00:41… 00:40… 00:39…
The countdown blinked across every screen like a heartbeat on borrowed time.
Orion's breath was steady—unnaturally so. Not the stillness of fear, but of acceptance. As if some silent part of her had already made peace with the cost.
She stood in the epicenter of the DAWNWALKER control hub, her palm pressed to the bio-port, tendrils of gold-threaded code threading through her neural network faster than thought itself. The interface pulsed with every beat of her heart, synced to her essence.
Behind her, Cole paced like a caged wolf, his fingers flexing and unflexing, the tension in his shoulders wound tight as wire.
"Talk to me, Orion," he demanded, voice taut. "What are you doing?"
"I'm mapping the Omega Seed chain to a loopback," she said, eyes fluttering. "If I can reroute the protocol through my primary code and contain it... the explosion won't propagate past me."
Cole stopped cold. "You're using yourself as a firewall."
"Yes," she said simply.
