The node mirrored Maya's room with uncanny accuracy.
It wasn't perfect—edges were cleaner than reality, shadows softer, the clutter reduced to tidy outlines—but the shape of the space was unmistakable. A narrow bed against the wall. A desk littered with cables and cracked hardware. A single window overlooking a slice of Neon Spire City's industrial district, the glow of distant factories bleeding into the low clouds.
Leo hovered near the digital window, watching the simplified skyline. The idea that the real city was out there—messy, loud, and solid—felt strange. He had seen it through screens and nodes, but this was the closest he'd been to it since waking up.
"You really live here," he said.
Maya nodded, settling onto the edge of the bed in the real world—her projection syncing with the digital bed beneath her. For a moment, the two versions of her overlapped imperfectly, the digital outline lagging half a second behind her physical movements.
"Welcome to Meat Space adjacency," she said wryly. "Not glamorous, but it's home."
Leo tilted his head. "Does it bother you? Seeing this place like this… flattened into code?"
She considered that. "At first. Then I realized the digital version shows me what I miss when I'm buried in screens. The small stuff. How cramped it is. How real it is."
He drifted closer to the bed, studying the digital outlines of rumpled sheets. "I don't remember what real feels like."
Maya's expression softened. "You will. Even if it takes time."
The faint hum of the node's stabilizers filled the space, a gentle white noise that dampened the sharper edges of the network. For a brief, fragile moment, the chase felt far away.
Maya turned back to her device, pulling up layers of physical-world data. "Okay. If we're going to hit one of the anchor points, I need to map the nearest access tunnels. The closest relay hub tied to the Black Channel is beneath Sector 12. Old subway maintenance routes. Sealed off after the city automated transit."
"Sealed off sounds… secure," Leo said.
"Sealed off means forgotten," Maya corrected. "Which is hacker for 'accessible if you're stubborn enough.'"
She brought up schematics of underground tunnels, overlaid with faded maintenance tags and hazard warnings. The map looked like a tangle of veins beneath the city's skin.
"If I can reach this hub physically," she continued, pointing to a node buried deep beneath a derelict factory complex, "I can inject interference directly into the Level-Black facility's outer ring. Not enough to breach it—but enough to disrupt the quarantine feed."
"And starve the ghost engine," Leo said.
"Exactly."
A flicker of movement outside the window caught Leo's attention. The digital skyline rippled as something passed through a distant screen—just a momentary distortion, but it set his nerves on edge.
"They're searching," he said.
Maya glanced up, eyes narrowing. "Yeah. They're sweeping adjacent nodes. The scramble bought us time, but not silence."
Leo's timer pulsed in the corner of his vision, a constant reminder of the clock he was racing against.
"How long until this node isn't safe?" he asked.
"Hard to say," Maya replied. "Hours, maybe. Once they tighten the net around old anchor points, they'll start hitting mirrored nodes like this one. Forever Cloud hates blind spots."
"Then we shouldn't waste time," Leo said. "If you're going to the relay hub in Meat Space, you should go now."
Maya hesitated. "I'm not leaving you alone in the network. Not after what happened in the Black Channel."
"You won't be," Leo said. "I'll be here. In your room. That's… kind of being with you, right?"
She huffed a quiet laugh. "You make it sound normal."
"It's not normal," Leo said. "But it's what we've got."
Maya met his gaze, searching his flickering form for something—fear, maybe, or doubt. Finding neither, she nodded.
"Okay," she said. "I'll prep my gear. If anything goes wrong on my end, you pull back into the deepest part of the node. Don't try to follow me into the physical layer. You're not anchored strongly enough yet."
Leo's chest tightened at the thought of being left behind, even temporarily. "Be careful."
She slung a battered jacket over her shoulders, the real-world fabric briefly phasing through her digital outline. "That's rich, coming from the kid who merged with a residual fragment in a collapsing relay hub."
He smiled faintly. "You rubbed off on me."
Maya paused at the door, hand on the handle. The digital door shimmered faintly, a soft outline of the real one.
"Leo," she said quietly. "If this works—if we disrupt the quarantine feed—they'll move the ghost engine. And your body with it. We might only get one chance to track the transfer."
"I'll be ready," he said.
She nodded once, then stepped out into Meat Space.
The door closed behind her, the digital outline sealing itself with a soft pulse of light.
Leo was alone in the node.
The quiet pressed in, heavier now without Maya's presence. He drifted toward the digital window, watching the simplified city glow.
Somewhere out there, in the real world, Maya was moving through dark tunnels and forgotten corridors to reach a physical anchor point.
And somewhere deep in Forever Cloud's core, the ghost engine was waking up.