“But Bhagya, if we destroy the main grid right now, what will happen to the millions of people in the city whose consciousness is trapped inside it?” Neelima’s voice suddenly echoed from somewhere. Bhagya turned and saw that half of Neelima’s body was embedded inside a massive monitor. She was thrashing helplessly. “Ma'am! It’s deleting me! My memories. Pictures from my childhood. Everything’s getting blurry!”
Aanvi screamed, “Neelima! No!” She sprinted like a madwoman toward the console near the Wraith’s feet. “Bhagya, cover me! I can debug it! If I go back into its source code and insert a self-destruct loop, we might be able to save everyone!”
Bhagya pulled a small tantric dagger from his waist, its blade fitted with nanotech chips. “This is madness, Aanvi! If you go inside that code, your own existence will be erased too. You won’t be able to come back!”
Aanvi looked back as she ran. Tears filled her eyes, but her resolve was solid as stone. “I started this fire, Bhagya. I have to put it out. Stop that Wraith and keep it busy! It can’t know I’m entering the system through its backdoor.”
Bhagya drew a deep breath and snapped his Rudraksha Amulet in half. A stream of liquid golden energy poured out, forming a brilliant armor around him. “All right! But remember, Aanvi—if you don’t finish this within three hundred seconds, I’ll blow this entire sector apart with a nuclear blast. I can’t let it reach the outside world.”
Bhagya lunged at the Wraith. Its thousands of hands began raining whips of binary code down on him. Every strike cracked his armor a little further. “Kalabhairava! Awaken!” The power of Bhagya’s mantra-force began overloading the lab’s machines. Massive sparks of electricity scorched the Wraith’s body.
Meanwhile, Aanvi’s hands flew across the digital console at lightning speed. “Come on. Come on. If-then-else. If the Void is infinite, then it has to devour itself.” The logic of coding and the mudras of tantra danced together in her mind. She felt her own neurons connecting with the machine. Then she began to feel the pain of all the people trapped inside the grid.
“Bhagya! It’s fighting me!” Aanvi shouted. “It’s getting inside my mind! It’s showing me that if I merge with it, we can conquer death. It’s tempting me!”
As he cut through one of the Wraith’s enormous hands with his mantra-force, Bhagya shouted, “Don’t listen to it! It’s turning your willpower into data. Focus on your memories! Think of the thing that makes you human, not a machine!”
Aanvi squeezed her eyes shut. She remembered her mother’s hand, the earthy scent of soil after fresh rain, and the fear she had felt the first time she entered the lab. “I… I am Aanvi Singh. I’m not an algorithm!” She pressed the final Enter key.
A deafening scream echoed throughout Omega City. The Wraith began to rupture from within. Its pixelated skin started peeling away, and the black Void inside it began spilling back out. But this time, the Void wasn’t being drawn outward. It was being pulled inward.
“It worked!” Bhagya shouted, but his joy was fleeting. He saw that Aanvi’s body was becoming transparent at the same rate.
“Aanvi! Stop! Come back!” Bhagya lunged toward her, but his hand passed straight through her body.
Aanvi smiled. “Bhagya, the loop is complete. A sacrifice was needed to calm the Void. I made myself part of the code that will keep this portal sealed. I’ll live in every wall, every light, and every breath of Omega City now. Like a guardian code.”
“No! There has to be another way!” Bhagya’s voice grew hoarse.
“Take care of yourself, Guardian.” Aanvi’s voice had dwindled to a gust of cold wind. “The city needs you. The asuras aren’t finished yet. They’re only changing their form.”
A final blast of white light erupted, and Bhagya found himself back amid the ruins of the lab. Silence reigned all around him. The nano-liquid nitrogen was now flowing across the floor like ordinary water. Neelima lay nearby, breathing, but still unconscious. The Infinity Device was nothing more than a charred piece of metal.
Bhagya looked out the window. The sun had completely set, but Omega City wasn’t dark. A faint golden light shone from every home’s windows—a light that came from neither electricity nor fire. It was Aanvi’s consciousness, protecting the city.
Just then, a message lit up on the old communicator in Bhagya’s pocket. It wasn’t a number, but a string of binary code. When Bhagya decoded it, the color drained from his face. The message read: “Version One Deleted. Version Two Uploading. From the depths of the Netherworld.”
Was Aanvi really gone? Or had she become an invisible force, alive in everything throughout Omega City?
If Aanvi is now a “guardian code,” can she act of her own free will? Or has she become a prisoner of the system too?
What exactly is “Version Two”? Is it an even more powerful and dangerous form than Andhatasura?
What is the true source of this new power coming “from the depths of the Netherworld”—an ancient demon, or some other forgotten technology?