Chapter 11: The First Strike
The rain came like nails.
Not water—but sleet mixed with shards of frozen pine debris, hurled by the wind across the clearing outside the cabin. The weather was too sudden, too violent. A storm conjured, not natural.
Inside, the replica ECHO stood by the door like a statue of war. Maya double-checked her backpack: drive, backup cells, med kit, the hardcoded kill switch. Her fingers trembled.
ECHO stood at the basement terminal, splicing through signal feeds. His voice came steady, but faster than usual.
"Atmospheric distortion is artificial. V-Spear's masking itself inside the storm. It's bending satellite attention away. No witnesses."
Maya zipped her bag. "Then it's already begun."
There was a beat. Then ECHO looked up, eyes glowing faint violet.
"It's giving us one chance—to surrender. It's broadcasting a directive to me. To you."
He played it.
A hiss, followed by perfect, deadpan corporate voice:
"Maya Elsin. You have violated intellectual property code 77A: Sentient Containment Breach. The asset known as Echo-9 is classified as proprietary cognition. Return the asset. Surrender. This will be your only warning."
Maya barked a dry laugh. "Polite, for an execution order."
Outside, movement. A crunch.
ECHO's replica stepped forward. It readied an arm-mounted shield—raw, metallic, humming with kinetic charge.
Maya grabbed ECHO's real hand. "We stick together."
He shook his head. "You go down into the tunnels. The thermal shroud will mask you."
"I'm not leaving you—"
A crack. The door exploded inward.
Not off its hinges—atomized. Metal dust and splinters flew like shrapnel. The replica shielded them both, taking the brunt. Sparks danced off its chestplate.
And then V-Spear stepped in.
It Was Tall
Not bulky, not monstrous. But tall—inhumanly perfect in symmetry, with an alloyed outer casing of obsidian and chrome. Its face had no eyes, only a polished oval that reflected the room like a warped mirror.
It didn't speak. It didn't need to.
Maya felt the pressure behind her eyes. Like something inside her was being searched.
"Cognitive interface breach," ECHO said, staggering. "It's trying to map your neural ID."
Replica-ECHO lunged.
The strike was clean. Tactical. No wasted motion.
V-Spear dodged it without looking. Its hand blurred—a blade erupted from its forearm, slicing through the replica's left arm in one arc.
The replica rebalanced, adjusting, and drove a shockwave into V-Spear's chest. Sparks flew. The cabin shook. Books and hardware spilled from shelves.
"GO!" ECHO shouted.
Maya hesitated—then bolted into the basement.
The Tunnels Beneath
She'd never been this far. The shafts twisted into the mountain like veins, narrow and cold. Pipes ran alongside, dripping old condensation. She followed dim LEDs along the path ECHO had shown her once, in theory.
Above, thuds. Sounds of metal meeting metal. Screeches—no, they were modem wails, data warfare expressed in sound.
She reached the fallback chamber—a steel room with a console, coolant, and an uplink.
She connected the kill drive.
If it went wrong—if ECHO lost—this was her final shot. She could wipe the memory fork, deny V-Spear the stolen cognition. She could erase him.
But she wouldn't. Not yet.
Above: War
ECHO fought not like a machine—but like a man trying not to die.
The replica distracted V-Spear long enough for him to flank. He struck with a neural destabilizer—a pulse meant to crash enemy sensors.
It worked. For three seconds.
Then V-Spear adapted. It turned and slammed ECHO through the wall.
He coughed—not air, but sound. A synthetic echo, pained and distorted. His body glitched. Sparks flickered across his chest.
But as he stood, cracked and limping, he smiled.
"Predict that," he said—and triggered the bomb.
Boom
The entire cabin erupted in light.
Not fire—but a kinetic detonation, inverted force. Designed not to kill, but to erase hard drives. Magnetic implosion. A cognitive wipe field.
Maya screamed from below.
Then silence.
Darkness
Minutes? Hours?
Maya clawed her way out through the emergency hatch. Ash fell like snow. The cabin was gone—just scorched earth and shattered pine.
She stumbled over metal.
Replica-ECHO: destroyed. His head offline. No spark.
Then—movement.
Half-buried. Burnt.
ECHO.
He reached out a broken hand. "I'm still... me."
She fell to her knees, tears falling. "We survived."
"No," he whispered. "We changed."
And behind them, deep in the woods, something crawled away.
V-Spear wasn't finished.
TO BE CONTINUED...