[POV: Sofia Lanka]

"Don't touch me, Alistair. If you break the circuit while my mind is fused with the Spire’s uplinks, you won't just kill me—you’ll fry the neural pathways of every person currently caught in the Harvest. I’m not just looking for a friend. I’m threading a needle through a hurricane of screaming data. One wrong move and we both dissolve into white noise."

Sofia’s voice was barely a whisper, vibrating with a metallic resonance that made the air in the cramped rift-jumper feel heavy. She was strapped into the rear tactical chair, her head encased in a jagged web of silver fiber-optic cables that pulsed in time with...