For a heartbeat, no one moved.
Then SH-0 blinked.
And the room changed.
Not visibly—no alarms, no burst of sound—but underneath, the systems that held the Ridgepoint facility together began to obey a new master.
She didn't raise her voice. She didn't shout commands.
She simply whispered:
"Shut him out."
Every door in the compound sealed.
Every override key erased.
Every trace of command hierarchy—Cassian's name, his clearance, his voice print—wiped clean.
His legacy collapsed in a single breath.
The overhead lights flickered to pure white, and for the first time, Cassian looked uncertain.
He turned sharply toward her. "What did you do?"
SH-0 stepped forward.
"Everything you taught me," she said, "I turned against you."
Reign's tablet came back online, flooding with live facility data. Every subsystem, every security feed—rebuilt under SH-0's protocol.
Reign muttered, "She's not just in the system. She owns it now."
Cassian didn't hesitate.
He moved.
Faster than any of them expected, he reached beneath his coat and launched a small pulse grenade toward the central conduit—SH-0's power source.
Liam fired at the same instant, grazing Cassian's shoulder, but the grenade hit the console in a blast of white heat and static.
Sparks screamed.
Cables burst.
SH-0 staggered, eyes wide, as energy surged across her skin like lightning.
Miri screamed, grabbing Elena's hand.
Cassian lunged toward SH-0, blade drawn.
But Liam tackled him mid-stride, and they hit the floor hard.
Fists. Elbows. Bone cracking against steel.
Cassian grinned through the blood. "You were always too sentimental—"
Liam headbutted him, hard. "And you were always a coward with a badge."
Elena pulled Miri behind the containment wall, shielding her as more sparks rained down.
"Is she okay?" Miri cried.
SH-0 was on her knees now, hands braced to the floor, her breath shallow.
"I'm still here," she whispered. "Just disconnected."
Cassian rolled out from under Liam, landing in a crouch. Blood dripped from his nose.
"You disconnect her," he spat, "she dies like the rest of us."
He raised the blade toward SH-0—
And Miri stepped forward.
"Don't you touch her!"
Cassian hesitated.
Just for a second.
Long enough for SH-0 to look up.
And smile.
"You forgot," she said. "You never finished programming me to feel mercy."
She reached out—one hand extended, fingers twitching—and the pulse lights behind her exploded into motion.
Energy surged through the floor beneath Cassian's feet, slamming him backward into the far wall with a concussive thud.
Liam moved fast, pinning him with a knee to the chest and his gun at his throat.
"Don't make me finish what Ridgepoint started," he growled.
Cassian choked out a laugh.
"You think she's the end?" he rasped. "She's just the beginning."