Page 69 of The Gathering
“They put her in a coma.” The words gushed out, broken and devastated. “They said her body stopped seizing, but her brain didn’t,” he strained. “They’re looking for what’s wrong and whatever it is… she’s fighting it so hard it’skillingher.”
Fuck. Bishop’s chest cracked with his fucking pain.
“Quantum is on his way to help,” he choked.
“I’m here to look and see what I can see, oui?”
He nodded on his shoulder, his hand covering the back of Bishop’s head. “Fuck, thank you,” he gasped.
Ethan released him and wiped his face, still not looking at him.
“Come with me,” Bishop said, walking. “I’m gonna need your expertise on this.”
He looked back, seeing Ethan considering that for a few seconds before nodding. “Anything I can do, you know I will.”
Bishop gave him a final one-armed bear hug. “Oui, I know.”
The Creole Kings’ infirmary was something to behold with the labyrinth of monitors everywhere. Bishop squeezed Ethan’s neck, watching him stare at Cat lying deathly still on a medical bed, wires at her head all leading to those monitors.
Rukem and Skul spotted them and came over while Thakx’s gaze remained locked on the three-dimensional holographic projection above him.
“What’s the verdict?” Bishop barely asked as Ethan joined them.
“We had to induce a medical coma to stabilize her physical body,” Rukem said, matching his low volume, face grim. “Her brain was tearing itself apart.”
Bishop scanned the monitors. “Any clue why?”
“8-Bit informed us that his digital brothers, Big G and AL, had neuro-synced with her,” Skul said now. “So, we looked for the connection and initially assumed the sheer volume of their combined data load had triggered a catastrophic physical response.”
“But that assumption was only partially correct,” King Thakx said from behind them. “Come look at this.”
They walked over as he tapped the holographic screen and expanded it. “This is her brain and these are the interconnected pathways. Once we connected her to the Synapse Monitor, we tracked the exact routes involved in the sync.” He pointed to the top of the projection. “The data load is immense,but it’s not a passive overload, there’s an active rogue program attempting to systematically rewrite her emotional centers. Look.” He pointed to several areas. “It’s targeting the neural clusters associated with her affection and memory of 8-Bit.”
“Holy shit,” Bishop muttered.
“They’re trying to erase me from her mind,” Ethan realized with a cold dread.
“Yes,” Thakx agreed. “But we can’t seem to reach the rogue program to stop or isolate it. Look at this.”
Thakx rotated the 3D hologram. Beneath the creeping, heavy mass of the rogue program, a violent, chaotic storm of digital static and jagged red electrical spikes was ravaging the outer layers of her neural map. It looked like a digital hurricane trapped inside a human mind.
“This data storm is what triggered her physical seizure,” Thakx said, his voice tight with determination. “It’s wildly unstable and generating massive neurological pressure.” He eyed them. “And it’s completely blocking our access to the core program.”
Bishop crossed his arms, moving his gaze to the scrolling algorithms and digital code cascading down the side of the screen. Fucking gibberish to him.
Usually, he had to touch things to gain access to their structures, but his self-optimizing system allowed him toseeinto the architecture of the three-dimensional projection and perceive how it was built.
He angled his head and his vision shifted, tuning out the digital noise and tracing the continuous feedback loops, the stress points, the flow of energy on the screen.
“You’re misreading the structure,” Bishop murmured, his eyes locking onto the violent static storm on the hologram. “The static isn’t causing the seizure.”
Thakx frowned, looking at him. “Misreading it how?”
“I don't know shit about this digital coding,” Bishop said, stepping up to the glowing projection and pointing at the red spikes. “But I know how a defense mechanism is built. That static isn’t attacking, it’s barricading.”
Rukem joined them now. “What do you mean?”
“Look at the foundation,” Bishop said. He traced the top of the hologram, where the rogue rewrite program sat heavy and dense. “The program trying to rewrite her brain is pushing downward. It’s applying massive structural weight to force its way in.”
