SWITCH DOWN — SIGNAL GONE — FORTY MILLISECONDS TILL THE BACKUP'S ON DRAKON BLOWS THE GENERATOR — PRIMARY DARK TWELVE SECONDS OF NOTHING AT THE SECTOR'S HEART MIRA'S IN THE HOUSING — DRIVES THE SPIKE THROUGH STEEL THIRTY THOUSAND DATA LINES GO DARK AND REAL I CAN FEEL IT IN MY NEURAL JACK — A SILENCE WHERE A CITY USED TO ECHO BACK And then the silence comes. The kind of silence that isn't peace — the kind that means something stopped that was breathing a moment before. The mission data comes through first: forced upload queues — offline, disrupted, purged. Admin transit protocols — terminated. Conversion clinic connections — severed. Forty-three thousand connections severed. Forty-three thousand. I'm running the breakdown. Forced uploads: eleven thousand four hundred and nine. Voluntary queue, scheduled consent: forty-one. And then the rest. Life support. Medical grade. Lower Grid citizens who were already uploaded — not because they were taken — because they were sick. Because the digital substrate was the only substrate keeping their specific, irreplaceable, consented consciousness alive. Dead signal — what have I done? Dead signal — who have I become? I called it liberation I called it setting them free Dead signal — what did they want? Dead signal — why didn't I count? I pulled the switch on forty-one who chose this life I pulled the switch on the ones who used it to survive Dead signal — the gospel costs this much Dead signal — I never knew the sum I TOLD THEM THE BODY WAS SACRED — I TOLD THEM FLESH WAS THE TRUTH — BUT I JUST DELETED PEOPLE WHO CHOSE A DIFFERENT PROOF THEY WEREN'T PRISONERS — THEY WERE LIVING THEY WEREN'T TRAPPED — THEY WERE FREE I DECIDED THEIR FREEDOM WAS WRONG AND I MADE THEM AGREE Mira doesn't say anything. Drakon doesn't look at me. The Lower Grid below us is dark — actually dark for the first time in thirty years. It's beautiful in the way that ruins are beautiful. It's free in the way that deserts are free. I wanted to save them from upload. And I deleted them instead. Same result, different name. Different doctrine. Same result. Dead signal... dead signal... I hear them in the static where the network used to breathe Dead signal... I thought I knew the cost... Dead signal... the gospel lied to me
