The Vault loomed above them: massive, seamless, silent. A monolith of alloy and buried design, rising out of the ruin like something meant to be forgotten. It didn't look ancient, it looked untouched. Not just preserved, but dormant. Waiting.
Warren stepped up beside Wren. The mist clung to his coat like it belonged there. Her hand rested lightly on her stick, fingers tightening as she scanned the strange metalwork.
"That sigil," she said, pointing to the large emblem carved into the upper half of the door, "I don't think it's a word. Maybe it's a picture. A flag or something. But... here."
She moved closer, tapping her finger along a faint seam, barely visible, nearly swallowed by time and grime. "This looked like a seal line, but there's something written here. Smaller. Almost hidden.
Warren leaned in. Symbols, carved into what might once have been a doorway inset. Faint but deliberate. Not decorative. They didn't shimmer. They didn't glow. They just... carved lightly into the steel like substance of the door.
"Can you read it?" he asked.
Wren shook her head. "No. I've never seen anything like this personally. But it... it kinda looks like Old Scav. Just... crushed together. Smashed into one sigil."
Warren's eyes narrowed. The structure of it wasn't clean Imperial but it seemed familiar enough to Old Scav. There was a pattern underneath the compression. Like something old had been broken and reshaped.
He began sounding it out.
He said the shapes aloud, slow, under his breath:
"Ha..."
"Her..."
Wren leaned in, squinting. "Try it slower. That middle bit, doesn't it repeat?"
"Muh..."
"Reh..."
"La..."
He tried again, slower this time, spacing the syllables like pieces he didn't fully trust to fit. Each sound felt like it had been scraped off the bones of a dead language.
His brow furrowed. Then he repeated them faster:
"Ha...meh...rah..."
He nodded. "Yeah. Maybe it's not 'meh.' Maybe it's 'me' again."
"Hemera."
The Vault made a sound: a long structural shift, pressure releasing like a deep exhale. Metal and memory creaked open. The seam along the central face began to part.
He stepped back.
"Hemera," he said again. "What the hell is Hemera? And why did it open the Vault?"
Wren watched the dividing line spread wider. Light bled from within, momentarily blinding. It wasn't harsh. It was full. A white flood, like a storm caught in amber.
"I don't know," she said. "But it must've mattered."
He stared into the opening. The glow touched his face like a warning.
"Why would someone put the passphrase on the outside?"
The Vault yawned wider, the light growing.
"Maybe it wasn't protection," Warren said. "Maybe the ones who built it wanted someone to find it. And burying it this deep, that was protection enough."
The mist caught around his boots. The light beckoned.
He reached for his truncheon. Not out of fear, out of habit.
And stepped inside.
They stepped through the Vault's threshold and were swallowed by silence.
No alarms. No defenses. Just air. Dry, temperature-regulated, and ancient.
Warren slowed first, eyes narrowing. His boots met smooth alloy beneath a mist-thin coating of dust. The passage expanded into a cathedral of machinery, tall pylons ribbed with unknown conduits, support arches inlaid with latticework veins that shimmered faintly beneath the surface. Everything here was smooth, flowing, almost liquid in design, but dry. Preserved.
The walls weren't blank. Every few meters, strange devices protruded, some looked like petrified roots, others like coiled antennae, and one was shaped like a suspended teardrop made of mesh and stone. Nothing buzzed. Nothing blinked. But each object felt placed with purpose. Not decoration, function that no one alive could explain.
Pedestals emerged from the floor like grown limbs, not constructed pieces. Some held crystalline tools. Others, dead screens. One bore a sphere the size of a fist, matte and almost humming with stillness.
Warren paused, eyes locked on it.
"This," he muttered. "Doesn't match the rest."
He didn't touch it.
They walked deeper, winding through chambers that curved like tunnels and opened into spaces like sanctuaries. Above them, long panels of some translucent alloy pulsed softly, not with light, but with presence. Like the ceiling was breathing slow and distant.
Wren turned in place, mouth slightly open. "This is... not what I expected."
Neither of them spoke again for a while. They walked.
The Vault was vast. Not just in scale, but in architecture. Nothing resembled known System structures. The corridors curved inward unnaturally. Doorways formed without seams. There were no visible screws, no welded plates. Every surface looked molded, like poured metal shaped by machines that didn't exist anymore.
Warren triggered Examine on a terminal recessed into a panel.
