Neo-York Sector-6 Ruins | Time Stamp: 22:03 PMThe silence was oppressive an unnatural, deafening quiet that weighed down around them as they descended into what once was the center of the VireCorp complex. Shiny steel walls and whirring servers of a high-end tech empire were swapped out. Now, twisted girders and broken glass glinted like teeth in the dying light above. The skeleton of the building, buried under wreckage and collapsed infrastructure, remained.Caden's boots grated against wreckage as he strode down the corridor, weapon raised, nerves tingling. Each step back towards the past was heavier than the last. This was where it all began. This was where they buried the truth.Sophia followed him, her fingers clutching a palm-sized device tightly, Ethan's homemade biometric bypass. She appeared white in the soft blue light of the device, her face pinched with grim awareness."This way," she gestured, towards a plain service elevator which was concealed behind a torn-up section

Location: Ruins of the Hydra Facility. Illicit Sector Omega-2Time: 22:18 PMThe moment the floor gave way beneath them, it seemed as though the world itself had opened up and engulfed them.Caden had hardly time to scream before the world receded in a whirlwind of screeching metal, crunching stone, and suffocating dust. The crashed elevator shaft had plummeted them straight down into a secret corner of the Hydra Facility one that wasn't on the maps, wasn't talked about, and, as far as anyone could have known, wasn't even meant to be.When he awoke, it was in darkness dense and stifling, as from a tomb that had lain sealed for millennia. Pain hurt his body. Ribs, bruised. Arm, perhaps broken. Dust clogged his lungs, and the air seemed unusually cold.Then, the lights.Small flashes, like fireflies, emitted light from the walls. He had thought at first it was bioluminescence, but after his eyes adapted, he could see that they were strands of fiber-optic wire braided with etched stone,

Location: Arctic Circle – Outpost 12 of the Central Intelligence Time: 06:12 AM | Countdown Day 1 The VTOL's landing struts hissed as it navigated into the snow-burdened tundra of the Arctic Circle. Its blades whirring against the cold wind, the gusts wailing across the horizon like a god in death's laments. Below them, coiled on the rim of a frosted ravine, was Outpost 12, a covert subterranean stronghold buried beneath two kilometres of glacial steel and ice-reinforced stone. Above, it was an apparent ruin. A dead one. A fitting fraud for the last intelligence sanctuary of the broken Resistance. Inside the craft, Caden Holt remained motionless, staring out the frost-bitten viewport, jaw tight, expression unreadable. Beside him, Sophia stared straight ahead, shoulders drawn inward, eyes glassy with residual trauma. Ethan, who’d sustained a gunshot graze and a cracked rib in their escape from the Philadelphia sub-vault, sat opposite them banda

Where: On board Resistance Hovercraft, Sector X-9 AirspaceWhen: 09:21 AM — Day 1 of the CountdownThe storm outside was alive, howling and lashing at the metal skin of the Resistance hovercraft as it ripped its path through thick, chemical-tinged clouds. Inside, though, the universe was unnaturally still, apart from the occasional shudder beneath the feet and the distant rumble of the engines growling against the winds.Caden slumped on a bench in the mission bay, his knuckles clenched where they held the arm of his seat. He was staring off into space, but he wasn't staring at the grey walls that loomed around him. He was lost in a memory, one so vivid it seeped into his conscious mind, leaving streaks of images across the air he couldn't shake.Sophia sat opposite him with quiet concern.Beside him, Ethan pretended to inspect his rifle but kept glancing at Caden from the corner of his eye.The text had come an hour earlier, picked up on

Location: In Caden's Mindscape – The Revenant Core (Meanwhile in Real Life: Revenant Facility — Sector X-9) Time: Unknown — Time no longer applies within the mind. There was once but darkness. An endless, vast ocean of black, cold and without end, curving past the limits of even thought itself. No stars twinkled. There was no horizon. Only the crushing, smothering knowledge of solitude. Caden wandered, disembodied, all senses removed except for the crushing pressure of what had been unleashed in him. Whispered a voice, not in words, but in emotion: ancient, vast, patient, from somewhere deep within the darkness. Welcome, Catalyst. Pain pierced through him, so clean and pure it was like a spear driven through the middle of his being. He tried to scream, but there was no sound, no body, no mouth. Only thought. Nothing but fear. Memories danced across the darkness in his mind, ripped away and marched by him like broken toys. Sophia's smile. Ethan's laugh. Mar