Fifty-three. Fifty-two. The automated count continued without pause. Tashira's muscles contracted in violent spasms, dragging her vision out of alignment until the crystalline atrium blurred into jagged streaks. Her patents and the research securing her soul's anchor were slated for destruction.
Kaveh’s grip on her hand tightened, pulling her forward with surprising force. “The primary repository hub is Level Delta-Eight,” he barked, his voice cutting through the klaxons. “Seventy floors down. It’s the only place to physically abort Alpha-Seven.”
He didn’t wait for a response, yanking her towards the nearest express lift shaft. The lift doors, usually a placid shimmer of pearlescent metal, shot open with an impatient hiss. Inside, the car plunged downwards, a dizzying freefall that pressed Tashira back against the cool durasteel wall. The Lumen-Net streamers, forgotten for a moment, scattered as the lift descended, their frantic cries and flashing holoscreens fading above.
Forty-one. Forty. The lift whined and ground to a halt at Level Beta-Seven. Kaveh struck the control housing with the heel of his hand. “Laleh locked down specific shafts. We switch to service stairs.”
They burst out, the air immediately thicker, cooler, carrying the faint tang of ozone and chilled metal. The pristine, open spaces of the upper floors gave way to narrower corridors, exposed conduits snaking across the ceiling, their glow a dull hum. The warding barriers, engineered to neutralize unstable compounds, thickened with each descending tier. A numbing chill bit into Tashira's marrow, unraveling her posture. Her borrowed frame buckled under the drag; she caught herself on a braided conduit to stay upright.
“Keep moving!” Kaveh urged, matching her uneven strides without a word about her sudden pallor.
They reached another lift, smaller, grittier. This one dropped them through the final, deepest levels, where the air was heavy, almost suffocating. The glow of the conduits here was a sickly, flickering green, casting long, distorted shadows. Every fiber of Tashira’s being screamed. The suppression grid tore directly at the binding threads of her spirit. Static crawled across her retinas. Then, beneath Kaveh's fingers, her right hand *phased*.
It wasn’t a trick of the light. Her fingers, still clasped in his, became translucent, like smoke, dissolving into the air before snapping back into solid form an instant later. The sensation was excruciating, a cold, empty void where her flesh should be, followed by a burning ache. The local field was actively unraveling her flesh.
Kaveh halted. Blood fled his cheeks as he stared down at her shifting skin. “What… what was that?” he whispered, his grip tightening as the automated count ticked to twenty-one.
“The suppression mesh,” Tashira managed, pressing her palm to her sternum. “It’s accelerating the split.” To elaborate was impossible; pride choked back any admission of how quickly her hold was slipping.
Kaveh’s grip on her hand became a crushing vice. His eyes narrowed, burning with an intensity that bordered on fury. He pulled her away from the monolith of the cooling tower. “Don’t you dare,” he snarled, a tremor rattling his tone that she had never heard before. “Don’t you *dare* vanish on me again, Tashira. Not like this.”
*Again*. The word struck her cold. He had seen through the facade all along.
“I’ve chased your shadow for years, you arrogant, brilliant woman!” he rasped, his face inches from hers. “I watched you slip away once. I will not watch it twice. Move!”
He released her hand, shoving her towards a reinforced access panel set into the server rack. “My biometric profile is the only administrative bypass for Alpha-Seven deletion on this level.”
Seventeen. Sixteen. Tashira swallowed the shock of his words, locking her focus solely onto the terminal.
Kaveh pressed his palm against the glass. A chime sounded, and the plate retracted to expose optical strands braided around a brass interrupter switch. “My signet can't interface here,” he said, rough-edged. “Legacy hardware. Palm verification only. Pull it.”
Fourteen. Thirteen. Tashira seized the brass switch, ignoring the dead numbness running along her arm, and dragged it down. A shrill klaxon shrieked across the chamber, then cut into dead silence.
“Deletion protocol Alpha-Seven, targeting Legacy Alchemy Patents, Vandan, has been halted. All data integrity confirmed.” The automated voice, this time, delivered a message of salvation.
Tashira sagged against the metal framework, cold condensation soaking through her sleeve. The documents remained intact.
Kaveh began keying inputs into the console beside the breaker. “Let’s see whose clearance backed Laleh’s command. A purge of this magnitude demands secondary sign-off.”
His fingers flew across the holographic keyboard, lines of code scrolling past. Tashira watched, her breath held tight. If Laleh was just a pawn, who was the true orchestrator?
Kaveh halted, tapping an entry on the scroll. “Interesting,” he murmured. “Laleh tripped the initial trigger, yes. But the secondary counter-signature that sanctioned a purge of a founder's work…” He angled the luminescent display toward her. “It bears a Tier-One cryptographic signature.”
Her gaze locked onto the alphanumeric string. The cryptographic key belonged to Minoo—the identical string Tashira had helped her formulate years ago.
“The purge wasn't Laleh working alone,” Kaveh said plainly. “Minoo’s administrative key approved the execution.”
Tashira stared at the glowing glyphs, her throat dry. Minoo had saved her life with the body swap, yet her cryptographic fingerprint sat here on the execution order. The countdown had stopped, but the questions were only beginning.