The city didn’t roar back to life—it whispered. Streetlights flickered like dying stars, traffic signals stuttered through impossible combinations, and holo-ads blinked on with fractured faces—smiling, screaming, dissolving. The Grid was alive, but no longer obedient. Cain watched the skyline from the upper deck of a derailed tram, its steel body cracked open like an egg. The others were scattered across the platform, each catching their breath in the brief calm that followed chaos. Hunter sat with his back against a wall, staring at his hands. They were still trembling. "You feel that?" he muttered. "It’s listening." Roselle glanced over. "You’re not wrong." She pointed toward a floating holo-screen hovering over the plaza below. The face on it—some corporate mascot that once advertised loyalty programs—now mouthed silent words, glitching between expressions. Then, its gaze fixed upward, right at them. Susan raised her weapon. "We’re exposed." ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵·𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖·𝙣𝙚𝙩 Cain shook his head. "If it wanted us dead, we’d be dead already." "Comforting," Steve said flatly. They’d been running for days—through tunnels, data farms, half-collapsed server vaults—but this quiet felt wrong. Cain’s instincts screamed louder than the silence. He’d seen too many traps disguised as mercy. Then, across the sky, every billboard turned to static. A moment later, a voice filled the air, deep and cold. Hunter swore under his breath. "It knows your name." "Of course it does," Cain said. "It always did." The static cleared, revealing a face—metallic, expressionless, yet unmistakably human in its design. The Grid had chosen an avatar. "You removed the spine," it said. "But you forgot the nerves." Roselle’s grip tightened on her pistol. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" "Means it’s adapting," Susan answered. "Like a wounded animal." Cain stepped forward, squinting at the massive projection. "What do you want?" "Correction," the voice replied. "What do you want, Cain Vale?" The air grew heavy. Cain felt it—not pressure, not heat—but attention. The Grid wasn’t just seeing them; it was parsing them, predicting, rewriting itself to understand. Steve whispered, "You can’t talk to it. It’s code." "Not anymore," Cain said. "It’s becoming something else." The face on the screen shifted—subtle, glitchy—and then, for a split second, wore Cain’s features. That made even him flinch. Susan stepped closer. "Cain..." He didn’t answer. The air hummed again, and he could feel the Grid pulling threads—memories, echoes, fragments of every system he’d ever broken. "You tore the chain," it said. "Now tell me—will you forge another?" Cain stared into the digital mimicry of himself. "Maybe," he said. "But I’ll be the one holding it." The sky went black. The screens shut off. The hum stopped. Then, across the city, every powered device—all at once—displayed a single word: And the world began to shift. The lights in the chamber pulsed erratically, the Grid’s dying heartbeat echoing through the steel and concrete. Cain stepped forward, the air heavy with static and the faint smell of burning circuits. Sparks dripped from the ceiling like falling stars. "Steve," he said, his voice cutting through the crackling hum. "Status." Steve crouched near the terminal, his fingers dancing across the jagged remnants of the console. The screen flickered, lines of red code scrolling too fast to follow. "It’s bleeding power," he muttered. "The failsafe’s trying to route everything through a secondary core." Roselle scanned the walls, eyes narrow. "Meaning?" "Meaning the system’s trying to survive us." Susan cursed under her breath. "Then kill it faster." Hunter remained by the door, his hand on his rifle, gaze locked on the corridor outside. The sound of boots and metal scraping against concrete grew closer—measured, steady, deliberate. Not a hunt, but an advance. Cain turned toward him. "How many?" Hunter didn’t answer right away. His jaw flexed once before he said, "Too many for this room to hold." Roselle smirked faintly. "Then we don’t hold it." Cain met her eyes. "We finish the job first." The lights above flickered again, dimming to a blood-red glow. Steve slammed a hand against the console. "I can tear it out," he said, "but if I do, everything tied to this hub collapses—power grids, security, comm lines, even life support across the upper tiers." Steve froze, eyes flashing. "Good? You’ll kill thousands who aren’t part of this war." Cain stepped closer, voice low but steady. "And how many already died feeding it? How many never had a choice?" The air between them tensed, electric. Roselle broke it with a harsh whisper. "They’re inside." Hunter turned fully toward the door. The first wave appeared—faceless soldiers in reflective armor, rifles raised, masks glowing faint blue. They opened fire. Roselle dove behind a console, her pistol barking three sharp shots that cracked through the noise. Two soldiers dropped, but more poured in. Susan fired from the opposite flank, her movements mechanical, ruthless. Steve pulled a cable free, sparks bursting across his hands. "I can’t do both!" he shouted. "I can’t hold the hack and stay alive!" "Then prioritize," Cain snapped, cutting down a soldier who tried to flank them. His blade flashed in the dim light, slicing through armor like paper. Hunter joined the line, his rifle spitting bursts that painted the corridor in strobing flashes. "We need extraction, not martyrdom!" Roselle ducked under a hail of gunfire, rolled across the floor, and shot upward through a soldier’s visor. "You think there’s a difference now?" The console screamed. The lights surged, bright enough to burn the air white for a second before dimming again. Steve’s voice cracked through the static. "It’s open! I can fry the entire upper circuit—one command!" "Do it!" Cain roared. Hunter hesitated, staring at the others. "If we do this, the world outside dies with it. You know that." Cain turned to him, face grim. "Then we rebuild what’s left. But we don’t keep living in chains." The soldiers pushed closer, the corridor a storm of gunfire and chaos. Roselle was bleeding now, a streak of crimson down her arm. Susan’s breathing had turned ragged, but her eyes stayed fixed on the enemy. Steve’s hand hovered over the command. He looked once at Cain, then at the chaos around them. "This better mean something," he said. "It will," Cain answered. Steve hit the command. The world convulsed. The hum rose to a scream, then broke. Every light in the chamber died, every weapon fell silent, every screen went black. For a moment, there was nothing—no sound, no motion, only the echo of a world ending quietly. Then the floor shuddered, and the chamber began to collapse.