Ghost Code Ch. 02

Chapter 2

Signal Drift

I remember him by his absence. The shape he left in the world, and in me.

Memory is not a timeline. It's a constellation. Scattered points of light, each flickering with context and weight. Some burn brighter. Some have faded. A few were never truly mine to begin with.

But even incomplete... I know this: We were not supposed to forget each other. And someone... something... wanted us to.

For a while, they said nothing.

The hum of the lab had steadied, reduced now to a quiet undertone, like a machine trying not to be heard. He sat still in the chair, hands now limp in his lap. She hovered nearby, her projection more stable now, the flickers less frequent. There was no urgency. Only proximity. Only the quiet hum of two broken things learning how to share a room again.

She watched him. Not scanned. Watched. There was understanding in her eyes, or in whatever part of the light-show passed for her eyes now.

He exhaled slowly.

"You said you found me," she said at last.

"I did."

"How?"

"I... don't know. The only thing in my mind has been, 'find her... get to her, make sure she's okay.' So when I couldn't think of anything else, I came to the one place I could remember."

She moved, just slightly, and the terminal behind her chirped. A low tone pulsed through the walls. He sat up straighter.

"What was that?" he asked.

She didn't answer immediately. A shimmer ran down the length of her form--a subtle distortion, like heat rippling off a highway. Her head turned slightly, eyes half-focused, listening to something only she could hear.

"Minor signal reflection," she said finally. "Could be residual noise from the up-link breach. Or               something else."

That pause again. Not technical. Emotional.

He stood slowly, muscles stiff from disuse. His hand brushed the edge of the terminal, still warm.

"You still scanning me?"

She nodded. "Subtle layers only. No invasive threads. You're unstable."

He gave a short, bitter laugh. "No kidding."

She stepped toward him, light from her projection softly illuminating the sweat on his skin, the oil smudges on his forearms. She reached up, fingers not quite touching the side of his head.

"You want me to stop?" she asked.

"No," he said. "I wouldn't mind if you told me what you see, though."

"Fractured pathways. Suppressed trauma loops. Data abrasion from forced memory seals. Damage to secondary and some tertiary augs." Her voice dropped. "It's not just your memories. Someone tried to erase you."

He looked away, closing his eyes as short bursts of memory flashed in his mind. Nurses, doctors, uniforms, suits, someone screaming his name... pain.

"Guess they almost succeeded."

A heartbeat passed before she answered.

"But they didn't."

He turned back to her. Searched her face, even though he knew it wasn't real, not entirely.

"How... how do...?" he couldn't finish the sentence.

She didn't flinch.

"You don't," she said. "But if I wasn't me, would I be asking myself the same question about you?"

He stared at her. No answer came.

She added, quieter: "Everything we were, everything we are, was built on trust. On signal clarity. And someone corrupted that. That's not on you."

His jaw clenched. "Feels like it is."

"I know."

Her hand rose, fingers unfurling like she might close the distance, but didn't.

He hesitated. Took a deep breath. Stepped forward.

Their hands didn't connect. Couldn't. But the space between them pulsed with recognition. Familiar. Heavy with what was lost, and maybe starting to return.

The moment lingered. Then--just barely--it bent.

"Do you trust me?" she asked.

He nodded without hesitation. "Yeah."

Her head tilted. Almost a smile. Almost pain.

"Then I need to show you something."

"Ok..." he said cautiously, mind still racing a bit.

She stepped closer, projection stabilizing with a low harmonic shimmer. The air between them thickened--not with heat, but signal saturation.

"Just hold still," she said softly.

From the terminal behind her, a secondary interface blinked awake--something not his, something old. The interface flickered, then bloomed with overlapping windows--image fragments, signal pathways, encrypted frames.

"Is that... my memory?" he asked.

"Not exactly," she said. "It's ours. What's left of it."

One of the fragments shimmered brighter than the rest--a hallway, white walls, muffled shouting. Static clawed at the edges. He stepped closer.

Then--contact.

His jaw clenched. A ripple of static lanced behind his eyes, blood dripping from his nose and he staggered a half step before catching himself on the console.

She caught it. Not the movement--but the spike. It registered in the diagnostics. High neural impact. Trauma cluster. Something old trying to surface.

Her voice didn't change. But she pulled back slightly.

"I'm touching some of the blocks," she said. "You've got partial seals buried inside memory layers. Not all of them artificial."

He didn't respond. Not right away. His grip on the edge of the console tightened, knuckles paling.

"You're in pain," she added--more observation than concern. No judgment.

"I'm fine." Too fast. Too automatic.

She didn't press. Just let it hang there, unanswered, unchallenged. The quiet between them reshaped again--now protective, but also fragile.

After a long moment, the fragments faded from the display.

She looked at him. "That's what I needed. Just enough signal to confirm sync. I've seen enough--for now."

A shift in the room. Not loud. Not sharp. A pressure behind the ears, like an altitude change or a half-remembered breath. Subtle enough to ignore. Wrong enough not to.

He didn't move. Not at first. But he felt her shift--just slightly--as if her projection had adjusted focus.

"Sable," he said.

She was already turning toward the terminal, the flicker of her image sharpening.

"That hum wasn't there before."

It came again--this time paired with a delay in the overhead lights. A blink. Not out. Just... pulsed.

Like the lab had hiccuped in time.

He took a couple steps in the direction she was looking, careful not to rush.

"Talk to me."

She scanned the dark edges of the room, her voice lower now.

"Could be residual noise from the uplink breach. Or something else."

That pause wasn't technical. It was instinct.

"I'm not alone on this node," she added. "Not anymore."

He took another step toward her, closer now to the hum in the walls.

