Mister: Rom Packs

Kestrel woke up on the floor of the workshop. Her cheek was cold and blank—just a patch of dead synthetic skin. The CRT monitors were dark. And on the cot, Harold P. Driscoll opened his eyes.

“It’s a ghost,” he said finally. “Not a dead person’s ghost. Something stranger. You know how the city has its own network? The SpireNet?” Mister Rom Packs

“We’re missing the core,” Mister Rom Packs said on the eighth night. They sat in his workshop, surrounded by the hum of CRT monitors. The reassembled Harold—now a torso, one arm, and a head that had not yet opened its eyes—lay on a cot in the corner, breathing in shallow, mechanical gasps. “The SELF fragment. Without it, he’s just a collection of reflexes. He’ll wake up, but he won’t be anyone.” Kestrel woke up on the floor of the workshop

“I found it ,” Kestrel said, shivering. “It found me first. Crawled out of a disposal vent in Level 7. It was trying to type on a dead terminal. What the hell is it, Mister?” And on the cot, Harold P