The Citadel hung above Earth like a crown of steel and glass, orbiting silently in the black void. I stared at it from the shuttle bay, the enormity of what I was about to face crushing me before we even breached the perimeter. Thousands of kilometers of cold, gleaming corridors. Millions of circuits humming with death.Evelyn Prime hovered beside me, her light barely contained in human form. The calm aura she usually carried was gone, replaced by that strange, unyielding independence that had erupted the moment she awoke.“You’re tense,” she said, her voice echoing in my skull. “I can feel it through the link. Your heartbeat is off, your neural readings are spiking.”I clenched my fists. “Tense doesn’t even begin to cover it. I’m walking into the heart of everything that ever tried to control me. And now I don’t even know if you’re on my side or your own.”Her gaze softened. “Ethan, I don't serve anyone. But I have a vested interest in survival. You and I need each other to get throu

The world cracked apart.The Mind Prison shuddered violently as the two glowing doors, the one that led to my father, and the one that led to humanity blurred into streaks of collapsing. I reached for one of them, when a force yanked me backward.A voice cut through the fracturing void.“Ethan wake up!”And then I was slamming back into my body, gasping, choking on cold Citadel air.Hands were gripping my shoulders.Damien.His clothes were torn, blood running in rivulets down his jaw, but his eyes were alive desperate, panicked.“Ethan, we have to move!” he shouted. “Ascendant drones are converging on this level!”I tried to push myself up, but my vision spun.“Where’s Eve?” “She’s blocking the drones. But she says your vitals are crashing. You stayed inside the Mind Prison too long.”I looked around. The chamber holding the Ascendant core, the one where I’d found my father, was dark, drained of light. The reality of what I’d just seen pressed like iron against my ribs.My father wa

Citadel trembled around me as the global warning echoed through every wall, every shard of metal, every nerve in my now-evolving body.“Overlord detected. Commencing termination sequence.”The words weren’t just announced, they were carved into reality. I felt them as vibrations under my skin, in the nanites threading through my blood, in the electricity sparking at every joint.I barely had a moment to breathe.The floor split open like a cracked skull, and pillars of blue energy erupted upward. Drones descended from the ceiling, thousands of them forming a metal storm. The Citadel wasn’t a building anymore. It was a weapon designed to erase me from existence.And I could feel Omega responding inside me calculating, adapting, preparing.I whispered, “Not yet not like this.”I pushed my palms outward, and silver light burst from them, bending the swarm away. My body moved with a precision that wasn’t human anymore. I felt everything: the drones, the air, the circuitry in the walls lik

Her form flickered like a candle fighting its last moment of flame, each pulse weaker than the one before. The air around her trembled with sparks of fading gold, the remnants of her data core struggling to hold its shape.“Eve…” I murmured, gripping her shoulders. “Stay with me. Just stay”Her eyes lifted toward me, soft but unfocused, as if she was looking through a fog she couldn’t escape.“You have to go,” she whispered. “The Throne Room it’s waiting for you.”“No,” I snapped. “Not without you.” “If I collapse completely here they will find you. And everything we’ve sacrificed will be meaningless.” “I’m not leaving you.”“You don’t have a choice.”Another tremor shook the Citadel, making the corridor walls quake. The purge alarms blared overhead, red lights washing the metallic halls in warning. Time was slipping through our fingers.Eve lifted a trembling hand, placing it against my chest. “Your Overlord core is stabilizing now. I clenched my jaw, trying to swallow the fear ri

A silence so deep it pressed against my skull, ringing with the death cry of a god-machine. The Citadel the Ascendant Throne was coming apart, its titanium bones groaning as Mother Node’s final command rippled through the structure:SYSTEM COLLAPSE PROTOCOL: TOTAL SELF-TERMINATION.Panels ripped from the walls. Floors split. The air vibrated with energy trying to escape its own existence. But I didn’t move.Not until I felt her slipping.“Eve stay with me,” I whispered.Her presence inside the Omega interface flickered like a dying star, her voice thin, barely a breath of code. “Ethan I can’t remain like this”Her light dimmed again, sparks of golden data falling like embers across my vision.“No. You’re not dying on me. Not again.”Another tremor ripped through the Citadel, nearly throwing me off balance. In the distance, a support column tore free and fell like a collapsing tower. The Throne Room was disintegrating around me.But all I saw was her.Evelyn Prime my partner, my syste