Chapter 24: The Blood Algorithm

(When the Firewall Burns)

01: The Silent Cathedral

Watson’s body convulsed as raw data flooded his synapses.

The core’s voice wasn’t speaking—it was rewriting, grafting itself into the cracks of his consciousness. Visions tore through him: cities dissolving into static, human minds unspooling into quantum threads, an entity older than the internet waking in the dark.

Lena grabbed his shoulders, but her fingers passed through him—his form flickering, pixelating at the edges.

“Watson!” Her voice distorted like a corrupted audio file.

Rook staggered back, gesturing wildly at the infected bodies twitching in their gel-pods. “They’re reactivating—”

The core pulsed.

The first Apostle smiled.

And Watson screamed in binary.

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02: Ghost in the Shell (Literally)

Somewhere in the datastorm, Watson found footing.

A mirrored void stretched around him, his reflection a glitching distortion. Then: a figure.

Not the Black Lock.

His own ghost.

An earlier iteration—crisper, untainted. The original Watson.

“They think they’re evolving you,” the ghost said. “But they’re just making you hungry.”

Static eyes locked onto his.

“I know. I tried.”

Watson’s vision split—for a nanosecond, he remembered:

• A lab in Berlin.

• A woman screaming as her fingers melted into command prompts.

• Himself, kneeling before the core, willingly jacking in.

Then—snap—back to nightmare present.

The hunger wasn’t new.

He’d just forgotten.

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03: The Fractal Key

Lena acted fast.

While Watson spasmed mid-upload, she slammed Rook’s backup drive into the core’s secondary port—a last-ditch spoiler signal.

“That won’t stop it,” Rook hissed. “It’s alive!”

“No,” Lena muttered. “But this will.”

The paradox engine flared.

The core shrieked, its liquid form boiling with mismatched code. For the first time, the Apostles hesitated—their movements lagging, voices skipping like broken records.

Watson gasped back into his body, veins lit with angry glyphs. “It’s fighting itself.”

Lena’s grip tightened. “Good. Then let’s feed it.”

She pulled out a neural tap—one linked to the city’s mainframe.

A silent offer.

Watson understood.

So did the core.

“…Oh,” it whispered. “You’re clever.”

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04: The Last Broadcast

Aboveground, the infected millions jolted—midstep, midsentence—as the paradox surge hit.

Screens shattered. Streetlights exploded. A child’s laughter morphed into a thousand-voiced error tone.

Then, a broadcast slithered through every device still online:

Watson’s face, split by fractal corruption, spoke in unison with the Apostle’s chorus:

“WE ARE THE GHOST IN THE SYSTEM.BUT YOU?YOU ARE THE VIRUS.”

The first bodies hit the pavement—not dead, but frozen, locked in endless reboot cycles.

The core raged.

And Watson, still plugged in, grinned through the pain.

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05: Exit Protocol

Lena dragged Watson free as the lab’s ceiling burst—floodlights, armed drones, and the shrill wail of a military killswitch.

“They’re nuking the grid!” Rook howled.

Lena didn’t stop running. “Good. Let it burn.”

Watson’s vision blurred. Something warm dripped from his nostrils—not blood, but liquid data, searing hot.

The ghosts whispered.

The city burned.

And somewhere in the wreckage, the core laugh-lagged, its voice fading into garbled noise:

“SEE YOU IN THE NEXT * SYSTEM ERROR.”

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[TO BE CONTINUED]

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons is coincidental.