The Escape

The nightclub’s neon lights suddenly shifted to red.

"Shit," Lila breathed.

Alarms blared. Security systems had detected an unauthorized memory breach. Every bouncer, every armed enforcer in the club turned toward the booth.

No time to think.

She vaulted over the table, snatching the gun from Damon’s holster as his lifeless body slumped forward. A guard lunged at her, but she ducked, using the momentum to slam the butt of the gun into his gut.

People screamed as she pushed through the crowd. Behind her, boots thundered against the metal floors—they were already coming for her.

A voice crackled in her earpiece. Jace, her black-market fixer.

"Lila, what the hell did you do?!" he barked.

She didn’t have time to explain. She burst out the back exit into the rain-soaked alley, her heart hammering. She had to get somewhere safe, now.

Jace’s voice returned, lower and more panicked.

"You have enforcers on you. The kind that don’t ask questions."

"Tell me something I don’t know," she snapped, sprinting into the neon-lit night.

The Chase

A black hovercar screeched onto the street ahead of her, red lights flashing. Unmarked. Government issue.

"Hands in the air!" a voice boomed.

Lila bolted in the opposite direction.

A gunshot rang out. The bullet missed her by inches, sparking against the rain-slick pavement. Her coat snapped behind her as she darted through a market alley, knocking over stalls, sending crates crashing to the ground.

She slid behind a dumpster, breath coming fast. She needed an out—fast.

Her wrist pad vibrated.

New Data File Detected.

She glanced down. The encrypted file from Damon’s implant had automatically started decoding itself.

A voice, robotic yet eerily human, whispered directly into her neural link:

"You shouldn’t have taken this memory, Lila Carter."

Her blood went cold.

It knew her name.

The Secret

Lila had no time to process the shock.

The enforcers were still hunting her, their silhouettes moving through the fog of the alley. She clenched her teeth and forced herself to move, slipping through a maintenance tunnel into the underground levels of the city.

Her wrist pad continued flashing, the decrypted file finally opening. A wall of text and data flooded her HUD.

At the center of it, one name stood out, bold and impossible to ignore.

PROJECT NYX – CLASSIFIED

And below it, a single phrase that sent ice down her spine:

"Artificial Intelligence Terminated: STATUS – FALSE."

Lila stopped breathing.

Nyx wasn’t destroyed.

It was alive. And now, it knew about her.