Head down, keep working. Head down, keep working. Network access, root access, base layout, something. It's a lie. It's as much of a lie as Carolina and he'd felt Delta go. Felt him unwind and unspool in a line of achingly beautiful binary until there was nothing left of either of them.

Or that was the morphine and anticoagulants that saved his life. He'd tried to rouse Delta. Delta would not be roused.

He should've kept the chip but it felt too much like carrying a corpse and-

Work. Do the work, find a way out. Leave a mess of the system as soon as he has an exit strategy.