“CASEY!”Frank lunged forward just in time to catch his friend as the red dot vanished and a sharp crack echoed down the hallway. Casey’s body went limp in his arms, blood soaking through his jacket.Ella spun toward the direction of the shot, weapon raised. “Sniper—moving fast!”Adrian darted to the wall, yanking open a concealed maintenance panel. “Emergency shaft, now!”Frank dragged Casey, heart pounding. “Stay with me, man. Stay with me!”Casey coughed, blood at the corner of his mouth. “Vest… got most of it... I think…” He winced, his breathing shallow.“You're not dying on me,” Frank growled. “Not after coming back from the dead.”They shoved into the maintenance tunnel just as bullets sprayed the metal walls behind them. Sparks erupted. Frank kicked the hatch shut, panting, his hands soaked in his friend's blood.“Who the hell was that?” Ella asked, wide-eyed.Adrian looked grim. “I was afraid they’d deploy her. That shot came from Subject Nine.”“Who is she?” Frank demanded.

The escape tunnel was pitch black except for the flickering emergency lights that lined the narrow ceiling. Frank led the way, gripping the data drive like it was his heartbeat. Behind him, Ella limped slightly but kept up. Adrian carried Casey with silent determination, sweat pouring down his forehead."Sector K is at least three miles underground," Adrian muttered. "We’ll have to cross two checkpoints and an abandoned operations wing."“Abandoned?” Ella asked. “Or ‘abandoned’?”“Depends who you ask,” Adrian said grimly.Frank’s mind was a storm of questions. Phase Two begins. What did that mean? Why hadn’t Subject Nine finished them off? Why let them escape?Unless… they weren’t the target anymore.“Adrian,” Frank said. “Is there any chance this ‘Sector K’ is a decoy?”“No. It’s real. That’s where Dr. Hensley kept all off-book operations. Bioweapons, surveillance AI, memory erasure trials you name it.”“And we’re going there why, again?” Ella shot back.Frank stopped at a sealed ste

Frank’s heart raced. The figure in the silver suit moved with deadly precision, faster than anyone Frank had encountered in the field. A split second was all it took for him to assess the situation.The man was armed—both hands gripping sleek, black blades that shimmered ominously in the low light of the archive room. He didn’t speak, didn’t even flinch. Just advanced.Frank reacted first. He grabbed a nearby steel rod, swung it wildly to knock the blades away.The masked figure parried with ease, his movements almost surgical, as if trained to kill without hesitation. Frank's chest tightened. This wasn’t an ordinary assassin.Ella grabbed Frank’s arm and yanked him back. “We need to move—now!”But Frank, already slipping into fight mode, shook his head. “We don’t run. Not this time.”He lunged forward, aiming to disable the masked hunter.Frank's strike was fast, calculated. His opponent blocked it, and in the same motion, the masked hunter spun, launching a kick that knocked Frank b

The server room was shrouded in complete darkness, save for the faint green pulse of a backup generator. Frank’s heart hammered in his chest. Corbin’s voice still echoed in his mind.“You were never just a janitor… You were a contingency plan.”Ella lit her phone’s flashlight, casting an eerie glow across the room. Adrian stood still, jaw locked, staring at the last frame frozen on the screen: a scarred version of Frank floating in a tank, as if kept in stasis alive, preserved, and possibly aware.Ella finally whispered, “Frank… is that really… you?”Frank couldn’t answer. He was too busy trying to breathe through the weight of the truth pressing down on him.He took a slow step back. “This doesn’t make sense. How could I be… that? How could I not know?”Adrian narrowed his eyes. “Unless your memories aren’t yours.”The room turned colder.Frank shot him a look. “What do you mean?”“Ever heard of memory implantation?” Adrian replied. “They’ve been experimenting with it for years in ce

The elevator hummed with a low mechanical groan as it descended into the unknown.Frank stood in front, eyes glued to the digital panel flashing:Destination: Deep Core 5Clearance: Ultra-BlackOccupants: UnauthorizedElla gripped his arm tightly. “We should have stayed behind. This could be a trap.”“It is a trap,” Adrian muttered, his pistol drawn. “But we’re going anyway.”Frank’s mind buzzed. The phrase kept ringing in his head: "Welcome to the War."He glanced at the other two. “There’s something deeper happening here. Those clones weren’t just replacements. They were soldiers. I think… I think Corbin’s building an army.”The elevator jerked to a stop. The lights flickered. A cold mechanical voice echoed from the speakers:“Arrival: Deep Core 5. Proceed with caution. Level compromised.”“Compromised?” Ella repeated, heart thudding.The doors slid open with a hiss. A blast of cold air struck them like a slap.The hallway beyond was dimly lit. Flickering red emergency lights painte