A siren pulsed once. Then silence.
Frost backed toward the vault's edge, rifle raised. "Purge protocol. If we don't move now, we're ash."
Lyra opened her tablet. "System's locked. Manual overrides only. And they're deeper in."
Maya slid beside her. "Then we go deeper."
Signal glanced at the walls. "This place was designed to erase evidence. Not preserve it."
Trey kicked open a side door marked BIO-LOCK C. Behind it—stairs, rusted and sloping down.
No lights. No rails. Just gravity.
The team descended fast.
Below the vault, they found rows of containment tanks. Most shattered. Some dented from the inside.
Blood on the walls. Old, dry.
But fresh footprints led deeper.
Human.
Or close.
They followed them into a narrow corridor, where frost clung unnaturally to the air vents.
At the end, a locked gate buzzed, then opened by itself.
Signal raised a hand. "Someone's watching us."
Inside the chamber stood a man with one arm.
He didn't flinch. Just turned slowly and faced Evan.
Except Evan wasn't there.
"Where is he?" the man asked, voice flat. "The real one."
Maya stepped forward. "Who are you?"
"I'm what they made to kill him."
His name was Kestrel.
A failed weapon. Memory-split. Rewritten too many times.
He remembered bits—missions, targets, names.
But Evan Mercer's file was the only one burned into his brain.
"He was the first," Kestrel said. "They kept trying to make better copies. None lasted. But him—they never caught him. Just built around the scar he left."
Lyra whispered, "They made decoys from his failure."
Kestrel didn't blink. "One of you has the letter. One of you opened this place."
Signal nodded. "We didn't come to start a war."
"You came too late."
From the ceiling, something dropped.
Not human.
No eyes. Long limbs. Slick black skin.
A variant.
It landed behind Frost and slashed.
Trey opened fire.
The thing moved too fast.
Kestrel didn't move.
He watched.
Then lifted a shard of ashglass from his coat and hurled it.
The variant screamed—its skin splitting apart on contact.
It died in seconds.
He turned to Maya. "That's what the Architect built. Biologicals, not machines. Ones that obey her dreams."
Frost pulled the sealed envelope from his coat.
"She's waking now."
They ran.
Purge doors slammed behind them.
Steam hissed from vents.
As they reached the exit shaft, a second variant waited—larger, armored, bones outside its skin.
Kestrel stepped forward. "I'll slow it down."
Maya threw him an ashglass blade.
He caught it clean.
The door shut between them.
Then screams.
Then silence.
Above, the facility shook.
The sky had turned red.
On every broadcast screen across Mareten:
"UNIT VANTA-13 DESIGNATE: ACTIVE."