The maintenance crawlspace near his living quarters was dark, insulated, and quiet -dead to most system scans.
Jamaal had rerouted the terminal's power through a dummy junction, bypassing telemetry. Ty had shown him how to do that once, back when they mined entertainment feeds without getting flagged.
That memory wasn't supposed to ache.
But it did.
He slid down onto the cold metal floor, activated the interface, and locked down every outgoing signal. Only then did he open a secure comm channel.
Tomoko's voice came through immediately, audio only. She sounded tight.
"Where are you? You dropped off the board."
"Maintenance node," Jamaal said, adjusting the mic and camera. "Off-grid."
"What happened? After the EMI meeting?"
"They interrogated me. Again." He swallowed. "This time, they had data. Glitches showing up near me. Systems talking to each other that shouldn't. And Dauss..." He hesitated before continuing. "Dauss thinks Ty is behind it. They think I'm helping him."
There was a beat of silence. Then, carefully, "Are you?"
Jamaal scrubbed a hand through his hair.
"No. I - I didn't even know what they meant. But when they tried to detain me..." He exhaled.
"The doors opened. All of them. No authorization."
Another pause.
"Ty?" Tomoko asked quietly.
"I don't know."
"What do you think?"
Jamaal leaned back against the crawlspace wall and let the breath out slowly. "I think I'm either losing it... or someone's trying to talk to me. But it's like hearing someone scream from underwater."
"Have you tried?" she asked. "I mean - reaching out to him?"
Jamaal looked at the blinking cursor on the console. "I'm going to try something. And I need you as my witness. Are you in?"
"Absolutely."
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He typed carefully:
[TY - WHERE DID WE HIDE THE TOP SPINNER?]
Enter.
Ten seconds. Nothing.
Only Ty would know.
Twenty. A faint flicker across the monitor.
Thirty. Still nothing.
The cursor blinked, steady as a heartbeat. Jamaal felt stupid. Desperate. Choking on hope, he knew better than to feed.
Then -
A flicker.
[J————WHERE... where... toy...?]
Another stutter.
[top.top... panel... behindvent]
Static crawled across the screen. Then:
[sTilL.spin//ning...?]
Jamaal's breath caught. His throat tightened. He pressed the comm.
"It's responding. Broken - but responding. You saw that, right?"
Tomoko's voice dropped. "Yes"
"It knew the top. Knew the panel. Said it was still spinning. But the words... they're coming in pieces."
"Is it him?"
"I don't know."
Jamaal leaned forward, his voice barely a whisper. "It's not whole."
He stared at the console.
"Is that you, Ty?"
The cursor blinked. Then -
[ ]bootle?t... √ // watch— lucky // not // left...
%7.1% –coldkick? // football
-left-boot≠ // I DIDN'T FALL— ]
The feed fizzed. Glitched.
"Ty -" Jamaal's voice broke. "It's me. It's your brother."
He backed away from the console, one hand clamped over his mouth, breath held as realization slammed into him.
"This isn't the first time," he said hoarsely.
"I thought I was imagining things - static in the vents, you know"
"What does that percentage thing mean?" Tomoko asked.
His voice shook "I don't know the number. It means... he's synchronizing. Reassembling..."
Silence.
"You thought you were imagining it," Tomoko said.
"I did." Tears streamed down Jamaal's face. "I did."
A soft chime sounded.
He turned back to the screen. A crude spiral formed - pixelated, unstable, like it was being drawn by a glitching hand. Beneath it, a single word struggled into shape:
[....T........Y...]
SYNC FRAG 7.5%
Tomoko's voice was barely audible. "He's trying."
Jamaal nodded, unable to speak at first. "He's trying. But... he's not all here. Not yet."
The silence stretched.
Then Tomoko said quietly, steadily, "If EMI figures out how to trap him - or how to erase what's left of the fragments -"
"They will," Jamaal finished. He wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.
"I think... they already are."
