth forming the word I thought I’d never get to say: “Helena—”
The chamber swallows me. The air is blue-white fire, the stench of burning meat, the taste of a life I almost had. My last thought is of her, not myself. It’s a better way to go.
Everything goes black.
And even in the black, I see her, reaching back for me.