Back in The Nest, Riven didn't sleep.
The silver cube sat on his desk like it was watching him.
No ports. No interface. Just a slow, hypnotic spin—like it was breathing.
He cleared his mind.
Focused.
What are you?
Nothing.
He leaned closer. Let the thought deepen. Not words—intent.
Show me what you're hiding.
The cube stopped spinning.
Then—
Riven wasn't in The Nest anymore.
He was in a lab. Blinding lights. Sterile walls. Rows of pods.And inside them—clones. Hundreds.
A voice echoed:
"Memory isn't data. It's a network. We just never had the key—until now."
Then he saw it.
His own face in one of the pods. Eyes closed.Wired into a neural harness.
"Initiating Ghost Seed Protocol," the voice said.
Everything flashed red.
And Riven snapped back into The Nest, gasping, the cube glowing dimly on his desk.
"What the hell was that?"
He ran a scan on the cube. Nothing. No signals. No storage. It wasn't a hard drive.
It was a door.
And he'd just opened part of it.
He staggered back, heart pounding.
Because that lab? Those pods?
He'd never been there.
But the memory felt real.
Too real.
On the wall, he crossed out "Ghostwire" and wrote something new:
Ghost Seed
He didn't know what it was yet.
But someone had tried to bury it.
And now, it was in his head.