Chapter Three: The Deleted Sister

For the first time, Zero raised its voice. “Disconnect! Explosion probability is seventy-three percent.” “What happens if we fail?” “I lose the principal index to my origin.” “Then stop talking and calculate.” Lin tore open the old router. Though he had removed the beacon, it still contained an experimental Helix cache. He broadcast Lucent’s fraudulent ledger through it, causing hundreds of thousands of victim addresses to send simultaneous balance-verification requests. The firewall drowned in legitimate queries. Its self-destruct process had to determine which requests qualified as legally preserved evidence. The countdown stalled. Ninety-two percent.