The wind carried no scent. No heat. No sound. It wasn't nature anymore. It was static. A hum in the bones.
Zayn stood over the collapsed entrance to the Ark, his hands trembling not from exhaustion, but from the lingering echo of what he'd seen inside. The stasis chambers. The broken subjects. The girl who now stood behind him, quiet and blinking under the sunlight like it was a strange new element.
F-13 hadn't said a word since they left the ruins. She only stared at the sky, mouth barely open, like she was listening to something no one else could hear.
"You okay?" Zayn asked.
She nodded slowly, then stopped. Her fingers twitched. Then she said, "It's not just us anymore. Something's opened."
Zayn turned to face her. "What do you mean?"
She didn't answer. Her eyes rolled back for a second, then settled again. "They're trying to burn the fractures. Everywhere. All at once."
The words meant nothing at first. Then the Null inside Zayn stirred violently, like a nerve being shocked. His spine locked. A whisper crawled into his mind, not from F-13, but from the Zone itself.
Burn Protocol active.
Global anomaly containment engaged.
All unauthorized CoreTech remnants marked for purification.
Zayn turned to the northern horizon. Dull gray clouds rippled unnaturally. Not weather. Not storms. Something else. Something weaponized.
F-13 knelt in the dust, pressing her fingers into the sand. "I can hear them. The places waking up. And the flames coming."
Zayn stepped toward her. "How do you know that?"
"I was part of the system once. Not like you. I didn't break out. I broke in."
She looked up at him.
"They're coming here next."
Zayn looked up again. And saw the sky fracture.
It didn't crack like glass. It bled light. A thin vertical line opened across the upper atmosphere. Something fell from it, silent and smooth like a scalpel.
A clean white capsule.
It hit the ground ten kilometers away and didn't explode.
It hissed.
A new shape emerged from it. Humanoid. Tall. Graceful. Wrong.
Zayn watched as the shape began walking toward them. Not running. Not flying.
Walking.
The Null in his body recoiled.
F-13 whispered. "A Cleanser."
Zayn had heard the term once in a scrambled data shard Velon had left behind. A prototype weapon. Not a person. A function. Created to do what others couldn't. Erase corrupted bonds. Clean the blood. End the lineage of Null fractures.
They were said to be unkillable.
F-13 clutched her stomach suddenly. Her skin flickered with dark light.
"She knows me," she said. "She called me the split echo. I've heard her in my sleep. She's here to erase us both."
Zayn moved to step in front of her.
"Then we fight."
He didn't feel brave. He didn't feel ready. But his feet didn't move away.
The Cleanser came into view.
She wore armor that gleamed unnaturally clean, like it repelled light instead of reflecting it. Her face was covered by a smooth mask with no eyes. Just a single vertical slit where the mouth should be. She stopped ten meters away.
Zayn raised his hand, the Null swirling faintly. "You planning to talk?"
She nodded once.
"I will speak before deletion," she said, her voice soft. Human. Female. "It is part of the protocol. Closure is humane."
Zayn frowned. "I'm not dying today."
"That is statistically unlikely," she said. "But not impossible."
F-13 stood up behind him. Her presence made the air feel heavier. The Null was responding to her now as much as him.
The Cleanser tilted her head.
"You were both meant to be forgotten," she said. "But memory is disobedient."
Zayn stepped forward.
"You were made to erase people like us. But you're not early enough."
He launched the first strike.
The Null lashed outward in a jagged whip of inverted energy. The Cleanser sidestepped, not dodging, just slightly rotating out of phase. Zayn's attack passed through her shadow.
Then she responded.
Her arm extended. Not stretched — reconfigured. A blade formed mid-motion, made of something that shimmered with Aether. She moved with surgical grace, swiping once. Zayn ducked, barely.
The blade didn't miss. It phased through part of his arm, not cutting... disintegrating.
Pain didn't follow. Confusion did.
She had erased a part of him.
F-13 screamed.
Zayn turned just in time to see her collapse. The Cleanser hadn't touched her.
"She's fracturing," the Cleanser said. "Not because of me. Because of herself."
F-13 twitched on the ground. Her body was changing. Eyes glowing, limbs distorting. Her bones shifted in place, like she was trying to stabilize into a new shape.
Zayn launched again, this time pulling the Null like a net. The Cleanser met it mid-air and punched. The energy broke apart like paper.
Then she froze.
A ripple passed through her armor. Her mask cracked.
F-13 stood up.
Her feet weren't touching the ground anymore.
Zayn backed away slightly.
She floated upward, eyes burning black. Her voice was many voices now.
"Zayn. Move."
He did.
F-13 released.
The desert bent.
Light fell inward, not outward. A reverse explosion. A collapse.
The Cleanser's armor shattered.
She didn't scream.
She only said, "Reset acknowledged."
Then she vanished.
Not dead.
Erased.
Zayn collapsed to his knees, chest heaving.
F-13 landed beside him, knees buckling.
He caught her before she hit the ground.
She looked at him, eyes normal again. "She was just the first. They sent her because she could speak. The next ones won't."
Zayn nodded.
Above them, the sky continued to bleed fire. Across the world, other Ark sites burned. Hidden labs. Sealed vaults. Forgotten cities. Everything that once belonged to CoreTech was being scrubbed from reality.
But something else was waking up too.
F-13 whispered, "They can't burn the memories. They tried. But we still remember."
She passed out.
Zayn carried her toward a cave barely visible in the distance.
He didn't know where they'd go next. But he knew who he'd find.
His father.
The man who made all of this possible.
And this time, he'd bring the fire with him.