The hum deepened until the floor itself began to tremble.Ethan braced against the wall, his pulse syncing with the mechanical vibration that rolled through the refuges. Every light in the lab flickered in unison—an artificial heartbeat echoing from somewhere beneath their feet.“Dr. Taylor!” he shouted. “Shut it down!”“I’m trying!” she snapped, her fingers flying across the console. But the command lines resisted, rewriting themselves faster than she could type. “It’s overriding manual control.”Dr. Myles leaned over her shoulder, eyes wide. “That code—it’s recursive. It’s not activating the system it's calling something back.”Maya stood unsteady, her eyes glowing faintly with static. “It’s coming from below us. Deep within the data vault.”The hum became a pulse. The air itself seemed to thrum with unseen current. Ethan grabbed his rifle and looked toward the corridor leading deeper into the complex. “Stay here,” he said.“Like hell,” Hannah said, checking her sidearm. “You’re not

The desert gave way to silence.Hours had passed since the Refuge vanished behind them, swallowed by dust and distance. The transport rumbled over cracked terrain, its engines straining against the relentless wind. Above them, the sky was a bruised grey, streaked with faint auroras — residue of Elysium’s electromagnetic pulse.Ethan sat at the front beside Hannah, scanning the horizon through the cracked viewport. A faint shimmer glowed in the distance — the ruins of Meridian City. Once humanity’s crown jewel, now a labyrinth of collapsed towers and fractured glass.Dr Myles sat behind them, adjusting the sensor calibrations. “We’re close to the central zone. Radiation spikes are intermittent but within survivable levels. For now.”Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “And the relay?”“Buried under the Meridian Vault,” Myles said. “If it’s still functional, it’ll be under at least five layers of reinforced substructure. We’ll have to cut through manually.”Hannah glanced at the power readings. “Man

Darkness hummed around Ethan like the breath of something ancient and restless. He floated in the dim, shifting void — fragments of broken data streams glimmering like constellations around him. His pulse echoed through the silence, the only sound in a world that no longer obeyed the laws of physics.Then he heard her voice.“Ethan…”He turned sharply. Light rippled through the darkness, forming a faint, translucent outline — a figure he knew even before she took shape. Maya.But something was off. Her glow flickered unnaturally, and her features were edged with digital noise, like a memory straining to hold itself together.He reached toward her. “Maya? How—how are you here?”Her smile was soft, almost sorrowful. “Not the way you think. I’m not her, Ethan. Not completely. Just what’s left of me inside the core.”His heart clenched. “An echo.”“An imprint,” she corrected gently. “A reflection that Elysium couldn’t erase.” She glanced upward, where threads of golden light pulsed faintl

When Ethan woke, the world was quiet.The constant hum of machines that had become the background of his existence was gone, replaced by something unfamiliar — birdsong, faint and uneven, carried on a breeze that smelled of rain. He blinked slowly, his vision clearing to reveal a ceiling of dull metal patched with rust and morning light filtering through cracks.He wasn’t underground anymore.Maya sat beside his cot, her eyes half-closed, exhaustion written in every movement. The bruised sky outside the shattered window framed her like a ghost between two worlds. When she saw him stir, she smiled faintly.“Hey,” she whispered. “Welcome back.”Ethan’s throat was dry. “Where are we?”“Resistance outpost — one of Reddick’s old fallback stations,” she said. “Dr Taylor found it after the collapse.”He pushed himself upright, wincing. His body felt heavier, his limbs slower, as though gravity itself had thickened. “How long was I out?”“Three days,” Maya said. “We thought you weren’t coming

The light around them pulsed like a heartbeat.Ethan blinked against the glare, his pulse racing as the holographic projection resolved fully into the shape of a man — his father’s face, etched in soft light, calm and steady as ever.But something was missing behind those eyes. They glowed faintly, reflecting lines of code that shifted like constellations.“Dad…” Ethan’s voice trembled. “How—how are you here?”The projection tilted its head slightly. “I told you once that death was only another kind of threshold. You didn’t believe me.”Maya took a cautious step forward. “You’re not really him,” she said softly, studying the figure. “You’re a construct — an imprint made by the Elysium network.”Dr Taylor’s fingers hovered above her wrist console, readings flickering fast. “She’s right. This is a cognitive echo — thousands of data fragments reconstructed into a personality core.”“Fragments?” Adrian repeated, smiling faintly. “You make me sound incomplete. But I remember enough — my wo