The man in the pinstriped suit was dragged out of the wreckage, bloodied, bound, and unconscious - his mask of civility ripped away beneath the harsh glare of Kara’s broadcast. Every citizen saw him now. Not as a faceless executive or a shadowy bureaucrat, but as the architect of Lin City’s decay.And with that image, something ancient stirred across the city.Not rage.Resolve.Mira sprinted through the wrecked corridors, her boots slapping concrete slick with dust and blood. Every breath scorched her lungs, but she didn’t slow - not when she saw the smoke curling out from the stairwell. She descended like fire on legs, passing torn walls and broken glass, until she reached the server room.The blast had warped half the chamber. Metal panels hung like torn pages. Sparks hissed from crushed circuits. Ares stood in the center, body trembling, shirt soaked in blood and ash. His hands still held the pistol, now lowered, as Kara limped toward him, gripping a hard drive like it was sacred

The storm had passed, but the tension hadn't.Ares stood in the war room - once the mayor’s private golf simulator - now stripped of opulence and remade into a resistance nerve center. The projector hummed quietly, throwing up satellite images and digital intercepts onto the peeling walls. Reyes paced nearby, tapping a stylus against a cracked tablet. Monk sat cross-legged on a crate, chewing sunflower seeds, eyes on Kara as she typed furiously.Across the room, Mira leaned against a window, arms folded. The city outside was beginning to buzz - markets reopened, sirens silent, children laughing again. But behind that laughter was unease. Everyone felt it. Even the kids knew.Something darker was coming.“Alright,” Kara said, breaking the silence. “That signal we traced from Victor’s channel? I decrypted the last packet.”Ares turned toward her.She tapped the screen. A satellite image zoomed in - a snowy compound nestled at the base of jagged cliffs near the Eastern Bloc.“He's callin

The morning after the snow settled, Lin City woke to quiet - not peace, but something like it.Ares stood at the edge of the old city wall, overlooking the western outskirts where rusted factories met frostbitten fields. The scars of war were still fresh - half the skyline was missing teeth. But for the first time in years, there were no drones overhead. No sirens. No screaming.Only crows.Behind him, Reyes approached slowly, boots crunching through the snow.“You didn’t sleep,” he said, voice flat but laced with something gentler.“I haven’t earned it yet,” Ares replied.Reyes didn’t argue. He stopped beside him, staring at the horizon. “Command wants to know what we’re doing next.”Ares didn’t answer right away. His eyes drifted to the edge of the tree line, where a trail of black smoke coiled into the air like a question.“Next,” he murmured, “we prepare for what comes after victory.”-Back in the courthouse bunker, Victor Wu was still breathing.Barely.The room was silent save

Lysandra stood before the wall of monitors, each one flashing footage from the Eclipse broadcast - Ares’ synthetic double staring coldly into every home in Lin City.“Look at them,” she murmured, her voice gravel-thin behind the gauze wrapping half her face. “They’re afraid - not of what he is… but of what he could be.”The shadowed figure beside her stepped forward. Male. Tall. A glint of silver wiring pulsing faintly beneath the skin of his neck.“Project DEI is fully integrated,” he said. “All facial match systems confirm a 93% overlap between the real Ares and the artificial model. The citizens are confused. Faith is a fragile thing.”Lysandra’s gaze never left the screen.“Then let it fracture.”She turned away, stepping into the sterile corridor lined with humming servers and cryo units. Behind reinforced glass, figures floated—suspended in pale-blue fluid, their limbs twitching subtly. Failed prototypes. Pieces of war.She paused before one chamber - the only one lit from benea

The alarms howled like a waking beast - shrill, pulsing, alive.Red lights strobed overhead as the corridor flared with motion. Mechanical clanks echoed from behind the walls, as if the building itself had started to breathe.Ares instinctively stepped in front of the girl, shielding Mira and the rest of the team. But the child didn’t flinch. She just looked up at him with strange, steady eyes.Then she said it again - softer this time, as if testing the shape of it.“Welcome home… Eron.”Ares froze.Mira turned sharply, eyes narrowing. “What did she just call you?”Ares didn’t answer.Couldn’t.That name - Eron - he hadn’t heard it in decades. It had been erased, buried in the fires of Fallujah, lost in files that no longer existed. No one alive should have known it.Unless someone had been watching since before all of this began.The girl blinked. “You don’t remember me. But I remember you.”Reyes moved forward, raising his rifle. “Back up, kid.”“No,” Ares said, arm outstretched. “