CHAPTER 43
“The Ghost in the Wires”
At first, the stories spread like static.
No one knows who starts them. Maybe it’s a child who saw the drones fall and thought it was a miracle. Maybe it’s a syndicate runner whispering through the smoke for courage. Maybe it’s just the city talking to itself in the only language it remembers.
They call her the Ghost in the Wires.
The one who silenced the machines. The one who turned the sky red and made it bleed code. The one who walks the grid like a god wearing a woman’s skin.
No one agrees on what she looks like. Some say she glows from the inside. Some say her eyes reflect the whole skyline. Some say if you whisper her name into a dead comm, the line will breathe back: I hear you.
In the daylight, they clean the streets, bury their dead, and
