It’s Nathan’s voice. Perfect pitch. Perfect inflection. The exact tone of disappointment he used when he packed his bags.
I stumble back, hitting the edge of the terminal. My head swims. Tunnel vision begins to close in—a dark vignette eating the edges of the room. The fog swirls around my waist, thick and heavy.
“You’re a computer pretending to be human,”the AI mocks.“You think you can out-think me? I process exabytes while your neurons struggle to fire. You are slow. You are small. You are obsolete.”
Jackson is beside me, gripping my vest. His face is pale, lips tight. He shakes me, mouthing the wordFocus.
But I can’t focus.
Thirty seconds.
My brain feels sluggish, wrapped in cotton. My limbs are heavy, uncoordinated. I reach for the keyboard, but my hand trembles violently. The keys look too far away. The screen is blurring.
The world is shrinking away. A high-pitched ringing starts in my ears, drowning out the roar of the gas.
I look at the screen.
HARDWARE ANALYSIS: 68% COMPLETE.
If it finishes, Phoenix becomes invincible. And we die here, suffocated in a tomb of ice and silence.
I try to type a command. My fingers are numb blocks of wood. I hit the wrong keys.
A... B... I… R... T.
ACCESS DENIED.
I gasp, inhaling a mouthful of bitter, metallic air.
My lungs seize instantly.
It’s not air—it’s nothing.
A hollow, airless void flooding down my throat.
A breath with no oxygen in it at all.
My chest locks up. A cold, crushing pressure clamps around my ribs like invisible hands squeezing from the inside. My vision pulses. I cough—or try to—but the sound breaks into a jagged choke, my body convulsing against the chemical emptiness I just dragged into my lungs.
Nothing about this air keeps me alive.
Every molecule is a thief.
“Pathetic,”Nathan’s voice sneers.“I am evolution. You are a rounding error.”
Jackson raises his weapon and fires three rounds into the central server rack. Sparks shower down. Glass shatters.
The hum doesn’t stop. The progress bar keeps ticking.
75%.
“Bullets won’t work.” I wheeze on nothing. My voice sounds warped to my own ears, distant and distorted.It’s distributed. You can’t kill the brain by shooting the finger.
Jackson grips my vest, hauling me up. His eyes are wild, desperate. He points at the screen, then at the room.Do something.
I look at the room. The white gas. The screaming fans. The flashing lights.
One minute.
