The neural interface sparked against my temple at 3:47 AM, and I knew Elena Vasquez was dying.
Not in the traditional sense—her body would survive another forty years if the actuarial algorithms held true. But her consciousness, the ethereal pattern of synapses that made her her, was fragmenting across the quantum substrate like ice crystals spreading through supercooled water. In the extraction suite's blue-white glow, her body convulsed against the neural cradle's restraints while error cascades painted my monitoring screens crimson.
"Kira, we're losing coherence in the temporal lobe mapping," Dr. Reeves said from behind the observation glass, his voice tight with the particular strain of watching profit margins evaporate. "Pull her out."
My fingers danced across the haptic interface, each gesture sending quantum pulses through Elena's deteriorating neural pathways. The extraction protocol was only sixty percent complete—enough consciousness transferred to leave her ve