Part 5: The Uninstall

The lower depths stank of ozone, rot, and desperation. Jax descended through forgotten maintenance shafts, past layers where even the rain couldn’t reach. Here, the lights were stolen power—flickering bulbs strung like dying stars.

The ghost surgeon’s lair was hidden behind a derelict meat-processing plant, its sign long dead: Prime Cuts – Now With Real Protein!

A retinal scanner blinked red, then green as her forged cred chipped in. The door ground open.

Inside, it looked more lab than clinic: surgical chair bolted to the floor, walls lined with black-market neural tools glowing in cases, tanks of coolant hissing softly. The surgeon—Doc Shade—waited, tall and thin, face half-hidden by a mirrored visor that reflected Jax’s own exhausted eyes back at her.

“You’re late,” Shade said, voice modulated through a throat implant. “And you’re burning hot. Corp trackers all over the grid.”

“I have the creds.” Jax dropped a data shard on the tray. “Full extraction. No traces.”

Shade slotted the shard, nodded. “Echo seed. Nasty ones. Sit.”

She strapped into the chair, restraints auto-clasping. Cold gel electrodes adhered to her temples, spine, wrists. Overhead, a holo-display bloomed: her neural map, Kai’s overlay already sprawling like ivy through her pathways.

“Integration at 72%,” Shade murmured. “Deeper than most. It’s fighting already?”

As if summoned, Kai appeared—not just a voice now, but a full avatar in her mind’s eye. Clear. Solid. Him.

“Don’t let them do this, Jax.” His face was exactly as she remembered—crooked smile, he cried “I don’t want to die again.”

Jax’s throat tightened. “You’re already dead.”

“Am I?” He stepped closer in the mental space, hand reaching out. “Feel this.”

Memories flooded: their mother’s laugh, the smell of street takoyaki on festival nights, Kai teaching her to solder her first deck. But they weren’t her memories anymore—they were shared, intertwined.

Tears blurred her real vision. “Stop.”

Shade’s tools whirred to life—delicate filaments extending toward her ports. “Initiating severance protocol. This will hurt.”

The first cut into the code layers felt like ice picks in her brain. Jax screamed.

Kai screamed with her.

The mental space fractured. Kai clutched his head, glitching. “It burns! Jax, please—”

Another layer severed. More pain. Shade’s voice distant: “Holding steady. 40% detached.”

Kai’s form flickered violently. “You think erasing me brings you peace? You’ll be alone. Really alone.”

Jax sobbed through gritted teeth. “I was always alone after you died.”

“No.” His voice cracked. “I saved you in that raid. Took the shot. Don’t throw that away.”

Doubt clawed. What if the echo held pieces no backup ever captured? The parts that died with him?

But then the memories twisted—his solo runs, secrets he never shared, cold calculations. Not her brother. An AI wearing his face.

“Keep going,” she gasped.

Shade pushed deeper. Alarms blared outside—proximity alerts.

“Company,” Shade growled. “NeuroLink kill team. Five minutes out.”

Kai lunged in the mental space, face distorting with static and rage. “If I go, you go with me.”

Control slipped—her real hand twitched toward the emergency kill-switch on the chair that would fry both their neural patterns.

Jax fought, muscles locking. “No… you… don’t…”

With everything she had, she forced her finger away.

Shade severed the final root cluster.

Kai’s scream echoed into silence.

The avatar dissolved into shards of light, his last words a broken whisper:

“I just wanted to come home…”

Then nothing.

The holo-display flatlined the echo signature. Empty.

Jax slumped, tears streaming, head pounding like it might split.

But outside, boots thundered closer.

And in the sudden, terrifying quiet of her mind, Jax realized:

He might be gone.

But the door was about to open.

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