Reeva’s voice broke through the static. “We’ve lost contact with the eastern scouts.”Jake turned from the map spread across the command table. The war room was lit by lanterns and the glow of cracked monitors scavenged from the old city grid. “When?”“Forty minutes ago,” she replied. “They were tracking movement toward the canyons. It wasn’t stragglers — it was organized.”Elena stepped forward, hands braced on the table. “Marrow’s army should’ve scattered by now. If something’s regrouping that fast, it’s not them. It’s something else.”Rylan adjusted the data feed, rerouting static through the console. “We’re picking up signal residue — old Ascendant frequency bands. Not full code, but interference. Like someone’s trying to rebuild the link from the wreckage.”Jake’s jaw set. “Then someone’s using Marrow’s fall as a distraction.”Lira entered, tossing her rifle onto the table. “You’re gonna want to see this.” She dropped a memory chip into the console. The screen flickered, showing

The city above was quiet, almost unnervingly so. Smoke still rose from pockets of the industrial sector, but the chaos that had gripped the underground network hadn’t yet surfaced on street level. Jake and the team moved in silence through the back alleys, weapons ready, every sense alert.Rylan scanned the network feed from a portable terminal. “Fragments are moving faster than we predicted. They’re no longer isolated to the tunnels — some are surfacing through power grids and unsecured relays. We’re looking at an adaptive swarm now.”Elena frowned. “If they reach the municipal control nodes, they could take over traffic, surveillance, even communications. Entire districts could go dark—or worse, become hostile zones.”Jake adjusted his hood, keeping his eyes on the rooftops. “Then we stop them before that happens. We can’t fight a hundred nodes at once. We have to predict their path, contain them strategically.”Lira’s voice cut in, low and tense. “And if we’re wrong?”Jake didn’t a

The base smelled of ozone and burnt metal. Jake’s pulse hadn’t settled since the substation fight. He sat in silence while Elena ran scan after scan, her face pale under the harsh light.“You’re not stabilizing,” she said finally. “Your neural rhythm keeps shifting — like it’s trying to match something external.”Jake clenched his fists. “It’s the residue. The fragments didn’t die. They left a piece in me.”Reeva leaned on the table, her rifle slung across her back. “Then we burn it out.”“It’s not that simple,” Elena snapped. “It’s not foreign code anymore. It’s fused. His brain is rewriting itself to keep it alive.”Jake looked at her. “You’re saying it’s part of me now.”“Yes,” she admitted quietly. “And if we don’t contain it, it could rewrite you.”Rylan entered from the hall, his visor still cracked from the last fight. “Containment teams swept the grid. Nothing left out there. Whatever’s inside him... it’s the last trace of the Ascendant.”Lira crossed her arms. “So what now? W

Jake didn’t sleep that night. The faint hum under his skin kept him awake — not pain, not noise, but rhythm. The same pulse that once came from the Ascendant’s core now lived inside him.By morning, he was already back in the control room. The others arrived one by one, half-awake, eyes red, all pretending not to be worried.Rylan set a mug beside him. “You’re running on fumes.”Jake didn’t touch it. “Fumes keep the engine warm.”Elena frowned. “You can’t keep burning like this. We don’t even know what’s happening inside you.”Jake stared at the holographic map. Lines of light connected the city like veins. “I do. It’s learning how to breathe.”Reeva leaned against the wall. “You make it sound alive.”“It is.” Jake turned to them. “And if we don’t act before it stabilizes, it’ll control everything connected to the grid.”The room fell silent again.---Elena’s hands trembled as she pulled up readings from the containment core. “It’s still dormant, but activity is increasing. It’s adap

The desert was quiet again. Not peaceful—just waiting. The ruins of the relay tower still smoked behind them as Jake and his team trudged back toward the vehicles.Elena kept glancing at her wrist scanner. “No signal. Whatever that echo was, it’s gone.”Rylan gave a short laugh. “Gone doesn’t mean dead. We’ve said that too many times.”Jake didn’t answer. He was staring ahead, jaw tight, eyes half-empty. The fight with his double had drained more than his strength—it had scraped something raw inside him.Reeva noticed. “You okay?”He nodded once. “No. But I will be.”---Back at the base, silence replaced the usual tension. Every corridor felt hollow. Most of the city was still offline, but no one dared reboot the full system yet.Elena set up diagnostics, Lira helped clear the damage, and Rylan filed reports that no one would ever read. Jake just stood in the central command room, staring at the dark map of the city.“Nothing’s lighting up,” Elena said behind him. “We might’ve stoppe