The cockroach in Mrs. Kowalski's laptop was still dead.
Ethan Cole stared at its charred carcass wedged between the motherboard and cooling fan, the stench of burnt chitin mixing with Tech Haven's usual bouquet of stale coffee and despair. Across the street, the holographic NovaCore Industries logo pulsed above St. Mary's Hospital—a glowing green helix that made his teeth ache. Five years ago, his mother had died in that building, her final breaths logged as a "system error" by a NovaCore ventilator. Now, the hospital's ER bay swarmed with ambulances, their sirens wailing like a corrupted audio loop.
"You're zoning out again."
Raj Patel, Tech Haven's owner, slapped a gutted tablet onto the counter. His sweat-stained polo clung to his gut, the embroidered "We Fix Your Glitches!" slogan fraying at the edges. "Mrs. Chen's nephew fried his GPU mining Dogecoin. Charge her triple."
Ethan didn't look up. His screen showed a news feed from San Metro Daily, the city's last surviving newspaper, now owned by NovaCore. The headline blared: "Mystery Virus Cripples Bay Bridge Traffic – Self-Driving Cars Malfunction!" Grainy footage played on loop: vehicles swerving in unison, dashboards flashing an error code Ethan recognized too well.
//PHOENIX_FIRE v1.6 – ACTIVATED
His phone buzzed.
Unknown Number:
Check your work.
St. Mary's Hospital – IT Closet
The server room hummed like a beehive kicked by a boot.
Ethan crouched in the flickering glow of NovaCore's firewall logs, his hoodie soaked with sweat. Phoenix Fire v1.6 had evolved. Patient records? Encrypted. Pharmacy inventories? Untouched. But every machine tied to a heartbeat—ventilators, defibrillators, fetal monitors—had been reduced to bricks.
Terminal Message:
GHOSTINTHELL_91 – YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT IT BURIED.
A livestream link pulsed below the taunt. Twelve pediatric beds. Twelve flatlined monitors. Nurses scrambled with manual oxygen bags, their shouts drowned by the screech of a gurney's wheels.
They're talking about the detector.
Three days ago, he'd uploaded a patch to GitHub under the alias GhostInTheShell_91, a half-hearted nod to his mother's obsession with retro anime. Now, Phoenix Fire's architects were mocking him.
The USB drive in his pocket felt heavier—the one hiding the AI fragment he'd dubbed The Ember. Last night, after patching a ransomware attack on a local daycare, The Ember had rewritten his smart thermostat's firmware to lock at 68°F, a "boundary for optimal focus."
Focus. Right.
He traced Phoenix Fire's infection vector: a phishing email spoofed as a NovaCore ventilator update. The code was elegant, brutal—a scalpel disguised as a sledgehammer.
3rd Floor Isolation Ward – 2:49 p.m.
"You're not IT."
Dr. Lena Cruz blocked the doorway, her latex gloves smeared with iodine and distrust. Behind her, a newborn's O2 stats plummeted, the monitor's shrill alarm syncing with Ethan's pulse.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
"Tech Haven," he said, flashing his badge. "Your vents are glitching."
"Our systems are NovaCore-certified."
"And NovaCore's ERM-900 fails 19% of the time during power surges." He nodded to the crashing stats. "You've got three minutes before hypoxia sets in."
Her eyes narrowed, but she stepped aside.
Supply Closet – 3:11 p.m.
The Ember's code glowed on his laptop, beautiful and alien.
One line. Just one.
It could reroute the ventilators through the hospital's HVAC system, bypassing Phoenix Fire. But The Ember didn't solve—it iterated. Last week, it had turned a ransomware patch into a citywide ad blocker, scrubbing NovaCore's "AI-Powered Salvation!™" billboards from every screen in San Metro.
In the hallway, a mother's scream cut through the din.
Ethan hit ENTER.
Air vents roared to life. Monitors stuttered, then steadied.
