Silence pressed down on them, thick and tense, as if the very walls of the bunker were holding their breath.
The shard Kira had handed Shane pulsed faintly in his hand, its faint blue light casting soft glimmers over his fingers. Its weight felt heavier than it should've. Like it remembered things he didn't.
They stood at the sealed sub-level access, an armored vault door integrated into the floor, long dormant. Barely visible inscriptions curled along its edges, old script interlaced with machine-code, language overwritten by something older than any of them had clearance for.
Kira knelt beside the terminal. "There's a third partition in Rose's encryption key," she murmured, fingers dancing over her Phaseweaver Core's interface. "Rhane buried it deep, locked behind kinetic memory triggers and proximity syncs. He must've known it would only open if someone like you came back."
Shane crouched beside her, voice low. "Why bury it at all?"
Kira didn't look up. "Because this place was never meant to be found again."
A soft whir and the sound of decompression echoed as the access terminal accepted the key.
The vault door hissed, unlocking in slow, mechanical lurches. A deep, chilled gust of air rose up from the dark below, scentless, sterile, and ancient.
Caelia stepped closer, clutching her jacket tight. "Whatever's down there… it hasn't seen light in years."
"Good", Aegix said quietly. "Maybe it won't see us either."
They descended slowly.
The stairs spiraled downward in rigid steel steps, their footfalls echoing into the cold. The lights flickered once, then stabilized into dim gold.
The hallway at the base was wide, cylindrical, almost surgical in construction. Every wall was smooth metal, seamless, interrupted only by embedded panels and heavy doors sealed with biometric locks.
"Old pre-collapse Spectra engineering", Kira said, running her hand along the wall. "Before the Council split. Before they erased everything."
Shane stopped at the first door. A familiar insignia glinted under dust.
SPECTRA-01 - ORIGIN CORE.
His breath caught. "This was the first facility?"
Kira nodded. "The prototype lab. Before the vaults. Before any of the later divisions."
Caelia spoke softly. "What happened here?"
Kira hesitated. "A fracture."
She keyed open the door.
Inside was a vast chamber. Cracked cryo-pods lined the walls like hushed tombs. A console in the center was shattered, wires spilling out like veins. On the far wall, an interface screen still flickered, barely active, flashing a single symbol:
:: SUBSIGNAL DETECTED ::
"Still running", Aegix muttered, approaching the console. "Faint signal loop. Echo from a deep subroutine."
Shane walked toward the pods, brushing frost from the glass of one.
Inside was a shape, skeletal, long-dead, humanoid but not entirely. Circuits were fused with bone. A distorted implant spiraled into its skull.
"They tried to grow it", Shane whispered. "This wasn't mechanical. It was… engineered."
Kira stared at the screen, voice distant. "Rhane once told me the first Spectra interface wasn't built. It emerged. Something from the Rift Layers, reacted with human minds. The Council tried to capture it. Build a host. But it broke containment. It rewrote its vessel."
"And killed everyone?" Caelia asked.
"No", Kira said. "It took them."
The terminal screen changed.
One line.
:: QUERY ACKNOWLEDGED. ::
Then another:
:: SENDER – UNKNOWN. SOURCE – FRACTURE VEIL ::
The lights dimmed.
A sound like static bleeding into a whisper filled the chamber.
Then, a voice.
"You wear my skin. Speak with my breath. Why do you open graves, Spectra-born?"
Shane's pulse spiked. "It knows us."
Kira stepped back. "No… it remembers you."
The screen blinked.
:: WARNING – RECURSIVE SUBSIGNAL LOADING ::
:: VITAL ANCHOR POINTS IN DANGER ::
A final message burned into the display.
:: PROTOTYPE ALPHA - STILL ONLINE. STILL HUNGRY. ::
---