The roar of the black helicopters had long faded, swallowed by the infinite white hunger of the Siberian night. Ateş stood in the skeletal remains of the Vostok station, a man who had become a ghost before his time. The snow was already beginning to bury the charred metal, erasing the evidence of the battle, but it could not bury the violet glow burned into his retinas.

He didn't move for a long time. His body was a machine on the verge of total system failure. His left arm was numb from the static discharge, and his lungs felt like they were filled with shards of glass. But the pain was a tether. It reminded him that he was still alive, even if the woman he lived for was currently being rewritten by a digital demon.