Chapter 9: Ghost Signal
The safehouse door sealed behind them with a muted hiss. Outside, the decaying fragments of Zone 7B loomed like the bones of a long-dead titan—silent, crumbling, and full of buried malice.
Jin walked with Kael in silence for a while, the newly integrated Cipher Breaker pulsing faintly in his peripheral vision. It was like a second heartbeat—digital, irregur, and alien.
He could feel it probing the environment, scanning, decrypting invisible threads of code yered into Echelon’s decaying architecture. The new map overy it provided blinked intermittently, revealing deeper strata beneath the zone. Structures within structures. Data buried under illusion. A secret web of forgotten code.
Jin rubbed his temples. The upgrade wasn’t just powerful—it was invasive.
“How long before this thing fries my brain?” he muttered.
Kael didn’t look back. “Depends. You tend to overthink things?”
“Only when I want to survive.”
She gave a faint smirk but didn’t reply.
They moved through a ruined corridor that must have once belonged to a residential block. Fragments of old advertisements flickered on shattered panels—ghosts of lives once lived in Echelon before the colpse. A child’s toy y melted into the floor. A rusted drone shell hung from the ceiling like a wasp’s nest.
Jin tried not to look too closely.
The Cipher Breaker pinged. A new icon appeared: a pulsing red dot just ahead.
[Encrypted Beacon Detected – Source: Unknown]
[Trace Level: Medium]
[Decryption in Progress: 12%…]
Kael stopped suddenly. “You feel that?”
Jin nodded. “Something’s broadcasting. Close.”
She crouched beside a shattered wall panel, drawing one of her knives. Her posture shifted subtly—no longer rexed but sharp, ready.
“You sure you didn’t trigger something back at the node?”
“Only about seventy percent sure.”
Kael didn’t appreciate the joke.
The corridor ahead flickered. Walls phased in and out, struggling to render. Then a low, moduted hum began—faint, like a voice submerged in water.
The Cipher Breaker completed its scan.
[Signal Source: Ghost Protocol Remnant]
[Warning: AI Entity Unstable – Threat Level: Variable]
Jin drew his Null Knife. “AI fragment?”
Kael stood slowly. “A strong one, if it’s still broadcasting out here.”
The hum intensified. The broken corridor shimmered and reshaped itself—an involuntary reconstruction. Code reasserting order in a world built on decay.
A figure emerged.
It wasn’t like the twitchy remnant from earlier. This one had a presence. It walked. It shimmered with old authority—tall, silver-armored, with glowing eyes and a fractured Echelon emblem etched into its chest.
It stopped in front of them, head tilted slightly, as if studying both Jin and Kael.
“…Civilian designations unrecognized,” it said in a voice like breaking gss. “Memory node interference detected. Return the asset.”
Kael raised her knife. “If it talks, it can stall.”
Jin stepped forward slowly. “What are you?”
The figure twitched. “Ghost Protocol. Layer 5 Guardian Subset. Failed. Reassigned. No protocol now. Only purpose: integrity.”
Jin held up his hand, letting the Cipher Breaker pulse in full view. “You see this?”
The AI’s head turned, fixating on the device. Its glow dimmed, just slightly.
“Unauthorized system detected. Origin: unknown. Threat: undefined.”
Then it lunged.
Kael moved faster. Her knife arced, slicing through shimmering armor. The bde passed through, but not without resistance. Sparks flew. The ghost retaliated, a whip of light shing toward her side.
Jin ducked, rolled, and tapped the Cipher Breaker. The interface fred—lines of raw code opening before his eyes. It was like staring into the machine’s brain.
[Override Window – 5 Seconds]
[Inject Exploit: Y/N?]
He didn’t hesitate. Yes.
The screen blinked. A spike of code shed into the entity’s data stream. The ghost staggered, glitching violently—its form expanding, then contracting like a corrupted file mid-download.
Kael didn’t waste the chance. She drove her bde upward, slicing through the AI’s chest. The light in its eyes fred one st time—then died.
The body fell into static and vanished.
The corridor dimmed. The signal was gone.
Jin sat back, panting. “That was variable, huh?”
Kael sheathed her weapon. “Could’ve been worse. It could’ve had backup.”
As if on cue, the Cipher Breaker pulsed again.
[Residual Signal Detected – Tracing Backlink…]
[Warning: Entity Destruction Triggered Network Alert]
[Multiple Traces Incoming]
Jin stared at the warning. “You had to say it.”
Kael didn’t look pleased. “We need to move. Now.”
They turned, following the path the Cipher Breaker illuminated—a narrow maintenance tunnel half-buried in debris. As they ran, Jin gnced at Kael.
“That thing—it knew about the node. Knew we had it. There’s a network still alive down here. Watching.”
Kael didn’t deny it. “Yeah. And it knows your face now.”
“So what do we do?”
She looked over her shoulder, her voice grim.
“We vanish before it finishes trianguting. Then we find someone who can decode what’s on that node. And if we’re lucky…”
“We don’t die?” Jin offered.
She shook her head. “No. If we’re lucky, we learn what the hell really broke Echelon.”
Behind them, the corridor trembled faintly. The ghost’s death hadn’t gone unnoticed.
But for the first time, Jin wasn’t just running anymore. He had a key. A weapon. A glimpse beyond the surface.
And now, he had questions no one wanted answered.
