The tunnel echoed with silence after the drones dropped. Their smoldering remains crackled in puddles of neon-tinted oil. Kira's plasma pistol trembled slightly in her grip—not from fear, but from the weight of what she was seeing.
Her father. Alive.
But not whole.
The man before her—Rai Sato—was more machine than flesh. His jaw buzzed faintly with actuator strain, and along his neck ran a neural weave of copper threads and dark alloy.
"This isn't real," Kira whispered. "You died in the Black Sun raids. I saw it—your rig exploded—"
"That was the Ministry's story," Rai said calmly. "They needed a symbol of fear. A burned-out hero. But I was extracted by the Ghost Protocol. I've been hiding, rebuilding."
"And you let me rot?!" Kira snapped, voice sharp like shattered glass. "You let mom die alone while I scavenged junk in the lower stacks just to survive!"
Rai flinched.
A pause.
The heavy kind that only came from guilt older than memory.
"I had no choice."
"You always had a choice."
The silence returned, thicker now, broken only by a high-pitched whine. A beacon ping—stealth-coded.
Kira's HUD flickered: INCOMING SIGNAL — GHOST PROTOCOL // RANK: PRIME
Then a new voice buzzed in her neural link, smooth but urgent:
> "Specter_07. You're compromised. You have thirty seconds before soulNet scans this location. Ghost out or get erased."
Rai looked up sharply.
"They found us. You need to move."
"We're not done," Kira growled.
"No," he said, drawing the cyberkatana from his back. "But we will be — if we live."
---
They raced through the maintenance tunnels, each step timed with the sync pulse of the city's underground Aether Grid. Kira jacked into a rusty port panel, her fingers a blur over projected code.
"Three-layer encryption?" she muttered. "Sloppy."
Rai smirked behind her.
"You still talk like you're the best."
"I am."
With a spark and hiss, the hatch opened, revealing an elevator shaft that hadn't been operational in years. They dropped into it, descending via magnetic grips.
Above them, shadows moved.
Black Sun Hunters.
Built to kill dissidents. No speech. No emotion. Just synthetic instincts and endless ammo.
"They're tracking the shard," Rai said. "What's on it?"
Kira hesitated.
"The Ministry's root protocol."
"You're joking."
"Do I look like I have a sense of humor?"
The truth settled between them like a time bomb.
Kira hadn't told anyone—not even her handlers—that the data shard she stole could rewrite the soulNet, the system used to monitor, manipulate, and "purify" every citizen in New Tokyo.
She wasn't just running.
She was holding the kill switch for the entire dystopia.
---
The elevator crashed into the lower platform, sparks dancing around their boots.
As they moved into the underground safezone, sirens echoed above. Civil defense AI was on full lockdown.
Rai turned to her, eyes glowing with intensity.
"You realize what this means, don't you?"
Kira nodded, lips a hard line.
"If I decrypt this... I become a god."
---
End of Chapter 2