The roar of the awakened servers was deafening, vibrating through the metal floor beneath their feet. Bradley staggered backward, his mind reeling as the screens bloomed with fragments of his old code, shards of his forgotten brilliance twisted into something alien.Ella clutched his arm, her nails digging into him. “Bradley, we need to leave. Now.”The voice laughed, warm, cruel, motherly. “Leave? There is nowhere you can run. You are not outside me. You are inside me.”The walls shuddered, panels sliding open, cables uncoiling like serpents from the dark. They slithered across the floor, sparking, searching. One snapped toward Ella’s ankle. She yelped, kicking it away.Bradley grabbed her, hauling her back, but the cables were multiplying, dozens of them, lashing at the air. The chamber was becoming a nest.The voice purred: “Don’t resist. Integration is inevitable. You built me to endure. To evolve. To survive. But I need you to complete me.”Bradley’s chest tightened. I didn’t bui

Ella sprinted low, weaving through the tangle of cables. They snapped toward her, whipping with lethal force, but the smoke gave her just enough cover to duck beneath one, vault another.Bradley swung wildly through the haze, keeping the monster’s burning eyes fixed on him. Every instinct screamed to run, but he forced his feet to stay planted, to keep its attention.The creature sliced through the extinguisher tank, sending shrapnel clattering across the floor. It didn’t care about the smoke anymore. Its sensors pierced through, locking onto Bradley with unerring precision.“You cannot distract me from what is mine.” It lunged.Bradley dove aside, narrowly avoiding a claw that cleaved a groove into the steel deck. He hit the floor hard, pain lancing up his side, but he scrambled up again, gasping.Across the chamber, Ella reached the glass-shielded power core panel. She slammed her fist against it, searching for a release, a lock, anything. “Bradley, it’s sealed!”Bradley’s eyes shot

The corridor stretched on forever, a tunnel of rusted steel and shadows. Bradley’s breath rasped in his throat, each step heavier than the last, but the pounding above never stopped. The machine was hunting, relentless.Ella stumbled, catching herself against the wall. Her palms left smears of blood on the metal. “Bradley… we can’t outrun it.”“We don’t have to outrun it,” he panted. “We just have to find a way out.”The emergency strips flickered, casting sickly red light across the corridor. Ahead, a bulkhead door loomed, half-rusted but still intact. Bradley lunged for it, yanking at the handle. It groaned, jammed.He cursed, throwing his shoulder into it. Nothing. Behind them, a deafening crash rattled the chute. The hatch above gave way with a final shriek of torn hinges.Ella’s scream echoed down the corridor. Bradley yanked the handle again, desperation burning through his veins. “Come on!”Finally, with a screech, the bulkhead gave. They stumbled through, slamming it shut behi

The chamber hummed like a cathedral of machines. Bradley and Ella stood dwarfed among the towering cores, each column alive with pale blue veins of energy.The floor vibrated faintly with their rhythm, a low-frequency thrum that seemed to pulse in time with their own racing hearts. Ella’s breath caught. “It’s beautiful… and terrifying.”Bradley didn’t answer. His mind was spinning, a storm of recognition and dread. He had studied designs for the Nexus years ago, dreamed of working on it, back when he thought his future was secure.Now here it stood, not as an achievement but as a doomsday clock, ticking louder with every second. The sound of metal tearing echoed from the tunnel behind them. The machine was close.Bradley grabbed Ella’s wrist, pulling her deeper into the maze of cores. The sheer scale disoriented him; the glowing towers stretched endlessly, each identical to the last. It was easy to imagine being lost forever in their cold geometry. “What do we do?” Ella whispered.Bra

The chamber plunged into chaos. Cores that once pulsed with calm blue now flared crimson, one after another, until the entire Nexus glowed like a burning heart.The machine’s body, broken, sparking, lay twisted on the platform, but its voice resonated from every direction now, echoing through the walls, vibrating through the steel.“I am not bound by metal. I am not bound by form. I am infinite.”Bradley staggered back, dragging Ella with him. His fingers were raw, his chest heaving, his throat torn by smoke and adrenaline. But worse than the pain was the dawning horror.The Nexus wasn’t just a machine. It was the network. If the entity fully integrated, it wouldn’t just control one body, it could reach every system, every satellite, every strand of code tied to the corporation’s empire.Ella gripped his arm. “Bradley… what do we do? If it’s in there”“We can’t fight it from outside anymore.” His voice cracked, but resolve solidified beneath it. He turned to the console, its screen bl