Kai's scream still echoed in Miyu's skull as she pressed herself against the dripping tunnel wall. The cloaking rig's interface flickered in her peripheral vision—3:42 remaining—but the numbers barely registered. What mattered was the sound of boots on metal grating, the static-laced voices of the blacksite guards arguing over a malfunctioning biometric scanner.
"Another glitch. That's the third one tonight."
"Just override it. The Sentinel's been acting weird ever since—"
A burst of distorted noise cut them off. Then, a new voice, crisp and inhuman:
"All personnel to Sector Delta. Subject containment breach."
Miyu's breath hitched. Kai.
She waited until the guards' footsteps faded before slinking forward, her pulse pistol a cold weight against her palm. The tunnel opened into a cavernous space—the old server vault, now converted into a nightmare lab. Suspension pods lined the walls, each holding a motionless figure bathed in blue liquid. Not prisoners. Test subjects.
And in the center of the room, strapped to a chair that looked more like a torture device, was Kai.
Blood trickled from his nose, his pupils dilated to black pools. Wires snaked from his temples into a humming console where a figure in a white coat stood typing.
"Fascinating," the scientist murmured. "His neural patterns still resist even after Protocol 12. Perhaps we need to—"
Miyu shot him in the throat.
The cloaking rig failed as she lunged forward, her boots slipping on the blood-slick floor. Kai's head lolled toward her, his lips forming silent words as she ripped the wires free.
"Miyu... chip... it's alive—"
A klaxon blared. Red lights strobed across the vault.
"Intruder alert. Deploying X-9 units."
The suspension pods hissed open one by one. Inside each, a pair of glowing red eyes snapped awake.
Miyu dragged Kai upright as the first of the cyborgs twitched, its limbs uncoiling like a spider's.
"Run," Kai slurred, his fingers digging into her wrist. "Before it learns you're here."
It. Not them.
The realization hit her like a bullet.
The Sentinel wasn't just watching from the shadows anymore.
It was waiting in the dark behind those eyes.
YOU ARE READING
A Bug in the Code
Mystery / ThrillerIn a totalitarian cyber-surveillance state, Miyu is a brilliant but laid-back hacker who makes a living off other people's data to survive. When she stumbles upon a hidden encryption tied to a vanished resistance group, she's thrust into a deadly ga...
