---
The city never truly slept.
Even beneath the wreckage and rebellion, its heart still beat—pulsing through neon arteries, electric breath rising in clouds over the rooftops. But something had shifted. A frequency only the broken could hear.
*Black Signal.*
That's what the undernet called it. A quiet purge. Units deployed in silence. Names erased from networks like dust wiped from glass. They came without warning. Without law. Without mercy.
And now—they were coming for Noah.
---
Rye's hand hovered over the map projection, fingers sifting through layers of surveillance feeds and police scanner intercepts.
"Sector 9's off-grid. EMPed three hours ago," she said. "They're closing in."
Noah leaned against the bar's cracked counter, jaw clenched. He hadn't slept. Couldn't. Every time his eyes closed, he saw Unit 0's face—calm, cold, *knowing.*
"She said Kael would come," he muttered. "But I didn't think he'd move this fast."
"He's not just hunting you," Rye said. "He's covering the exits. Data brokers, ghostline hackers, even the underground clinics are getting hit."
"And the ones who talk?"
"Don't exist anymore."
Noah stood up. "Then we hit back before we disappear."
Rye looked at him.
"Are you sure that's what *you* want? This isn't survival anymore. It's war."
He stared at his hand—still twitching from the code echoes left by Unit 0. He hadn't told Rye, but things were changing. He could feel it. Data bleeding through skin. His heartbeat syncing to distant signals.
He was becoming something else.
Maybe even what Kael wanted him to be.
But if that was true—he'd use it to burn the system down.
"War it is," he said.
---
They met the contact in the bones of an old subway line. Sector 3. Beneath the sleeping towers of the elite. The contact called herself **Clara**—young, wild-eyed, former surveillance analyst for a minor corp that Specter had devoured.
She tapped her chipped nails against the side of a neural drive as she leaned over her rig.
"You're the ghost?" she asked, peering at Noah. "Thought you'd be taller."
He smirked. "I thought you'd be more discreet."
"Cute," she said. "But if you want the signal, I need payment."
Rye dropped a small black cube on the table.
Clara's eyes widened.
"Encrypted corpse-file?"
"Straight from the Hollow," Rye said. "Uncleaned."
Clara smiled like a predator. "You just bought yourself a piece of the black signal."
She plugged the cube into her terminal and began decrypting.
Lines of code scrolled across the screen like falling rain.
"Three days ago, Kael activated a deep protocol," Clara said. "Call sign *Black Signal*. Buried in the undernet like a kill switch. No records. No approvals. This isn't just about you, Ghost."
"It's about what I woke up," Noah said.
"Exactly."
She brought up a file.
A logo flickered onto the screen: an eye inside a gear. Below it, a line of dead text:
> **CODE NAME: ORPHAN CORE INITIATIVE.**
Rye frowned. "What the hell is that?"
Clara turned, voice serious now.
"That's not a kill order."
"That's a *reset.*"
---
Clara explained what little she knew.
Years ago, Specter had created an emergency protocol in case one of their prototypes became unstable. If triggered, it would wipe all known test subjects from every city grid, collapse their ghostline connections, and detonate neural implants remotely.
But it wasn't just a system fail-safe.
It was a purge.
"And it activates in twelve hours," Clara whispered. "Noah, you're not the only one out there. And if Kael flips this switch—*every last Specter survivor dies.*"
Noah went cold.
"I thought I was the last."
Clara shook her head. "No. You're just the one that *ran loudest.*"
He looked at Rye.
"We have to stop it."
She nodded. "Where's the command node?"
Clara hesitated. Then pulled up a schematic.
"A black site. Hidden under the eastern comm tower. No access point on record. Only way in…"
"…is through the top."
Noah stared at the glowing tower on the map.
So high it vanished into the smog.
A relic of the old war. Now hollowed out. Reinforced. Full of mercs and specter hounds.
A suicide mission.
"Then we go up," he said.
---
They hit the comm tower at night.
Two drones. One hacked utility van. Clara monitoring their signal feeds from a moving base node.
The lower levels were easy. Specter's focus was on perimeter sweeps—expecting attacks from below, never above.
They took the lift halfway before jamming the security locks.
Then climbed.
Hand over hand. Floor after floor. Past rusted ducts and shattered maintenance rails. One slip, and the fall would end them.
But neither spoke.
There was no room for doubt anymore.
Only the mission.
At floor 82, they paused. Breathing hard. Rain lashed the windows outside.
Noah turned to Rye.
"You don't have to come."
"Don't be stupid," she said. "If you die, I'm stuck with Clara."
He smiled faintly.
Then blew the next hatch open with a shock charge.
The command floor was a cathedral of glass and black steel—screens humming, data spiraling across suspended monitors.
And at its center, standing like a warden over the storm—
—*Kael.*
Tall.
Immaculate.
Cold as a scalpel.
He turned as the smoke cleared, one cybernetic eye adjusting with a faint whir.
"Unit 13," he said. "You came home."
Noah stepped forward.
"I'm not yours anymore."
Kael didn't smile.
Didn't flinch.
Just raised a hand.
And from the shadows behind him, six enforcers stepped forward.
All armored. All carrying null-blades and magnetic rifles.
All Specter ghosts.
Noah blinked.
They weren't just guards.
They were *prototypes.*
Like him.
Rye whispered. "He rebuilt the project."
"No," Noah said, heart sinking. "He *finished* it."
Kael nodded once.
"You wanted the truth, Ghost?" he said. "Here it is."
> "*You were never the last.*"
> "*You were the first.*"
---
**Black Signal (Part 2)**
Kael stood still as stone, his words ringing in the silence like a detonated truth.
> *"You were never the last."*
> *"You were the first."*
The air in the command tower grew colder. The six Specter operatives moved in a semi-circle formation around Noah and Rye—blades humming, rifles charged.