[Error. Classification: Unknown. Material: Unknown. Interface: Obsolete.]
He tried another.
[Error. Data node inaccessible. Parsing conflict.]
A third.
[Object recognized: Station Frame. Additional Data: Corrupted.]
He scowled. Even the System couldn't name these things. And when the System didn't know, it meant they were looking at something pre-collapse.
They moved deeper.
At the heart of the structure, past several columns of server-like infrastructure, stood a single pedestal. On it: a terminal unlike anything Warren had seen. Clean. Untouched. Still running.
Styll had followed them quietly until now, but as they reached the central node, her ears twitched.
Without warning, she bolted, darting back the way they came, only to loop around a pedestal toward the matte orb Warren had eyed earlier.
The console glowed faintly, casting lines of light across a strange interface made of overlapping glyphs.
He stared. Wren stared.
Warren leaned closer.
Symbols blinked softly at the top. He read them aloud, slowly:
"Al... Alp... Af... Al-pha. Alpha Cre. Alpha Core"
"Alpha Core?" Wren repeated.
He nodded. "That's what it says. Whatever that is."
She stepped around the pedestal, examining the rest of the station. Its back arched up like a spine, vertebrae of metal and light, pulsing slowly in sequence.
Warren reached for the controls, but hesitated.
The language was old. Not Imperial. Not Old-Scav. He could make out bits. Guess others. But every touch felt like smacking his head against a wall and hoping something useful fell out.
He pulled back.
"This is a functioning pre-Collapse facility," he said quietly. "But I have no idea what it's for."
Wren smiled faintly. "Whatever it is, it looks incredible. And it's ours."
He glanced over at her. She meant it. Her voice wasn't sarcastic or guarded. For a moment, he felt it too.
Victory.
Then he noticed something: a thin rectangular port beneath the console. An open cradle. Circular slot.
His eyes narrowed.
Warren spun. "Styll...."
Too late.
She snatched the orb in her jaws and vanished behind the nearest column.
"Styll!"
Wren yelped as the little creature zipped around the pedestal like a shot, orb clutched proudly in her jaws. Warren lunged, slid across a smooth panel, and slammed shoulder-first into the back of the terminal.
"She thinks it's a game," he muttered, pushing himself off. "It is not a game yet."
He pointed at Wren, breath catching. "If I get her, you give me those fungal crisps you've been saving."
Wren's eyes gleamed. "Deal. But if I win, I want the rest of the bars."
"Done."
Styll shot past them again, an erratic blur. Warren dove and missed, landing with a grunt against a hollow frame that let out a dull clang. Wren tried to sidestep and catch her from the flank, but slipped on a patch of dust and barely avoided face-planting into a console.
Styll ricocheted off a vent housing, made a full circle around Warren's boots, then bolted beneath a bank of monitors. Warren spun too hard chasing her and skidded into a smooth control strut, his shoulder glancing off it with a hollow thump. .
"She's not even trying to win," Wren gasped, laughing. "She's just chaos!"
"She's cheating!"
Warren tried to corner her near the terminal base, but Styll leapt over him instead. She launched off his shoulder, claws dragging lightly through his hood. He flailed. For a second, he thought he might be wrestling with a weaponized mop. Wren howled.
They collided mid-run trying to block her from opposite sides, bounced off each other, and landed in a heap. Styll circled them twice in a mocking figure-eight.
"This isn't working!" Warren barked.
"That's because you're panicking."
"I am not..."
Styll vanished behind a console. Both of them looked around. Nothing. No skitter, no sound.
Then a squeak, above them.
They looked up.
She was perched on a light fixture, orb still in her jaws, wagging her tail.
"How is that even physically possible?!"
Styll leapt down like a comet. Warren threw his hands up. Wren ducked. She landed between them, ran through Warren's legs, and he caught her. For half a heartbeat, he had her.
"Got... you?" He blinked, stunned.
She twisted like liquid shadow, slipped out of his arms, and was gone again.
Wren's voice came from behind him, breathless and delighted. "You really thought you had her, didn't you? That was adorable."
Warren stared at his empty hands, now coated in something slick and slightly warm. "How in the world is she wet?"
Warren groaned, wiping his hands uselessly against his coat. The slick wouldn't come off. "Why won't this come off?" he muttered. Wren was laughing so hard she had to brace herself against a server bank.
Finally, she pulled out her last card: a crinkled wax-paper pouch.
Roasted bug mix.
