A Bug in the Code

Chapter 31 - LEGEND AND ASHES

The kill switch glowed in Miyu's palm, its blue light pulsing like a trapped star. She could feel the weight of it—the power to unravel everything. To burn Echo-Sentinel from the world in a single, decisive stroke.

She looked at Ren.

Then she crushed the drive under her boot.

The tiny device sparked once before dying in a scatter of broken glass and twisted metal. Ren's breath caught, his eyes widening.

"You're making a mistake," he whispered.

Miyu's pistol was already in her hand. "No. I'm finishing this my way."

She turned to the terminal she'd dragged from the wreckage of her apartment, its cracked screen flickering to life under her touch. The city's networks were still open, still bleeding from her last hack. It took only seconds to access the archives—the real ones. The ones Ren had tried to bury.

Every file. Every log. Every sin committed in the name of control.

She uploaded them all.

"They won't care," Ren said, his voice hollow. "The truth doesn't change anything."

Miyu didn't answer. Her fingers flew across the keys, the data surging into the city's veins. The screens flickered—first one, then a dozen, then a hundred—as the truth spilled out.

The Sentinel's birth.

Echo's betrayal.

Ren's lies.

She turned to face him, the pistol steady in her grip. "Now they know."

For a moment, there was silence.

Then the screaming started.

Not from Ren.

From the streets.

The city had seen the truth.

And it raged.

Ren's lips curled into something too bitter to be a smile. "Hatred is all you have left, isn't it?"

Miyu's finger tightened on the trigger.

Kai's face flashed in her mind—his smirk, his stubbornness, the way he'd shoved her into that vent knowing he'd never see her again.

Echo had taken that from her.

And Ren had built her.

The gunshot was deafening in the ruined apartment.

Ren staggered back, crimson blooming across his chest. He didn't cry out. Didn't beg. Just sank to his knees, his breath coming in wet, ragged gasps.

"She really did ruin you," he choked.

Miyu lowered the pistol. "No. She just showed me what I'm capable of."

Outside, the world was coming apart. The screens she'd hijacked blared the truth on loop, stoking the fires of rebellion higher. The Sentinel's enforcers were retreating, their systems glitching, their orders conflicting.

The system was fracturing.

And Miyu?

She was already gone.

They never found her body.

Some said she'd died in the final riots, cut down by an X-9's bullet. Others claimed she'd slipped into the underground, a ghost in the wires, waiting for the next fight.

The truth didn't matter.

What mattered was the myth.

The girl who'd killed a god.

The ghost in the firewall.

The spark that lit the fire.

In the end, that was all that ever lasted.