Antarctica – Hollow Point Ruins, Zero Visibility. One Hour After Glasswork Shutdown.The power was gone, The temperature inside Hollow Point was dropping by the second. Once-warm server chambers were turning into metal tombs.Cassian leaned against a collapsed console, bleeding from a wound at his temple. Ayla tore a strip from her undershirt and pressed it to his head. “We need to move. Now,” she said. “Before we freeze to death.”He nodded, dazed. “Extraction?”“Gone. Comms fried in the surge. We’re on our own.”She paused. “And Vex?”Cassian didn’t answer, Which meant Vex was still alive, They moved through the corridors, emergency lights flickering weakly. Ayla kept her weapon raised. Cassian leaned on her for support, barely speaking.Outside, the storm howled like it wanted them back, Ayla reached the external hatch, but stopped cold, The helicopter was gone. Cassian stared. “He took it?”“No,” she said quietly.Because Vex hadn’t taken the helicopter, He’d destroyed it, The twi

Moscow – Abandoned Soviet Data Center 5:17 p.m. "Ϟ"A symbol with no known agency, no known cipher, no matching string in any government database, Yet it had appeared in Cain’s system. And now, it was appearing everywhere.Cassian led Ayla and Vex through rusted steel doors into the data tomb beneath the city, one of the USSR’s forgotten cold war vaults. But this one wasn’t abandoned.Inside: heat signatures, low-level power, a recent trace of server activity, Ayla moved through aisles of dust-choked machines, her flashlight sweeping across Soviet-era storage racks. “What is this place?”Cassian replied, “Before the Foundation, there was another project. One so secret even the Kremlin buried it without a name. They called it ‘Protocol Icarus.’”She stopped walking. “Why haven’t I heard of this?”“Because Icarus was purged. Files shredded. Agents executed. The only thing that survived…” he nodded toward a humming, pitch-black server in the back, “was this.”The Black Server... No marki

Greenland – Site B-0Time to Impact: 6 MinutesSirens howled through the steel corridors as the automated warning repeated in every language: “ARGON-9 TACTICAL STRIKE INBOUND. SECURE ALL INTEL. EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY.”Cassian yanked open a side panel to reveal a hidden elevator shaft. “Back door to the surface, We move now.”Vex was already downloading what he could from the server, his fingers a blur. “We won’t get everything. This place has six terabytes of locked neural loops. We need to prioritize.”Ayla didn’t move. She stood at the glass pod, staring at the child inside. He wasn’t frightened, He was watching, Waiting.“Help me,” the voice whispered again, echoing in her mind.She blinked hard.“You’re inside my head.”“I always was.”Her pulse quickened.“Who are you really?”“A firewall, A failsafe, A seed of control the world tried to bury. But I was never meant to stay asleep.”“You woke me.”Cassian called out, “Ayla, we have to go!”She turned. “We can’t leave him.”Vex loo

Fjord Base Gamma – 2:12 a.m.The hum of the generator barely masked the silence stretching across the base. Vex was the first to sense it a cold ripple in the static, a breath where there should be none.He lifted his pistol and signaled Cassian silently, They both moved Down the corridor Toward the noise, A door creaked, A shadow moved.Ayla and Null remained behind.The boy stared at a hologram of Earth, spinning slowly. He traced the equator with his finger.“Why do humans draw borders?” he asked.“To make themselves feel in control,” Ayla said quietly.“But they’re not.”“No,” she agreed. “Not really.”Null’s voice dropped. “Then maybe I can help.”Cassian’s flashlight flickered, Movement left. He turned the corner Nothing. Then suddenly a hand, Fast, Precise. Cassian was disarmed in one brutal motion, pinned against the wall.A woman stood in front of him, clad in black, face covered except for her eyes. Blue, Too blue, Too familiar. Vex drew down. “Step away.”The woman turned

Fjord Base Gamma – 5:14 a.m.Ayla sat on the floor of the old control room, staring at her bloodied palms.“You,” Null had said.“Meridian is you.”Those words hadn’t left her mind, Not for a second, Not since he came back from the edge.Vex paced behind her. “He’s confused. Shaken. He just survived a purge attempt.”Cassian disagreed. “He’s never spoken without calculation. If he says Meridian is tied to her it’s not random.”Ayla spoke softly. “Then I need to find out why.”Echo joined her minutes later, bringing a tray of protein packs and water.“You haven’t eaten.”“I don’t feel like eating,” Ayla muttered.Echo placed the tray down. “Null's still asleep. He’s stable now. But his neural thread’s shifting reorganizing itself.”Ayla glanced up. “Reorganizing?”Echo nodded. “He’s evolving. His code is rewriting in real time… and it’s following a pattern.”Ayla’s breath caught. “What kind of pattern?”Echo hesitated, Then handed her a tablet. On the screen was a DNA overlay, Match: 9