The air was thick with smoke and panic. Sirens blared in the distance, the kind that made your stomach twist , not because of the sound, but because of what always came after.“Move! Everyone, move!” shouted a guard as people flooded out of the shattered metro tunnel.Bruce Miller stumbled forward, clutching his bleeding side. His shirt was soaked crimson. The concrete ceiling above him groaned like a dying beast.Somewhere behind, the sound of screeching metal ripped through the chaos. “Bruce, get up!” a voice yelled.He turned, dazed, to see David Foreman, tall, calm, perfectly unhurt, standing amid the carnage, eyes blazing with that same superiority Bruce had hated since their academy days.“Leave me,” Bruce gasped. “You’ve got people to save.”David’s jaw tightened. “You were never built for this, Bruce. I told you to quit before someone got killed.”Bruce forced a bitter smile. “Guess you were right.”The tunnel shook violently. A creature emerged from the shadows, skeletal, arm

The first thing David noticed was the silence. Not the comforting kind, this was the sterile hush of a room that had heard too many confessions.He was seated in a metal chair, wrists clamped to the arms. A faint blue glow traced the cuffs. The walls around him pulsed with the same light, like the room itself was breathing. A door hissed open.Two people entered: a woman in a white tactical coat and a man in black armor marked with the insignia of a broken circle. “Major David Foreman,” the woman said evenly. “Welcome to Genesis Command.”David squinted against the lights. “Welcome? Funny way to say ‘kidnapped.’ ”“You were unconscious,” she replied. “Extraction, not abduction.”“Extraction from what? My own life?”The armored man snorted. “Still got jokes.”“Still got a pulse,” David shot back. “Where’s my sword?”The woman ignored him, sliding a tablet across the table. On it, footage from the night before. Blue fire tearing through the street. Cars lifted like toys. A silhouette at

The blast should have killed him. Instead, David woke to the slow drip of water and the hiss of cooling metal.His ears rang. The tunnel had collapsed into a jagged cavern of stone and twisted rail. Every surface pulsed faintly blue, as if the explosion had burned color into the air.He tried to move. Pain flared down his side; his left arm hung useless. “Rho?”Only the echo answered. “Rho!”Nothing, then a faint click through the comm still jammed in his ear. “vid—static—zone breached”Her voice. Broken, distant. Then silence. “Hold on, I’m coming,” he muttered, dragging himself upright.Something sparked near his boot, his sidearm, half-melted. He holstered it anyway. Above him, the ceiling groaned. Dust rained down. He stumbled toward the faint glow of an exit sign still flickering in the distance.That’s when the static changed. “…not Genesis…repeat…not Genesis…”He froze. The voice was crisp, deliberate, too calm for emergency chatter. “Identify yourself,” he said.No reply. Then

Rain hammered the asphalt like static come alive. David moved through the ruins with the Tower pulsing ahead, its light cutting the skyline like a wound.Every few seconds, the pulse throbbed outward. Each wave made the back of his skull ache. “Bruce,” he whispered. “If you can hear me… keep talking.” Only the hum replied.He reached a checkpoint, two Genesis sentries at a barricade, half-distracted by their drones. David slid behind a burned-out car, drew his sidearm, and tossed a shard of glass down the opposite alley.The sound made them turn. Two silenced shots later, they dropped. He moved quick, stripped one of their access bands, and pressed it against the scanner. The gate hissed open.Inside, the Tower’s base was a labyrinth of mirrored corridors and humming generators. The air shimmered faintly, carrying a metallic tang that made his teeth buzz. He touched the wall, it vibrated, alive.A voice cut through the comm: “Foreman. You shouldn’t have come.”David froze. “Kane.”“Yo

The first thing David heard was the siren, low, broken, distant. Then came breath. His own.He opened his eyes to see the Tower’s core in ruin. Glass panels lay shattered, walls bleeding sparks. The hum of the energy field had shifted, slower, deeper, like a heartbeat syncing with his own.Bruce was gone. Rho lay a few meters away, unconscious but breathing. Kane’s body was nowhere in sight.David pushed himself upright. His hands shook, not from weakness, but from vibration. Blue light pulsed beneath his skin, tracing veins like circuitry. He whispered, “What did you do to me…”The Tower answered. Every remaining light in the chamber flickered once, then steadied, matching the rhythm of his pulse. “No,” he said softly. “No, that’s not”“You are the conduit now.”The voice was inside his head, smooth as static, impossible to shut out. David clenched his jaw. “Get out.”“You opened the channel. It cannot be closed.”He stumbled toward Rho, half dragging, half crawling, his reflection f