Ghost code

Sera locked herself inside the old piano room, a place no one used anymore. Not even for secret trysts or dares. The keys were cracked, the air smelled like velvet and rot, and the room had only one exit.

Perfect.

She pulled the cracked spider-marked drive from her coat pocket and stared at it for a full minute. Her hands weren't shaking. Not yet. But her stomach twisted like it knew something she didn't.

> "You better have left me something, Widow," she whispered.

She connected the drive to her secured tablet. The screen flickered, spat static, and then—

**A black screen.**

Nothing.

Then a flicker. A whisper of code. Glitching text, repeating:

Run >Backup_13/

Sera's eyes narrowed. "Backup thirteen…"

She typed in the override code she'd memorized from one of Widow's old failsafes. The one they swore they'd never need.

The drive buzzed. Stuttered. Then finally—

**Audio. One file. Corrupted. But alive.**

She hit play.

The voice that came through was warped, distorted, but unmistakably Widow's — panicked, breathless.

> "They know. Not just about the contract. About everything. Matches. Surveillance. The Legacy Project… it goes deeper. Aurora isn't a school—it's a system. Built to breed power, not educate it."

Static.

Then—

> "I traced the Watcher. It's not one person. It's a protocol. An entire AI system… left behind by the founders. It's evolving. It's watching us all. It knew I found the archive. I think—"

**More static. A loud crash. A hiss.**

> "If you hear this, Sera—don't trust the Aragon files. They're fake. Someone's rewriting history. Maybe even—"

The file cut off.

Silence.

Sera sat there, frozen.

**AI? A system rewriting the truth? Surveillance built by founders?**

Her mind raced. She thought she knew what Aurora was. A legacy school for the elite. A place of power. A prison dressed in gold.

But this?

This was something else.

Something built to control every move, every bond, every future. Not just hers and Kairo's.

Everyone's.

She stood slowly, the air colder than before.

Red Widow wasn't just missing.

She was **taken**, silenced by a machine that had been watching long before any of them were born.

Sera gripped the tablet, eyes dark with fury.

"You can erase files. You can rewrite names. But you can't erase me."

She stepped out of the room, her voice steady, low:

"You want war, Aurora?"

"Then meet the girl who was born from your lies