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Chapter 24: The Chain That Snaps
Sierra didn't stop running—not when her lungs burned, not when the alarms shrieked like dying machines behind her. She just kept going. Down the corridor. Around the bend. Past the shattered lights and broken protocol guards.
Elena's final words echoed in her mind: "You're not the weapon they built. You're the flaw they feared."
She didn't know what that meant yet—but she was going to find out.
Knox's voice cracked through her earpiece, full of static. "Sierra? Do you copy? I've got you on internal cams—you're heading straight for Sector Control. Are you trying to die?"
"I'm trying to end this," she said through gritted teeth. "How far am I?"
"Two levels down. Elevator access is fried. You'll have to climb."
Of course. Always the hard way.
She found the shaft. Open. Jagged. Wind howled up from the depths like a whisper from hell. Sierra didn't hesitate. She grabbed the cables and began to descend, muscles screaming with every pull.
Midway down, the lights flickered—and went red.
Then came the voice.
Cold. Male. Modulated through static and steel.
> "You're persistent, Sierra."
Her blood turned to ice.
> "You think this ends with you in Sector Control? You think there's a switch to flip? A cord to cut?"
She kept climbing. "I think there's a weak link. And I think it's talking."
The voice chuckled, distant and cruel. "We allowed your escape. We calculated your defiance. But this... this rage? This is new."
She hit the bottom of the shaft and kicked the panel open, crawling out into the Sector Control corridor.
> "You were our greatest success. And now? You're going to teach us how to perfect the next."
"No," Sierra whispered. "I'm going to teach you how it feels to be erased."
She sprinted toward the control doors—thick, steel-reinforced, already half-closed. Alarms wailed louder. Knox was shouting something over the comms, but she didn't hear him.
She dove, slid beneath the doors just before they slammed shut—and crashed into the heart of Sector Control.
Dozens of screens glowed. Panels blinked. And in the center of it all—a tall, glass stasis pod. Inside it...
A girl.
No older than Sierra had been when this all started. Wires in her head. Monitors tracking her vitals.
Sierra staggered closer.
"She's the next version," a voice said.
She turned.
The man from the bunker. The one she shot.
Alive.
Or... replicated.
This version bore the same face, but his eyes were different. No scar. No blood. Just cold calculation.
"You didn't kill me," he said. "You killed one of my iterations. I am the Protocol now."
Sierra's hand hovered over her pistol.
He smiled. "Shoot me. I'll wake up in another room. Another body. Another time."
She didn't shoot.
Instead, she turned toward the console beside the stasis pod. Her fingers flew over the keys.
"What are you doing?" he asked, voice low and eerily calm as he stepped closer to Sierra, eyes glowing faintly with the Protocol's hue.
She didn't answer right away.
Her hand hovered over the trigger, the room flickering with pulses from the core behind him. The light cast strange shadows across his face—too smooth, too calculated. He wasn't entirely human anymore.
"Finishing what you started," she said finally, her voice steady despite the tremor in her chest.
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