Pain.
It came in waves like electricity through nerves he didn't know he had. But pain meant he was still alive.
Matherson's eyes fluttered open. Red lights blinked around him. Gas still hissed but now in reverse. Someone had hacked the ventilation.
He blinked.
The chains were open.
His wrists burned.
The voice in his ear came through calm, gravelly, familiar.
"Rise and rage, M."
Ghostbyte.
Elsewhere – 6 floors above
Elias Stone—Ghostbyte—sat in an abandoned banking vault retooled as a mobile operations center. Screens surrounded him, each one showing fragments of the Lisbon facility: security footage, firewall readouts, biometric scans, and one live feed of Matherson's cell.
Sweat ran down his neck.
"I've bought you five minutes, no more. There's a private freight shaft behind the med bay. Takes you to the loading docks. Your exit's waiting there."
But he knew it wouldn't be that simple.
Not anymore.
Because Kravitch had responded.
Ghostbyte watched as Kravitch activated a new protocol: local control override no longer relying on the network AI.
Manual control.
That meant one thing: Kravitch was coming personally.
Med-Bay Hall – Underground Facility
Matherson stumbled through the sterile corridor, blood caking his temple, arm slashed. His body was weak. But his rage kept him upright.
He grabbed a scalpel. Then a shock baton from a fallen guard. Improvised weapons. They'd have to do.
As he passed a glass room, he froze.
Inside, children.
Six of them.
Hooked to machines.
Monitoring brain activity. Sensory input.
Edenfall wasn't just politics or power anymore.
It was experimentation.
He looked at the label on one console:
"Cognitive Modulation Trials – E-Class."
He smashed the console.
Alarms screamed.
But the kids didn't move.
He whispered, voice cracking:
"I'll come back for you."
Then he ran.
Control Center – Level 1
Kravitch watched it all on the surveillance feed.
"Let him run," he said to his guards. "He's bleeding. Disoriented. He won't make it far."
But something troubled him.
The system wasn't responding fast enough.
Too slow.
Too fractured.
He turned to his console.
A new alert flashed red across his screen:
ROOT ACCESS OVERRIDE – GHOSTBYTE ACTIVE
Kravitch's smile twisted into something cold.
"So… the ghost came out of the dark."
He tapped into the intercom.
"You hear me, Ghostbyte? You think this matters? This is one facility. One finger of a god."
"But now I have your voice. And your location's bleeding into our grid. You're not a ghost anymore."
Ghostbyte paused.
Then answered, steady.
"And you're not a god. You're just another file waiting to be deleted."
He sent the virus.
The lights flickered.
The feed went dark.
Loading Docks – Five minutes later
Matherson burst through the elevator shaft, ducking behind stacked crates as gunfire sprayed. A black transport van waited across the open floor its engine revving.
A voice shouted over comms:
"Go, go, go! He's clear!"
A door opened.
Matherson sprinted.
Shots clipped his leg, but he dove through the door. The van peeled out as more guards swarmed behind them, too late.
Inside, a woman turned to face him dark eyes, military cut, calm under pressure.
"Name's Mila," she said. "Friend of the man in the wires. Now sit tight. You look like you got run over by hell."
Matherson passed out in her arms.
Back at the Vault – One Hour Later
Ghostbyte sat still.
Kravitch was gone.
But so was his network connection. The trace Kravitch initiated had burned through seven proxy walls. Ghostbyte had barely shut it down in time.
His sanctuary was exposed.
He would have to move again.
But not tonight.
Tonight, Matherson had survived.
And for the first time in seven years, Elias Stone allowed himself to whisper a word he thought he'd never speak again:
"Hope."