CHAPTER SIXTY-THREEThe system didn’t move forward.It closed in.Not like a command executing.Like something tightening its grip on reality itself.CORE REACTIVATION: 93%The number didn’t sit on the interface.It pressed into the space around her.Aurora felt it under her skin first, cold, precise, invasive in a way that didn’t feel physical anymore.Not pain.Alignment.Like something inside her had recognized a shape it was always meant to fit.Her fingers twitched once.The system responded instantly.Not to action.To intention.Across the glass, every layer bent, not outward, but inward toward her presence.As if she was no longer inside it.It was inside her.Alexander saw it.That was the problem.He always saw before things became survivable.“You’re not interfacing anymore,” he said quietly.Aurora didn’t look at him.Because if she did, she might still be something that could hesitate.“I never was,” she replied.A pause.“I was embedded.”Silence didn’t follow.Something
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