Smoke still hung in the air as Ayla stumbled through the shattered glass, Dominic’s words echoing in her mind.“I’ve been watching you since you were six.”The photo trembled in her bloodied hand. Her mother—Elena Quinn—smiling beside a man whose face was half-hidden by a burn mask.Dominic.He wasn’t in any file. No dossier. No intelligence pinged his identity. Yet he knew things—things Ayla hadn’t even told her closest allies.She pocketed the photo and limped down the alley, heart pounding. The ambush team was gone, vanishing as quickly as they came.Clean.Professional.Meant to rattle her, not kill her.A message.Dax’s Voice Her comm crackled. “Ayla! Do you copy?”“Still breathing,” she replied. “Extraction Point Two is burned. Caleb?”“Unresponsive. Last signal pinged near the opera house.”Her stomach clenched. “Track him. I’m moving.”“Negative. Sit tight—we’re—” “I’m not leaving him, Dax.”She clicked off and vanished into the mist.The ChaseThe city was eerily quiet as Ayl

Ayla’s heart raced in her chest, each beat a hammer against her ribs as she stood frozen before the glass tank. Her mother’s face, so familiar, was barely visible beneath the liquid and the mechanical tubes connected to her body. Elena Quinn—her Elena—was now something else entirely. Something… altered.She tried to speak, but her throat tightened, her voice caught in her chest.“Mom… please, wake up. You have to hear me…” Ayla whispered, but the words barely left her lips.For a moment, nothing happened. The room remained eerily silent, save for the hum of the machines. But then, something shifted. The lights flickered, the air seemed to crackle with energy, and then…A voice. It wasn’t her mother’s. It wasn’t human.“Ayla Quinn… We’ve been expecting you.”The words reverberated inside her skull, not spoken, but broadcast directly into her mind. The voice was smooth, mechanical, yet disturbingly familiar. It was as if the system itself was speaking through her mother.Ayla staggered

The world around Ayla crumbled in a violent cascade of noise and light. A thunderous explosion had torn through the chamber, sending shockwaves through the entire facility. She had barely been able to brace herself before the walls buckled inward, groaning under the weight of the collapse. For a moment, she thought she had lost everything—the fight, her team, and maybe even herself.But through the chaos, one thought remained at the forefront of her mind.Is it over?The Prometheus Core had been destroyed, or so she thought. But as the dust settled and the smoke began to clear, the haunting realization gripped her.The figure, the monstrous form of the new Prometheus, hadn’t disappeared. If anything, it had grown—its translucent skin now rippling with electricity, the very air around it pulsing with an unnatural energy. The face—if you could call it that—had shifted, becoming something more, something... alive.Ayla’s hands shook as she picked herself up from the floor. The explosion

The air was thick with tension, each breath that Ayla took feeling heavier than the last. Her team had fought through hell to get to this point, but they were still standing on the edge of a cliff, and now Omega, the terrifying new force from Prometheus, was mere steps away from finalizing the destruction of everything they had ever known.Ayla’s hands gripped her weapon tightly, knuckles white, as her eyes remained fixed on Omega’s glowing form. The woman—or whatever she was now—hovered just above the ground, a cruel smile playing on her lips as she surveyed the destruction that surrounded them. Prometheus had already begun to consume the facility, and there was no telling how far its reach went.“You think you can stop me?” Omega’s voice rang out, dripping with condescension. “You are already too late. The future is already in motion.”Ayla could feel the weight of those words pressing down on her chest. She had no idea how they were going to survive this. The odds were against them

Ayla’s heart raced as the abyss before her seemed to pulse with an energy she couldn’t comprehend. The swirling mass of black and violet energy writhed like a living creature, consuming everything in its path.She felt its power surging, and a terrifying realization dawned on her—Omega had evolved, become something far more insidious, far more dangerous than they had anticipated.Her mind screamed at her to run, to get out of the Prometheus facility while she still could. But her legs refused to move, frozen by a force she couldn’t fight. The darkness before her seemed to stretch on forever, an endless pit drawing everything in with its gravitational pull.Then she heard it—an eerie whisper, faint at first, like a distant, fading voice calling her name."Ayla…"The voice was unmistakable. It was Omega’s voice, but it wasn’t the same as before. It was distant, almost... hollow.“You thought you could stop me?” the voice continued, growing clearer, more defined. “You cannot. I am now mo