Emily didn't speak for the first few hours.
She sat on the couch, knees tucked to her chest, staring at the TV screen—not watching, just… existing.
Aidan had called the police, of course—but only after making sure the van had no identifiable links. The men had fled. The moment Aidan got Emily out, they didn't even try to fight back. Professionals.
No fingerprints. No IDs. Not even a scent trail for Rhea's drones.
Just… silence.
Jeremy paced the apartment like a caged animal. "They crossed a line."
"They did more than that," Aidan said quietly. "They tested us."
Jeremy paused mid-step.
Emily finally spoke. "He said something to me. Before they tied my hands."
Aidan turned. "What?"
She hesitated. "He said… 'Your brother believes in logic. But logic won't save you from chaos.'"
Jeremy sat down heavily. "It's psychological warfare."
"No," Aidan said. "It's recruitment."
---
That evening, Rhea arrived with a new case file.
Not physical. Digital, loaded onto an encrypted tablet.
"Ghostlink made contact with another system user," she said. "One of the five. Codename: Echo."
Aidan frowned. "Echo… The girl with the auditory analysis interface?"
Rhea nodded. "She's been going underground lately. Ghostlink found her first."
"Is she working with him?"
"No. But he left her a warning. Told her to stay out of your circle—or she'd 'be the next glitch.'"
Jeremy looked confused. "Glitch?"
"It's a term from system theory," Aidan said. "A failed interface. A user who becomes irrelevant."
Rhea added, "Or disposable."
There was a moment of silence.
The room felt colder.
---
Later that night, Aidan sat alone in his room, thinking.
He opened the Core's interface. It no longer looked like a dashboard.
It had… ambiance now.
A faint pulsing light behind a translucent pane. Subtle curves. A presence.
> [Status: Adaptive Layer Engaged]
[Core Tier: 1.9 — Approaching Threshold for Tier 2 Evolution]
[Warning: Emotional Load Detected — Affecting Predictive Consistency by 3.7%]
Aidan stared at that final line.
> [Affecting Predictive Consistency by 3.7%]
The system was warning him that feelings were distorting his logic tree.
But instead of retreating, Aidan typed something into the feedback console—a new feature that had quietly appeared:
"Can logic exist without human value?"
There was a long pause.
Then the Core replied.
> [Logic is sequence. Value is choice. You are both.]
For a long time, Aidan just sat in silence.
Then he smiled.
Just barely.
---
The next day, he visited Rhea's lab alone.
"I want to learn how to build a proxy protocol," he said. "I don't want to rely on the Seed again unless I absolutely have to."
"You want to learn system logic programming?" Rhea asked.
"I want to learn how they think. So I can predict them without needing the Core."
Rhea didn't speak for a while.
Then she gave him a thin, data-loaded tablet.
"If you go down this path, you stop being a user… and start becoming a designer."
"Exactly."
---
Meanwhile, Ghostlink watched from his side of the web.
He'd seen Aidan's recent decision paths—his algorithmic footprints had changed.
No longer purely defensive.
A pattern was forming.
One Ghostlink recognized.
Not from Aidan.
But from himself.
> "You're not supposed to evolve this fast…" he muttered.
His own system flickered—lines of code spinning like a whirlpool.
> [Simulation Instability Detected: Target Core Exceeding Predictive Model]
> [Rerouting Strategy: Prepare Interference Node 03 — Target: Jeremy]
Ghostlink smiled faintly.
"Let's test your attachments next."
---