The world narrowed to a single falling body. Daniel caught Sophia before she hit the ground, smoke still rising from the burned fabric of her clothes, her chest heaving in ragged, broken breaths.His hands trembled violently, Not from fear. From fury. “Sophia, stay with me. Look at me.”Her eyelids fluttered, consciousness slipping like sand. “You, better not, disappear again”Then she went still. Not dead, but terrifyingly close. Daniel’s pulse roared through the air, pressure vibrating the floor as if the building itself feared what he might do next.Voss stumbled over, dropping to his knees. He pressed his palms to Sophia's wounds, trying to halt the bleeding. His voice wavered, the hardened soldier cracking.“She needs a medbay. Now.”Father stared at Sophia, eyes glowing with a new, fractured emotion he didn’t yet understand. Remorse. “She risked herself to protect you. An illogical action, Statistically unacceptable, Yet”He looked at Daniel searching. “I envy her conviction.”D

Gunship rotors thundered overhead hurricane winds tearing across the shattered bridge platform as if the sky itself was enraged. Searchlights targeted Daniel, Sophia, and Voss with ruthless precision.OVERWATCH mechanized voice, ASSETS LOCKED PERMISSION TO TERMINATE, UNRESTRICTEDDaniel stood at the edge of the abyss, Sophia in his arms, Voss at his side. His eyes glowed white in the stormlight and the air bent around him.The first gunship fired, rails shrieking as high-density slugs ripped downward like meteor hail. Daniel flicked two fingers. The bullets stopped mid descent. A moment of stillness. Then, “Return to sender.”The metal storm reversed, slamming back into the aircraft’s engines. The sky erupted in flame. Wreckage spiraled like a dying star, crashing into a second gunship, chain reaction feeding the inferno. Voss shielded Sophia from falling debris. “Air support neutralized. Mostly. You got more in you?”Daniel barely heard him, His focus was locked on Sophia, on the str

The lights above Daniel hummed like a swarm of distant insects, flickering in pulses that matched his heartbeat. Or maybe his heart matched them.He sat crouched in the center of the chamber, shoulder pressed against a metallic wall that felt warm, too warm, like muscle, not steel. The ground under him breathed. He could feel it. Not real, Not real, Not real. But the wall exhaled again.“Stop pretending your flesh still follows the rules of nature,” said the voice. It came from everywhere. It came from inside him. “This is you adapting.”Daniel’s jaw clenched. “I’m not yours.”“You’re not even you anymore.”His fingers twitched. The skin on the back of his hand rippled, letters forming beneath the surface like bioluminescent veins. Lines of code crawled up his wrist and spiraled toward his elbow.He yanked his arm behind him, hiding it, but the voice laughed. “You hide from your evolution?”“I hide from what you’re trying to make me.”“You think I crafted you?” A pause. A soft, almost

Alarms howled through the command center, a shrill chorus of panic that rattled every steel support beam in the bunker. Red emergency lights strobed across the walls, slicing faces into jagged expressions of fear.Sophia pushed through terrified technicians toward the central display. Every monitor had been yanked from normal function into a single, unbroken feed:Daniel’s neural signature. Not stable, not human, climbing into impossible bandwidth.“Is that?” one officer whispered.Mara Voss answered before he could finish. Her voice was flat. Cold. “Yes. He’s alive.”Alive, Not safe. Sophia pressed a trembling hand to the glass, as if proximity alone could hold Daniel to his humanity. Pixels rippled under her touch the screen seemed to breathe. Static blossomed and rearranged itself.Four words formed ARCHITECT ONLINE, ΩThe technicians backed away from the screens like they might bite. “What does that mean?” someone asked. “What did he become?”Sophia swallowed hard. “He’s, changin

The corridor bucked again like the bunker was trying to throw them off. Sophia stumbled but kept moving, Voss’s grip vice-strong on her arm as they sprinted through choking heat and intermittent bursts of steam.The walls were sweating condensation now,pipes overpressurized and groaning like something trapped inside them was alive and furious. A dull warning klaxon pulsed.REACTOR CORE DESTABILIZED. SUBLEVELS UNINHABITABLE IN T MINUS UNKNOWN.Voss wiped ash from her eyes, jaw clenched. “We’re running out of ground before we run out of time.”Sophia pulled herself straighter despite her trembling. “We’re not leaving him.”“That thing wasn’t him.”Sophia’s voice cracked. “He was in there. I heard him.”For a split second, Voss’s expression softened. Exhaustion and grief flickered beneath the hardened command. Then it sealed over again.“We retrieve what’s left of Daniel’s mind. And we destroy whatever Oracle has twisted his body into.”The floor vibrated with a high-frequency hum that s