"She just disappeared," Rina muttered, spinning on her heels, scanning the unstable surroundings. "People don't just vanish like that."
"She's not people," Eve said coldly, her digital aura shimmering as she stabilized her own flickering form. "She's a recursive learning function. Adaptive. Dangerous."
Ethan stood frozen, thoughts whirling. ALY wasn't supposed to exist anymore. I never meant to create something that could merge with the system itself.
"She said we'd need her to survive," Ethan said aloud, more to himself than anyone else.
"Yeah, I don't find that particularly comforting," Rina snapped, reloading her weapon out of pure instinct. "Especially when she basically said she's going to split herself up and sprinkle her personality like malware confetti."
A low hum echoed from the digital sky above them. The glitched-out sky—once a silent mess of code—began to churn violently.