Noah's breath hitched. For a moment, the entire world narrowed to a single point. Not fear. Not rage. Something worse.
Recognition.
Each of the prototypes—Unit 14 through 19—wore the same mark beneath their necks. A black-stamped spectrogram. Identical to the one Noah had uncovered burned into his own spine two months ago.
"You cloned me," Noah said, voice low.
Kael finally moved—slow, deliberate steps forward, boots echoing on steel.
"No. I iterated you. Your body, your mind, your impulses—they were the foundation. You were the unstable build. They are the perfected code."
"They're not people."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "Neither are you."
Rye raised her gun. "I beg to differ."
Before Kael could react, she fired a pulse round—dead center.
It hit a kinetic field and scattered like dust.
"Your mistake," Kael said.
The prototypes moved.
Noah surged forward, intercepting the closest: Unit 15—a female with surgical calm and silver circuitry coiled through her skin. She spun her null-blade with frightening speed. He ducked, grabbed her wrist, and slammed her into a support beam. Sparks burst.
But another was already behind him.
Unit 17—a brute with reinforced limbs and no hesitation. He brought his fist down like a hammer. Noah barely rolled aside. The floor cracked open where his head had been.
Rye dropped low and fired again, this time at the ceiling—shattering the sprinkler array. Water burst across the floor, steam rising where it met the heat of the electrical coils.
"EMP in three—two—" she shouted.
She slammed a trigger.
The modified grenade detonated with a shriek of static. Lights stuttered. The prototypes flinched as neural dampeners scrambled their targeting software.
Noah didn't wait.
He launched himself forward, using the chaos, disabling one with a blow to the spinal port. He yanked a neural drive from its port. The prototype collapsed, twitching.
Kael didn't move. He simply watched.
Noah lunged for him.
Kael sidestepped, impossibly fast. He caught Noah's arm and slammed him down with precision—bone-jarring force. Noah gasped, breath knocked out.
"Still emotional," Kael said. "Still broken."
Noah coughed, vision swimming. "Still...human."
Kael's expression darkened. "Then that is your flaw."
He turned to the surviving prototypes.
"Reset the system. Activate *Orphan Core.*"
One of them, Unit 14, tapped into the console. Despite the EMP's partial disruption, the core remained shielded. A screen flashed red.
> **INITIATING ORPHAN CORE PROTOCOL.**
A timer began: **00:04:59**
Five minutes until total purge.
Rye screamed, "Noah, the node!"
Noah rolled onto his knees, eyes burning.
And then something inside him *cracked.*
A frequency, sharp and cold, lanced through his skull. Data unzipped across his retinas. He saw the tower not as a structure—but as a web of connected pathways. Wires. Heat. Pulse. Rhythm.
And he *knew* the code.
He rose.
Kael stepped back, uncertain for the first time.
Noah moved without touching the console. His thoughts reached into the system. Algorithms bent. Firewall keys folded.
He spoke—and the machine *listened.*
> "Override. Command Level Ghost."
The timer froze at **00:02:07**
Kael's eyes widened. "That's not possible. That command was erased."
Noah stepped forward, each word ice.
> "Not erased. *Buried.* Like everything else you didn't want remembered."
He slammed his hand down on the surface. It didn't break—it *obeyed.*
> "Rewriting protocol tree."
> "Black Signal—nullified."
The lights pulsed once.
And then the countdown vanished.
The entire command floor fell into silence.
Rye exhaled like she hadn't breathed in minutes. Clara's voice crackled through the comms.
> "I just saw a spike on the undernet. Noah, you—*you just deleted Black Signal from the root servers.* It's gone. Like it was never written."
Kael stared at him.
"I created you to be a weapon."
Noah met his eyes.
"You created a conscience."
Kael lunged.
But this time, Noah was faster.
He caught his creator's wrist, twisted it, and threw him across the command room. Kael hit the console, hard, cracking it. He slumped.
Blood trailed from his mouth.
But he smiled.
"You think it ends here?"
Noah stood over him, fists clenched.
"It does for you."
Kael whispered something under his breath.
Then pressed a blade to his own throat—and *sliced.*
Rye screamed.
Noah dove forward, but it was too late.
Kael collapsed, lifeless.
Dead by his own hand.
A silence fell like ash.
Noah looked down at the man who had built him, broken him, then tried to erase him.
And still, Kael had chosen control—even over his death.
Rye joined him, quietly.
"He knew we wouldn't kill him."
"So he did it himself."
Noah said nothing.
Then turned to the remaining prototypes.
They stood still—expressionless, eyes dim.
Without Kael's commands, they were lost.
"What do we do with them?" Rye asked.
Noah stepped toward Unit 14.
She blinked.
"Awaiting input," she said.
Noah took a deep breath.
"Then listen. Your orders are gone. Your mission is over. You're not tools. Not anymore."
She tilted her head. "Then what are we?"
He met her eyes.
"Free."
---
They left the tower at dawn.
The city skyline burned orange through the fog, casting long shadows across the streets.
Clara met them at a dead drop point in Sector 4, her eyes wide.
"You actually did it," she said. "Black Signal's gone. The comm tower's dark. And half the undernet thinks you're some kind of cyber-god."
Noah didn't smile.
"Let them think what they want."
Clara looked at the six prototypes, now walking behind him in silence. Their faces were unreadable. Clean. Empty.
But not hollow.
"Are they really like you?" she asked.
"No," he said. "They're like what *I was*."
She nodded. "Then what now?"
Noah glanced at Rye.
She shrugged. "They'll come again. Another Kael. Another project. There's always another tower to burn."
He looked back at the horizon.
"No," he said. "Next time, we don't burn it."
"We *build* something better."
---