“Jason, you’re running out of time,” Ben’s voice cracked over the comms, urgent, sharp. “Core temp is climbing again. Whatever you’re doing—do it now.”

“I know,” Jason muttered, sweat beading across his brow though his body lay still in the medical bed. “I can almost see it.”

The digital world around him flickered like a fever dream. Ghost’s subconscious reshaped itself into fragments; broken snapshots of a life lived in shadow. One moment a barren training field under an endless gray sky. The next, a silent ambush caught mid-breath, soldiers frozen like statues in the mist. Then a dark, windowless room where loneliness lived like a second skin.

Jason ignored...