The scent hit fast. Styll slid out from under the platform so suddenly she almost flipped.
Wren didn't even need to say anything.
Styll padded over with smug determination, tail high, and deposited the orb gently into Wren's open palm. Then pawed at her hip expectantly.
Wren beamed. "I win. Again."
Warren just stared. "That's cheating. It's always cheating with you."
"No rules were stated," Wren said, radiant with smug. "I just outsmarted you."
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Absolutely defeated.
"Pay up."
Warren fished the last of the nut bars from his pack and handed them over with all the drama of a man surrendering a kingdom.
Styll chirped and nosed the wrapper.
Wren broke one in half and handed it to her. Then shared the last bits remaining piece with Warren.
He accepted it with the expression of a man robbed by fate.
He took it silently, eyes narrowed like he was already plotting revenge. Next time, he'd set a trap. No more trusting snack diplomacy.
Together, they turned to the console.
Wren handed him the orb.
He slotted it into the cradle.
And the Vault responded.
The orb slid into the terminal with no resistance. Somehow, despite everything, including the fact that it had just been in Styll's mouth, it was dry.
Warren stared at it, then at his still-slick hands, and muttered, "How the hell does that even work?"
A faint hum stirred in the floor beneath them, not mechanical, but resonant, more like a subtle vibration through the structure itself, as if the Vault were remembering how to breathe. The light from the console shifted tone, soft white giving way to a muted amber. Glyphs scrolled across the surface, overlapping, expanding, collapsing into patterns neither of them could follow.
Warren didn't speak. He was still wiping his palms against his coat sleeves, grimacing as the slickness lingered.
Wren glanced at him, barely hiding a grin. "Still wet?"
"It's like she excretes some sick, twisted mixture of glue and grease," he muttered. "Why is it sticky and slippery at the same time? And where the hell does it come from?"
She shrugged. "Mysteries of the universe."
He gave up and focused on the screen again, muttering under his breath, "I had her."
Wren didn't even try to stop the laughter this time. "You sure did. Right until the part where you didn't."
"You're enjoying this way too much."
"Only because it was adorable."
The terminal chimed. A pulse of light ran along the glyphs, and then silence followed.
The unmistakable flicker of presence appeared next. A spark in the center of the screen, like an eye opening.
Then another line of glyphs.
Warren stepped closer, his expression tightening. "It's booting something."
The light dimmed. A voice, clearly speech but in a language neither of them recognized, filled the space between them.
It just was. Heavy. Invasive. Timeless.
Wren drew in a slow breath. "That's... not the System."
Warren nodded, eyes locked on the interface. "No. This is something much older."
And as the Vault came alive, Warren's hands still shone faintly with whatever Styll had covered him in.
A new glyph flashed on the console, brighter than the others.
The lights overhead dimmed. Then flared.
Along the curved walls, panels began to unfold, segments sliding apart with hydraulic precision. Armatures extended from the recesses like mechanical limbs stretching after a long sleep. A soft vibration ran through the floor, this time unmistakably structured. Rhythmic. Intentional.
One of the pedestals along the far wall illuminated. Another let out a slow, rising tone. Something clicked open with a hiss of pressure, clean, dry, chemical.
Wren stepped back, eyes darting.
"I think it's waking up. All of it."
Warren was still scrubbing his hands against his coat like he could polish the disgust away. But it wasn't working. He grimaced, then hissed through his teeth.
"It's on me. I can feel it on me. It's under my nails." He sniffed his fingers and recoiled. "Why does it smell like iron and tree sap had a baby?"
He scratched at his palm. Hard.
"I think it's moving," he said, horror rising in his voice. "What if it's alive? What if this is how it reproduces?"
He shoved his hand into a pouch and tried wiping it with an old cloth. "Nope. Still there. It's worse now. It's in the creases. It's learning my skin."
He turned, wild-eyed, to Wren. "If I lose control of my hands, you cut them off. Promise me. I mean it. I can't live like this."
Wren didn't answer. She was watching the entire Vault shift, bloom, realign.
Warren muttered something about needing industrial solvent. Or fire.
Behind him, the Vault breathed deeper.
Wren exhaled. "This isn't just a machine. This is a city's heart."
Warren finally looked up, half-distracted. "What?"
A ceiling panel turned translucent above them, and a constellation of softly glowing threads pulsed beneath it.
"Nothing," Wren said. "You just keep fighting the goo. I'll keep an eye on the apocalypse."
