Chapter Five: The War for Reality

Before the bureau arrived, Gu hid inside a cadaver transport cabinet. The idea came from Nanny. The underground lab remained registered as a sealed site from the fire twenty years ago, and the refrigeration cabinets belonged to an independent safety circuit beyond Mirror Harbor. Rust shorted the wheelchair to make smoke, White Elm lowered Gu's metabolism below the autopsy threshold, and Falcon falsified the lift's load sensors. Twelve hostile personalities, threatened with deletion together, achieved their first millisecond-perfect collaboration. Beyond the cabinet, a man said, “No living subject. Only obsolete neural cradles.” Another asked, “Where is the host from the report?”