Aunt June came with us, riding shotgun with the metal box on her lap and a radio headset over one ear. Mom drove like she had memorized every road in America. I sat in the back, gripping the seat belt with both hands while rain hammered the windshield.
Nobody spoke for nearly twenty minutes.
Then Aunt June said, “Air traffic is blind over the northern corridor.”
Mom’s jaw tightened.
“He’s testing it.”
“Or showing off.”
“Voss never did anything for one reason.”
I leaned forward.
“What does he want with me?”
Mom’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror.
“Ghostwing’s first interface was designed around pilots. It needed reflex, pattern recognition, spatial instinct. Voss pushed it further. Too far. He wanted the system to respond directly to the human nervous system.”
“That doesn’t explain me.”
She looked back at the road.
“When I was pregnant with you, I was exposed to part of the system during the final sabotage. Not radiation. Not poison. A signal pattern. A neural imprint. We didn’t know what it meant. After you were born, the system responded to your brain activity on a passive test.”