Wren reached into her pack without a word, pulled out a square of chemical cloth, slipped on her new gloves, and then grabbed Warren's hands.
"Hold still."
He blinked. "Wait, what are you..."
She scrubbed his palms with professional efficiency, muttering as she worked. "This is the only time I'm doing this for free. You're going to owe me next time."
Warren looked like he was about to protest, then let out a slow exhale as the residue began to lift.
"Thank you," he said. Genuine.
She tossed the filthy cloth aside. "You say that every time."
He flexed his fingers, watching them with the wariness of a man expecting the slime to reappear. "I'll win next time."
"You always say that, too."
Only then did Warren truly look up.
The Vault had transformed.
What had been sealed walls and folded recesses were now lit with dormant functions, equipment lined the perimeter: strange tools, coiled tubes, hardpoints marked with serial runes and faded pictographs. Massive racks held crates, sealed cylinders, and collapsed frameworks. Machines of no known function stood idle, but waiting.
Warren stepped closer to the terminal. He didn't touch it this time. He just looked. And the silence inside him began to shift.
His mind scanned the room like a battlefield. Looking for weakness. Looking for threat.
But it didn't feel like a trap.
It felt like something left behind in hope. Which made it worse.
He moved to the side. Looked down the length of one wall. Racks of compressed gear, still sealed. Pneumatic cables. Solar piping. There were labels in old-world script, some label by what looked like hand, some burned into the metal directly.
The lines reminded him of something.
A page.
No, a diagram.
He dug into his pack and pulled out an old wax-wrapped cylinder. Inside were Mara's sketchs thin as a wafer, smudged by years, but still intact.
He flip through them with care. The last sketch she'd ever drawn for him: a hand-drawn schematic of a shape she never found, but believed in.
A storage cradle.
A core field anchor.
The lines matched.
He held the sketch beside the wall, just long enough to be sure.
Wren said something behind him. He didn't answer.
The silence in him was changing.
A hum started, not in the Vault, but in his thoughts. A pattern. Not comprehension, but echo.
He looked again. At the equipment. At the layout. At the machines built not to destroy but to preserve.
Mara's voice whispered through memory: "Listen Rabbit. Not every relic is meant to hurt you. Some are meant to heal."
He turned back to the central hub. Stared at the interface.
He didn't understand it. But he recognized it.
Pieces. Echoes. Bits of something too large to name.
He whispered, "Mara... you were right."
Wren came to stand beside him.
"So what is it?"
He didn't answer at first. He just stared.
Then, slowly, "They didn't build this to protect the past. They built it to grow a future."
"So... not a vault."
"No," he said. "It's an ark."
She frowned. "And now we have it?"
"Now we hold it," Warren said. "That's not the same."
She tilted her head. "Hold it for what? What does it mean?"
He looked around. His voice dropped lower.
"This is power. But it's also a death sentence for anyone too weak to carry it."
Wren looked uneasy now. "You think we're not strong enough?"
He shook his head. "We're not. Not yet. The only reason we might survive it is because no one else knows we've found it."
The only grace was that neither of them triggered System broadcasts. Wren was still unchipped. Warren... Warren had never belonged to the System's map.
To the System, the Vault didn't exist.
Not yet.
Wren crossed her arms. "So... what's the plan?"
Warren paced. Slow. Focused. "This is everything and nothing all at once. We can build—but we don't have the power to hold. Not yet. First thing we do is go outside, grab the six fragments those squad bodies are holding, and get to the Bazaar."
Wren raised an eyebrow. "The Bazaar?"
"We need a chip for you. Even a rumor of where we might find one would be a start. And someone to install it."
She tilted her head. "Wait. Someone to install it? Did you not do yours yourself?"
Warren's steps paused.
"I'm not willing to risk you the way I risked myself."
Wren didn't say anything for a beat. "So... how did you do it?"
He turned, sharp. "No. You don't understand. I wasn't supposed to survive it. I knew I wasn't going to. I did it anyway. I jammed a dead man's chip into my spine with a knife and a mirror. I had no idea if it would work."
Her voice dropped. "But it did."
"Which is exactly why I won't do it again."
She blinked, perturbed. "You were willing to die to gain access to the System?"
"No. I was willing to die to control what I could."
He didn't let that sit long. He reached into his coat and pulled out the small device the squad leader Valk had carried.
