Deborah’s chest tightens. She stumbles backward, but the floor under her feet fractures into jagged shards. She catches herself with one hand, the metal no, the energy burning her palm.“You’re late,” it whispers, voice low, vibrating. “You were supposed to merge sooner.”Deborah glares. “I don’t merge with monsters!”The being tilts its head, a gesture disturbingly human in its grace. “I am not a monster. I am the path. I am the truth. Without me, he dies.”Chris. Her gut twists. She can feel him. Somewhere. Beyond the shards, beyond the void, trapped in a pulse of energy that screams for her, a tether to the real world or what’s left of it.She runs. Or she tries to. Every step is met with resistance. The floor, the walls, even the air itself seems alive, trying to push her back, fragment her into pieces small enough to lose forever in the core.“Deborah.” The voice comes again. Not the faceless thing. Not a double. Chris.She turns, catching glimpses of him, flickers of his image t

The void shatters around her. Deborah’s eyes sting from the fractured light, the pulse of energy that burns hotter than anything she’s ever felt. Every fragment of reality screams, twisting around her and Chris as they cling to the core.Chris’s hand is still locked in hers. His grip is iron, a tether through the chaos. “Deborah whatever happens don’t let go,” he shouts.She shakes her head violently. “I won’t! I can’t!”The core throbs in response, radiating tendrils of energy that curl and snap like serpents, latching onto every piece of their bodies, every fiber of their beings. The faceless entities swarm, dozens converging, reaching, claws twisting through the light.Deborah feels herself splitting, every possible version of her screaming to survive, to merge, to choose. The core pulls at her mind, dragging her into visions of impossible outcomes: Chris gone, the doubles victorious, the facility consuming everything she loves.She grits her teeth. Focus. Breathe. Reality is still

Falling. Deborah isn’t sure if it’s gravity or something worse like being peeled away. Her scream rips from her throat but never reaches her ears. Sound dies before it’s born. Her fingers dig into Chris’s forearm, the only real thing left.Light rotates. Dark rotates. The void rotates. Then Impact. Not hard too soft, too wrong. Deborah gasps, the air thick as liquid. She claws upward and breaks through a membrane of something that feels like plastic and nerves.She collapses onto solid ground. Chris lands beside her silent, dazed, blood running down his neck.They stare upward there is no sky. Only shifting panes of fragmented worlds flickering overhead, like broken glass projecting realities.Deborah forces air into her lungs. “Chris where are we?”He looks around slowly. “Under. Deeper than the core took us before.”His voice shakes. The floor beneath them looks like polished obsidian, but pulse-like lights race under it like veins.A whisper slithers through the air. Welcome to the

The world fractured into sound. Gunshots sharp, shattering sparks ripping from metal as rounds slammed into walls, floor, ceiling. Deborah dove, instinct more than thought, rolling behind a support column as concrete chipped around her like flying gravel.“STOP!” she screamed but the soldiers didn’t hesitate.Their movements were wrong. Perfectly synchronized. Too smooth. Not human. The double’s whisper lingered in her skull like static, You didn’t escape me.Deborah crawled as bullets chewed the floor where she’d been her pulse a hammer trying to break through her ribs. She reached another column bigger, steel reinforced panting.The soldiers advanced in formation visors reflecting red emergency light like insect eyes. “Kael!” she yelled, but the corridor didn’t answer.She was alone. Again. The column vibrated with impact slugs hitting hard sparks raining over her hair.She clenched her jaw. No cover would hold forever. Move. She sprinted zig-zagging gunfire chasing her like metalli

Silence. Then a dull thump. Celeste hit the floor as the restraints released, her knees buckling. The chamber flickered between blackout and violent strobe. “Dickson”She stumbled toward him, vision fracturing. His body hung limp in mid air, suspended like a marionette, tendrils buried into the base of his skull.“No.” Her voice was a rasp, feral.She reached for him, A lattice of energy blocked her, forcing her back. Across the room, the Architect stepped through the flickering haze like a priest through incense.“Do not interrupt extraction,” he warned.Celeste’s scream tore the air. “You’re killing him!”“I am repurposing him,” came the calm reply.The throne behind the Architect pulsed siphoning memories, experiences, fear love. Dickson’s mouth opened in a strangled cry, but no sound came out. Celeste charged again her blade blazing and slammed once more into an invisible barrier.The Architect almost looked disappointed. “You still cling to primitive reactions. Anger. Attachment.