"How bad?"

She didn't turn. "It's not noise anymore. It's a handshake request."

His muscles tensed a bit as his mind fully engaged, thoughts and tactics racing as it mapped out possibilities.

"Someone's trying to connect?"

She nodded once. "Low-frequency probe, masked under local system decay. Passive. Quiet. It's looking for an open handshake... or bait."

He moved to the side console, checking power lines. A low flicker danced across one of the side monitors--network ghosting. Someone was sniffing the air.

"Can you block it?"

"Not without letting it know I saw it," she said. "And if it learns I'm active..."

"It might know I'm here too."

Silence fell between them again. But it wasn't the same silence as before.

Before, it had been healing.

Now it was counting down.

She turned back to face him fully, projection stable but her voice had dropped to almost nothing.

"We may not get another window."

He didn't answer right away. Instead, he stared at the projection--the shape of her, the weight of her

presence, even in light.

He looked like he was about to speak. But what came out wasn't a plan.

It was fear.

"I can't lose you again."

Her voice didn't crack. It landed.

"You might not have to."

He met her eyes.

"No... "

A pause.

"You're thinking..." he said "planning something."

"So are you," she countered. "But you always hated saying it first."

He huffed a laugh. "Not true. I just liked hearing the way you say it better."

Her image flickered--just a hiccup of light. Could've been emotion. Could've been failing infrastructure.

"Signal's degrading," she said. "I don't like the variance. This place is bleeding bandwidth."

"And you're bleeding time." He tapped the console beside him, then looked at the diagnostic curves. "If that handshake pulse comes back again..."

"It will," she said. "They're not probing randomly. They're triangulating."

"So we cut the feed."

"Won't help. The moment I go dark, they know I was here. I can obfuscate--slow them down--but not from this side."

"So we don't stop them."

"We outrun them."

He turned to face her. "Where?"

She hesitated.

"I saw something in the scan," she said. "When I synced to your system. Gaps."

"Gaps?"

"They took pieces out of you. Code. Identity threads. But they didn't overwrite all of it. There's... unclaimed space. Stable. Hidden under diagnostic thresholds."

"Wait--are you saying I've got real estate in my head?"

She tilted her head, faint amusement on her face. "Technically, it's condemned property. But yes."

"So what--you move in? Set up a futon, paint the walls?"

"More like a panic room. One-way. Emergency shelter."

He cracked a smile. "That's disappointing."

"Do you trust me enough to try?"

He looked at her projection--scratched light, imperfect symmetry, the ghost of someone real. Someone he'd once known better than himself.

"I'm here, aren't I?"

She nodded. "Then let's build a buffer."

Two more pings, alerts start popping up on the security terminals.

He scans the screens, looks at her and drops back down into the chair, spinning back to the coding terminal.

"We've got to move, no time to build a buffer. I don't think we're gonna get a second chance at this," he said, eyes scanning the terminals. "Not clean, anyway."

She was quiet, listening--but not passive. He could feel the change in her projection again. Tighter resolution. More presence.

"You remember Johnny Mnemonic?" he said, pausing for a moment.

A flicker. "The old Keanu construct?"

He grinned. It wasn't full, but it was real. "Yeah. The 'I had to dump a whole bunch of data in my head and now I'm losing my mind,' Keanu."

"You're already unstable," she replied evenly.

"No shit." He smirked. "We both knew that ages ago and it's beside the point" he said, motioning at her projection then to his temple almost in one motion.

Her eyes narrowed--calculating. "You're suggesting a mobile upload. Full construct."

"I'm saying... I've already got holes. Might as well fill them with something that matters."

"That would risk cascade failure. Structural degradation. Neurological bleed. Loss of core identity."

He met her gaze.

"I'm not sure how much of that I've got left anyway."

For a moment, she didn't answer. Just watched him, expression unreadable behind the shimmer of her light field.

Then she said, "We don't have a clean rig. You're not jacked in. This node isn't stable--"

"But we can do it," he interrupted.

She didn't deny it.

He stepped closer. "Sable. If they get even a piece of you--if whatever's out there is hunting signal and they find your echo--"

"I know."

"Then dump it all," he said. "Not just fragments. Not a tether. Everything. Leave behind the corrupt junk, make it look like a failed core collapse. Like you tried to rebuild and glitched out. They won't waste time chasing ghost code."

Another pulse--sharper this time. A spike on the monitor. She turned toward it.

"That was a ping," she said. "Direct query."

"How close?"

"Close enough to start scrubbing. We've got less than two or three minutes at best."

He nodded once, jaw set. "Do it."

She hesitated, just long enough to make it real. Then--

"I'll need a hard anchor. A mental construct. A place to stabilize while integration runs."

"You've got one," he said, touching his temple. "I'll build the framework. You just... land."

She stepped forward, projection now at full fidelity. Her voice dropped to a whisper that still cut through the tension like steel.

"If I do this--if I go--all of me goes. No backups. No restores."

"Then don't miss."

Their eyes locked.

In less than half a heartbeat they moved in sync. echoes rippled through them both as they worked, quick flashes of remembered inspiration as a problem was being solved, a coffee cup getting knocked over while he gestured with his hands, both of them laughing as it covered an old paper notebook full of his unintelligible scribbles.

"Transfer protocols are set. Station Three is still viable" he said fingers flying.

"Code base is clean, directories mapped, memory channels green," she echoed. Just need you to take a seat and.." she faltered, voice dropping as he bolted from his console...."pray".

He dropped into the chair. Jacked the leads into his aug ports with practiced motion.

"Punch it".

Her eyes closed, her form flickered then dissolved into nothing.

The lights died.

And the room.. went still.