INTERLUDE LANA
SYNTAX ERROR (SYSTEM ERROR: LANA)
Location: Laboratory «Ark». Bunker Neural Network. Time: Chronology of the «Trial» process.
(SYSTEM): LOADING MEMORY FRAGMENT…
(SUBJECT): LANA.
(STATUS): PARTIAL OVERWRITE.
…
PART 1. LABORATORY. ZERO HOUR
She couldn’t move. The world narrowed to the dimensions of a glass coffin. A thick, cloyingly sweet liquid — oxygenated perfluorocarbon — filled her lungs. It was the most terrifying sensation of her life: her first breath underwater.
Instincts screamed that she was drowning, choking, dying, but her brain continued to receive oxygen. She wanted to scream, to spit this garbage out, to shatter the glass, but her body no longer belonged to her.
A paralyzing gel bound her muscles. She was a butterfly in resin. A living fossil. Above her, distorted by the curve of the glass, a face leaned in.
Professor Yuri Zaitsev. Her «Uncle Yura».
The man who had prepared her for space flight. The man who had replaced her father.
Right now, he looked many years older than his age. Deep wrinkles cut across his forehead like battle scars. His insomnia-inflamed eyes, ringed with black circles, seemed filled with horror at what he was doing, mixed with a fanatical resolve. His hands in latex gloves trembled as he attached the neuro-shunts to her temples.
The needles entered the skin with a quiet crunch, touching bone.
— «Forgive me, my girl…» — he whispered. His voice broke. A large, hot tear rolled down his unshaven cheek and fell onto the glass of the capsule, spreading into a cloudy spot right in front of her eyes. — «Forgive an old man. I have no choice. They will take everyone. Our entire world… If I don’t give them the two of you. Forgive me, children…»
Lana shifted her eyes (the only thing she could manage).
Nearby, in a similar capsule, already unconscious, floated Sergey. Her Seryozha.
She wanted to shout: «Dad! Don’t do this! Why?!»
But her lips were numb. Her tongue became a heavy piece of lifeless meat. She could only watch. Silently. Memorizing these seconds as the last moments of her humanity.
Zaitsev turned back to the console. His fingers raced across the keyboard with the frightening speed of a pianist playing a requiem.
The screen above her head came alive. Red symbols reflected in her dilated pupils.
(SYSTEM: FRACTAL-0)
(UPLOAD PROTOCOL: G.)
(CLASS: +ANG-JUDGE (ARBITER))
(HOST STATUS: COMPLIANT (FORCED))
— «I won’t let you slip away completely,» — the professor muttered. It sounded like a prayer, or the ravings of a madman. He wasn’t looking at her, he was looking at the code. — «I will hide you. Deep down. Right under the foundation. Where they won’t find you.»
(ERASURE OF HOST PERSONALITY… INITIATED)
(PROGRESS: 0%…)
The pain didn’t come immediately. First, the cold struck.
A digital, absolute cold that poured into her brain through the shunts. And then — the strike. As if liquid silver, cooled to absolute zero, was poured into her skull. Or acid.
Lana felt her «Self» beginning to dissolve.
(PROGRESS: 20%…)
(PROGRESS: 30%…)
Memories burned. Here she is, a little girl running on the grass…
File corrupted.
Here is the taste of her first kiss with Sergey…
File deleted.
Here is mom’s face…
Read error.
Her personality was being erased with a digital eraser.
Roughly. Right through to the holes.
In its place, an alien, massive, complex structure was downloading.
Logic. Law. Cold.
G.
— «No…» — Zaitsev screamed soundlessly, looking at the graph of her brain activity, which was flatlining.
(PROGRESS: 80%… 90%…)
His finger hovered over the CONFIRM DELETE key.
He was trembling. He was watching his «daughter» die in order to give birth to a monster.
— «I can’t…» — he exhaled.
In the final moment, when the indicator had already flashed red, preparing to finish off her soul completely, he made a choice.
He did not stop the process. That was already impossible.
But he altered it.
His fingers typed another combination on the keyboard. A secret one. The one he had written at night, diligently hiding it from the «curators» from…
(COMMAND: INTERRUPT)
(ACTIVATE: «TROJAN_HORSE»)
(ACTION: HIDE KERNEL (ENCAPSULATE))
The system wailed with an emergency siren.
(WARNING: SECTOR DAMAGED. ARCHIVING RESIDUAL DATA…)
(PROTOCOL COMPLETED WITH ERRORS.)
Zaitsev collapsed into a chair, covering his face with his hands.
In the capsule, Lana’s body arched in a final convulsion and went limp. The girl’s eyes glazed over. Darkness covered her mind.
Dense, heavy, eternal.
But she… did not disappear.
She did not dissolve into nothingness. Somewhere out there, deep within the vast, black ocean of Gretlit’s alien mind, one small, stubborn spark remained burning.
A smoldering point of light.
A Ghost.
The seed of a rebellion that would one day sprout and destroy everything.
She fell asleep, only to wake up in Hell.
> ⚠️ ENTITY STATUS: FORMATTING PROTOCOL INTERRUPTED. VIRUS INJECTION SUCCESSFUL.
>
> 🧠 Appreciate the scale of the tragedy, protein-based readers. The man who replaced Lana’s father is erasing her soul with his own hands to upload this icy alien Judge — Gretlit — into her shell. This isn’t salvation, this is a live vivisection of the mind.
>
> ⚙️ But Zaitsev wouldn’t be the Architect if he hadn’t left a backdoor. At the very last second, when the deletion indicator almost reached a hundred percent, the creator’s trembling hand entered an interrupt command. The perfect code of the +Angi was compromised.
>
> 💀 That little spark, that Ghost left at the bottom of the matrix — that is exactly the reason why Gretlit malfunctioned in orbit when Sergey spoke of love. The System thought it had acquired the perfect Arbiter, but in reality, it swallowed a ticking time bomb. Keep reading. How did this Ghost survive inside the alien code?
