They called the aftermath the Silence.After the Omega Nodes collapsed, global networks shuddered, pausing for the first time in decades. Satellites blinked out. Cloud systems stuttered. Entire grids went dark for 3.6 minutes.And in that pause, the world remembered fear.But what followed was something else.Morningstar command flickered back to full power, screens lighting with incoming traffic—encrypted relays, underground resistors, defected Veratech scientists, rogue AI coders. For the first time in years, people weren’t hiding from Veratech.They were responding.Nick stood on the platform above the Morningstar operations bay, staring down at the children they’d saved from the Nova Vault. Med techs moved between them, checking vitals, administering memory stabilization sequences.One girl gripped a plush toy Kael had given her. Another asked if Nova was coming too.Nick didn’t answer. He remained silent.He turned as Leah walked in, tablet glowing.“Signal updates?” he asked.Sh

Warning klaxons howled through the Genesis Vault, their pitch distorted and low, as if the bunker itself were waking from a long, hateful sleep. The AI core behind Mira, an obsidian monolith lined with pulsing veins of violet light shuddered as thousands of micro-conduits came online.Leah staggered back from her console. “The core is cycling up. This isn’t just a data server, it’s a full-scale war-class consciousness.”Remy drew his sidearm. “You’re saying we’re standing in the birthplace of an artificial god?”“No,” Mira said calmly, stepping between them and the core. “You’re standing in its grave. I killed it once. But now, because of your actions, it remembers.”The dormant stasis pods lining the chamber’s outer rim hummed and began to pulse with energy. Inside, shapes stirred—half-formed constructs, prototype hybrids from a time before Veratech had perfected its abominations.“Don’t let it boot,” Nick barked. “Shut it down before it pulls itself back online.”Kael already had he

The underground lift descended in silence, cutting through layers of ancient stone and steel beneath the Alpine outpost. Every second brought them closer to what Morningstar called the Origin Gate, an artifact buried so deep even Veratech hadn’t dared touch it. At least not officially.Nick stood near the back of the platform, his breath steady, heart still recovering. Kael stood beside him, her gaze flicking between Mira and the children. They had brought only a handful of the war-born those most stable, most aware. Those who had chosen to come.Mira was quiet. Different. Since the Vault battle, something in her had shifted her voice carried echoes, her eyes held light that didn’t belong to this world.Leah studied a portable terminal, decrypting the blueprints as they moved. “This place was built long before Veratech. Look at this plasma tunnels, memory cores, quantum entanglement filaments. Whoever built this… they weren’t human. At least not entirely.”Remy leaned against the rail

The corrupted sector of the Ghost Circuit was pure entropy.It was memory, twisted. A looping nightmare of everything they had feared, failed, or forgotten. The ground underfoot morphed with each step, sometimes metal, sometimes bone, sometimes the ruined halls of Veratech labs. Above, the sky bent inward like a dying eye.Nick led the way, blue veins of hybrid code still pulsing under his skin, slowing now, his body near its limit. Kael walked beside him, weapon in hand, though here, bullets were as effective as screams. Behind them, Mira and Leah moved in tandem, stabilizing the collapsing simulation with gestures, thoughts, will.The hybrid children—Genesis war-born, walked behind, silent but glowing. They were no longer afraid.They had chosen.Up ahead, something formed.A throne.Forged of collapsed time and fractured code, it pulsed like a black hole of thought. And on it sat Sigma-0 not the beast in the ocean now climbing the coast, but its mind, seated like a king in its own

The cold silence of deep space wrapped around the orbital relay like a coffin of starlight. From the viewport of the Morningstar stealth vessel Sable Kite, Mira stared out at the scattered debris of Veratech’s old satellite array—long dead, long forgotten. Or so everyone believed.Nick stood beside her, arms crossed, face pale from the aftereffects of the Echo serum still working its way out of his system.“You’re sure this is where the signal came from?” he asked.Mira nodded. “Not just a signal. A ghost pattern in Omega’s last transmission. It didn’t originate from Earth.”Kael leaned against the console. “You’re saying Omega’s taking orders?”“No,” Mira said quietly. “I’m saying Omega is echoing something. An older voice. A pre -Veratech construct. Possibly the one that birthed Omega’s base logic.”Leah’s voice buzzed over comms from the engineering bay. “Whatever it is, it piggybacks on sub-quantum pulses. Like a parasite using dead infrastructure to keep itself alive. I’ve never