Mira said nothing. The rain was soaking through her jacket.

“I wouldn’t,” Voss said. “The handshake you copied? It wasn’t a security flaw. It was a trap .” She stepped closer, the rain beginning to fall in thin, silver lines. “SCardSpy is brilliant, by the way. Clumsy in places—your entropy seeding is a mess—but the core concept is elegant. Copy, don’t break. That’s why I let it spread.”

The chip in Mira’s wrist beeped twice—a soft, almost apologetic sound—before going dark.

Mira shook it.

She froze mid-step on the crowded Tokyo skywalk, the morning rush flowing around her like water around a stone. The familiar pulse of data, the constant hum of the city’s permission network, was gone. For the first time in three years, she was completely offline.

Now she was holding the digital keys to something she didn’t understand.

“You let it?”