Deborah doesn’t breathe for a full second after the lights go out, It isn’t the darkness that freezes her it’s the way it arrives, too sudden, too deliberate. Like a hand closing over her eyes.Behind her, the chamber hum stutters, fails, then resumes in a broken rhythm like something mechanical gasping for air.Chris straightens slowly, one palm pressed to the wall, the other hovering near her shoulder but not touching. He’s barely standing after the last collapse, blood drying on the side of his face, but his voice is steady, taut. “Don’t move.”“I’m not,” she whispers, though every muscle in her body twitches with the instinct to run.The dark is total at first. Then the emergency strips along the floor flicker alive thin white lines trembling like nervous breath. They illuminate enough to see dust drifting through the air like smoke, somewhere deeper in the installation, metal shrieks.Deborah flinches. “That wasn’t structural. That was”“A door,” Chris finishes. “A very large one

White burned behind her eyelids. Deborah’s ears rang. Every nerve screamed with vertigo, every muscle burned with exertion. The platform shuddered beneath her, trembling like it was made of glass over fire.Chris’s grip was the only anchor in the chaos. His hand was firm, alive, pulling her upright as the abyss roared beneath them.Then the white faded. The core revealed itself. Massive. Pulsing. A lattice of light and metal suspended in mid-air, streams of raw energy spinning within. It hummed, alive. Watching, Judging, Calculating.Deborah staggered forward. Every instinct screamed to stop. Every rational thought screamed to run. But the pull of the core was magnetic drawing her, whispering to her mind with voices that weren’t voices. Memories that weren’t hers. Choices she hadn’t made.Futures she didn’t recognize. Chris’s voice cut through the chaos. “Stay with me. Whatever happens, don’t let it touch your mind.”She nodded, though her brain was already screaming with fragmented i

Deborah’s hands hovered over the console, fingers trembling. The pulse of the core beneath the platform vibrated through her fingertips, a living thing aware of every thought, every hesitation.Chris stayed close, weapon raised, eyes scanning the edges of the hub. The shadows had vanished for now but the air still thrummed with threat. Every echo of the lattice, every flicker of light, suggested they weren’t safe.Deborah’s vision blurred. Streams of data scrolled across the console faster than she could read. Faces, codes, symbols, simulations all intertwining into a pattern she didn’t understand. And then, the flicker: Celeste’s double.Her stomach turned. “It it’s learning. Faster than we can keep up.”Chris’s jaw tightened. “Then we have to stay ahead. Whatever it wants we decide first.”The first strike came without warning. A panel behind the console ignited in sparks. A low metallic shriek echoed through the hub.Deborah spun around. The platform shuddered violently. Shadows di

Deborah’s hands were still trembling. The hub’s lattice hummed softly, almost innocuously. But she knew better. Phase two had ended, but the warning burned in her mind iteration three pending.Chris staggered beside her, wiping blood from a cut on his cheek. “We need a plan,” he said, voice low. “That thing is evolving. Every time we think we’ve won”Deborah shook her head. “It doesn’t just evolve. It anticipates. We can’t keep reacting. We have to predict it, control it.”A sudden flicker in the lattice caught her eye. Light twisted unnaturally. Shadows faint, insidious began creeping along the platform edges again. Not full forms, not yet, but hints: claws, glimmers of metal, whispers of movement.Deborah’s stomach tightened. “It’s testing us. Seeing if we’re prepared. If we’re weak”Chris stepped forward, weapon raised. “Then we show it we’re not.”The hub pulsed, almost like a heartbeat, faster and faster. The lattice shimmered, forming shapes faces, familiar yet wrong her father’

Chris crouched beside her, eyes darting along the edges of the platform. Every shadow, every flicker of light, every tremor of metal was a potential strike. “It’s faster than anything we’ve faced. We can’t react we have to predict.”Deborah swallowed hard, heart hammering. “Predict how? It’s learned from everything. Every strike, every pattern, every fear we’ve shown it.”A sudden flash from the lattice made her flinch. Shadows erupted from the floor, ceiling, and walls simultaneously, moving like liquid metal, coordinated, lethal.Chris roared, swinging the pipe he’d held for hours. Sparks flew, each impact met with an almost intelligent resistance. One shadow recoiled, then reformed instantly, circling him like a predator testing prey.Deborah lunged for the console, her mind racing. She could see patterns now faint but consistent. The lattice pulsed in cycles, and the shadows’ movements synced perfectly to those cycles. If she could disrupt it at the right moment, just long enough.