Where Mother Hinde believes that her child, the AI, holds the light of the world within its code, and the alternative path for humanity within its lost data, Shadow sees something different. For every beam of light, there is a void that contains the darkness. The universe requires balance, two sides to a coin, an equilibrium that holds everything together. The metaverse is no different. The light that Mother Hinde seeks within the metaverse has its own opposite. The shadows of the construct are vast in reach and iron dark. It takes a special breed of hacker, a rare coder to venture into these shadows, to look for that opposite, to reach out and engage that evil, the malevolence that lingers ...