The bunker's silence wasn't peace. It was compression, like breath held before the plunge.
Rose's neural core pulsed faintly on the diagnostics rig, its crystalline shell refracting ghost-light across the table. Thin threads of code shimmered over its surface, forming half-symbols that vanished before Shane could focus on them. He'd seen corrupted data before. This was different. It wasn't broken. It was withholding.
Caelia stood over the console, her fingers unmoving above the glass. "This architecture wasn't built for combat. It's like… she was wired for memory. For holding onto things that weren't hers to carry."
Shane said nothing. He watched the core. He didn't like the way it pulsed, too slow. Like a dying heartbeat.
Aegix paced at the edge of the room, metallic paws silent. "Delta-Rose was hiding something. You sensed it. Her last act wasn't defense. It was containment."
A flicker.
Shane's eyes sharpened. There, just for a second. A face. Half-formed. A smile pulled from static and sorrow, flashing across the diagnostic overlay. Then gone.
"Replay frame seventy-two", he muttered.
The terminal buzzed and spat garbled code.
Caelia narrowed her eyes. "It's recursive. The data loops when we get too close. Like it's scared."
"Or warning us off", Aegix growled, tail stiffening. "It's not just encrypted. It's encrypted with intent."
Shane frowned. "That's not possible."
"Neither is a construct whispering your name as it dies", Caelia said softly.
The room dimmed slightly, no external cause. Just the weight of the thing between them. That neural core, faint and violet, humming low like a prayer to something buried too deep to answer.
Suddenly, the lights blinked.
Aegix snapped up, optics cycling. "EM fluctuation. Brief, like a pulse. Originating from---"
The neural core flared.
Shane grabbed the rig, twisting a dial to contain it, but---
The world staggered.
Images, fragments, his own voice, distorted. Caelia's scream. The flash of Rift's hollow eyes. And beneath it, something else. A shape without form. A name without sound. It watched through the cracked veil of Rose's memories.
And then, silence.
The flare died.
Shane stood trembling, jaw clenched tight. "It's not just Rose in there."
Caelia's face had gone pale. "What did we trigger?"
He exhaled. "A ripple. A memory buried too deep. Or a door she was trying to seal."
Aegix's systems buzzed with static. "We need out of here. This place isn't stable anymore."
"No", Shane whispered. His voice was calm. But beneath it: something ancient stirred in him.
Fear.
Recognition.
Guilt.
"Not until we know what she died to protect."
Shane knelt by the console, eyes locked to the faint pulses of the neural core.
Aegix adjusted his stance beside him. "Your vitals are spiking."
"I'm fine", Shane lied.
But he wasn't.The flickers Rose had shown him, they weren't just memories. Some weren't hers. One… might have been his.
Caelia knelt across from him. "I don't think this was meant for us."
Shane turned to her. "Then who?"
Her voice dropped. "Whoever was listening before we opened it."
The quiet settled again, denser now. Like something had changed permanently in the room, as if the act of seeing that echo had altered its shape.
Caelia stood and gestured to the central display. "There's a lock sequence here. Some kind of biometric chain. Not ours. Not even Rose's. Cross-referencing…"
She paused.
Aegix's optics clicked.
"What is it?" Shane asked.
She turned the screen toward him. A scan of the neural imprint pattern filled the display, like an intricate web burned into glass.
Shane blinked. "That's…"
"Rhane", Caelia confirmed. "Or what's left of his digital trace. She was carrying part of him."
Shane's gut twisted. Dr. Elias Rhane. The man who had saved his life. The man who had betrayed it in the same breath.
"So it wasn't just loyalty. Rose was engineered to protect his remains."
"More than that", Aegix interjected, stepping closer to the table. "Rose was a secondary vessel. A carrier node. She had fragments of Rhane's interface code bound to her memory layers. Like he was… trying to survive through her."
Shane's fists clenched. "He never left."
Caelia placed a hand gently on his arm, grounding him. "If there's even a piece of Rhane in there… we might still get answers. About what happened the night you fell. About the truth behind the Spectra Project."
Before Shane could respond, the lights overhead flickered again, this time more violently. Dust trickled from the ceiling. One of the overhead fans groaned to a halt.
Aegix whipped around. "External signal detected. Directional burst, three seconds ago. Origin: top-side."
Shane drew his cloak around him. "Scan for enemy presence."
"No immediate threats. But something's shifting. Atmospheric pressure drop… anomaly approaching fast."
They all turned toward the central shaft.
The lights flared once, bright enough to blind.
And then...
Silence.
A new tone vibrated through the room, deep, harmonic, almost like a chime slowed to a crawl. The core glowed brighter than before. It knew something was coming. Or returning.
Shane stepped forward. "Whatever Rose protected, it's waking up."
Caelia's voice was barely above a whisper. "And we just rang the bell."
Static hissed across the speaker arrays. Not white noise. Not random.
A voice.
Low. Warped. Genderless.
"It wasn't yours to open…"
The core flared one last time, then shut down completely.
All power in the room blinked out for exactly three seconds.
Long enough to feel the void.
Then...
Power surged back.
The emergency backups kicked in. The diagnostics rig rebooted. Shane's HUD reconnected.
But something was different.
He stared at the core.
It was cold now.
Still.
Whatever had been inside… was either gone, or watching from a deeper place.
They said little as they moved to seal the vault. Outside, the bunker wind keened like a warning.
As they walked toward the armory hallway, Caelia broke the silence.
"She'd locked something in there."
Shane nodded. "And we just cracked the first hinge."
Aegix turned his head toward the bunker's outer hatch. His voice was low, but certain.
"Something's coming."
Shane's eyes narrowed. "Let it."