The first thing Gray felt was silence.

Not peace—just absence. No data streams, no pulse of static in her skull, no hum from the neural link. The stillness pressed on her ears like deep water.

She opened her eyes.

The ceiling above her was cracked concrete, not glass or code. The floor was littered with shards of burnt circuitry and sand that had blown in from the desert. A pale gray light leaked through a collapsed section of wall, thin and cold.

For a moment she lay still, staring at ...