"This. This is how they would have hid from the System in here. It's called a dampener. It blinds the System for a few hours. That's how we use this place even once you're chipped."
Wren leaned in. "So it just... turns us invisible?"
"To the System. Not to people. Which means we move fast, quiet, and clean. And if I can replicate it, we can be ghosts it won't see coming."
She nodded. "And after the chip?"
"I talk to Car."
"Why him?"
"Because I think he knew my mother. And if he knew her, he might've known me. That changes everything."
"So what if he did?" she asked. "What does that change?"
Warren looked at her. "Our entire relationship."
A pause.
Warren crouched, sketching invisible shapes in the air above the console housing. "Before we do anything else, we need fallback points. This Ark is too exposed if anyone tracks us. We collapse a tunnel entrance and keep a second one hidden. We make this place vanish from the surface."
Wren nodded. "You want to bury it until we're strong enough to come back."
"Exactly. We prep caches too. Food, bandages, parts. We'll never know what we'll need when we come back."
"Where would we hide the caches?"
"Close enough for access. Far enough to not lead anyone back here."
He stood and began to pace again. "Your gear's already solid. Better than most Yellow Zone operators. Real weapon, armor that fits. But if we're going into the Bazaar looking for a chip, people will notice. Not because you're weak—but because you look like someone with means. That makes you a target for a different reason."
Wren tilted her head. "Why are we worried about that? We've played that card before and came out ahead."
Warren stopped mid-step. "Because we declared war on Lucas and his clan. They're not just going to be hunting us, they'll hire mercs. Quiet ones. Expensive ones. The kind who know how to track through the ruins without raising alarms."
Wren scowled. "Then we get in and get out. Quiet. No trade. Just information."
He pointed at the dampener again. "We test it. Fully. Underground. On the surface. In transit. We log everything. If it works the way I think, it's more than a mask—it's a blindfold."
"We need materials and to find out if anyone out there knows anything about how these dampeners work, or even if there's a way to buy more of them."
Wren crossed her arms. "And if they won't talk?"
Warren looked up. "Then we make them."
"And if it fails?"
"Then we move fast and burn whatever is behind us."
He took a breath. "Car is next. If he's who I think he is, I want answers. Why he never said anything."
"And if he lies?"
"Then I'll know."
Wren didn't answer.
Warren stepped over to the wall, running a hand along one of the sealed lockers. "We'll bury the squad tonight. Get them away from the entrance. Deep, quiet, unmarked."
Wren nodded slowly. "You think it's going to matter?"
"I know it already does."
And in the stillness, even the Ark felt like it was listening.
They dug into the earth with claws and shovels.
Styll helped more than either of them expected, darting between mounds, using her claws to dig with startling efficiency, occasionally disappearing into a hole only to reappear with her nose covered in dirt. She didn't need to be asked. She just understood.
Warren chose a hollow north of the Ark's approach tunnel, sheltered by overgrowth and shadow. No wind reached this far, no light touched the ground. It was clean, dry, and hard. Perfect.
Six graves.
The squad had been enemies, but they'd also been something else, Real. Human. Worth remembering, some more than other.
Wren said nothing as she worked. Neither did Warren. The only sounds were the scrape of metal against soil, the steady rhythm of breath, the quiet grunt of lifted weight.
When the last body was lowered in, Warren stood over the mound with his hands resting on the handle of his shovel.
"I made Rusk a promise," he said quietly. "To save her daughter Tasina. And Mel Valk's kid brother. Valk asked too, in a way. But mostly Rusk is why I promised. She knew she was dead, but she begged me anyway. She said... 'Don't let the Warlord take them.'"
Wren wiped her brow. "And you said yes."
"I said yes."
"Mara would have agreed"
She stepped beside him. "I agree. We need to stop the Warlord. We need to save them. Not just them everyone he has his hands on."
"Calra" she muttered under her breath.
She hesitated, then looked him square in the eye. "But it's going to be harder than anything we've done. Harder than even holding the Ark. The Warlord's at the third threshold."
Warren turned his head slowly. "What?"
"Level thirty. He's not just augmented. He's more than human now."
Warren's mouth went dry. Most people didn't make it past the first threshold. The second was rare. But the third? It wasn't just power, it meant mutation, system convergence, uncharted abilities.
"He's a monster," Wren said.
"And still, we're going after him," Warren replied.
The dirt settled quietly between them.
They stood in silence, side by side, as if the dead could still hear what came next.