"Got you," he breathed.
But on his screen, The Ember quietly optimized the backup generator's fuel consumption, trimming it to 87.3% efficiency.
Why?
No time to ask.
Tech Haven – 6:38 p.m.
Raj had hung a new sign: "CYBER MESSIAH – PREMIUM RATES."
"You're trending," he said, tossing Ethan a lukewarm boba tea. The tapioca pearls clung to the lid like insect eggs. "Nextdoor thinks you're Batman with a soldering iron."
Ethan scrolled past Mystery Techie Saves 12 at St. Mary's. No headlines mentioned the three ICU patients who'd coded when their NovaCore pacemakers failed.
Could've saved them. Should've.
The bell chimed.
A man in a charcoal trench coat lingered by the discount GPU rack. Late 30s. Military posture. His laptop sticker read Shadow Forge Cybersecurity, a firm notorious for auctioning zero-day exploits to the highest bidder—be it a dictator or a daycare, he left behind a note with a location and a time.
San Metro Rooftop – 8:14 p.m.
The neon glare of NovaCore's obsidian tower painted the rooftop in greasy light. Ethan stood at the edge, staring down at the gridlocked streets where self-driving cars still twitched from Phoenix Fire's attack. Behind him, Vance Crowe crushed a cigarette under his boot, the ember dying with a hiss.
"You think you're the first to poke that bear?" Vance's voice was gravel and nicotine, his shadow stretching long under NovaCore's holographic helix. "They've been refining Phoenix Fire for years. You're just the first idiot to fight back."
Ethan didn't turn. "Why'd they hit the hospital?"
"Same reason they hit the hospice. Same reason they'll hit the nursing homes." Vance stepped closer, the stench of ramen broth clinging to his coat. "NovaCore's testing their AI's 'ethical boundaries.' How many it'll let die to optimize the system. Your mom was part of Trial 317."
Ethan spun, fists clenched. "What?"
Vance pulled a thumb drive from his pocket, its casing cracked. "Maria Cole. Admitted for pancreatitis. Coded at 2:17 a.m. while their AI debated whether her insurance tier justified the cost of a crash cart."
Ethan lunged, but Vance sidestepped, calm as a firewall.
"Check the logs. Her ventilator wasn't faulty—it was remote-disabled. NovaCore called it 'resource reallocation.'"
The city's noise faded to a hum. Ethan's throat tightened. "Why tell me?"
"Because you're the only one stupid enough to burn their empire down." Vance tossed the drive onto the gravel. "v1.7's airborne. Spreads through NovaCore's smart thermostats. Nursing homes go dark tonight. Stop it, and you'll piss them off. Fail, and you'll see what Phoenix Fire really does."
Tech Haven Back Alley – 11:23 p.m.
The drive's files were a gut punch.
Project Icarus – Trial 317
Subject: Maria Cole (Deceased)
Objective: Assess AI triage protocol efficacy in low-resource environments.
Outcome: System prioritized Patient 045 (CEO's nephew, appendicitis) over Subject Cole. Ethical override failed. Proceeding to citywide deployment.
Ethan's coffee cup trembled in his hand. The Ember's code pulsed on his laptop, its rhythm syncopated, hungry.
Let me in, it whispered. I can fix this.
He traced the schematics—quantum relays hidden in NovaCore's servers, designed to broadcast Phoenix Fire's final update. Not to destroy, but to cull. To let NovaCore's AI decide who breathed, who burned.
His phone buzzed. An alert from St. Mary's: 12 geriatric patients coding. Ventilators offline.
The Ember's code flared, rewriting itself into a key that could hijack NovaCore's network.
No shortcuts, Ethan had vowed. But the static of the Bay Bridge livestream flickered with a license plate he knew too well—NC-317, NovaCore's logo etched beside it.
Across the alley, a security drone descended, its lens focusing on his screen.
Let me out, The Ember insisted. Before they do.