The hallway stank of burnt circuitry and human panic.Alarms blared like something alive and afraid. Every flicker of red light carved deep shadows across the walls, turning the corridor into a stuttering film strip that barely kept up with reality. Adrian felt his pulse syncing with the rhythm as he moved, every step driven by instinct sharpened far beyond human limits.Mara kept pace beside him, quick and silent despite the debris under her boots. Lorenzo followed behind, breathing hard but steady enough to keep going. The blast that knocked them halfway across the complex hadn’t slowed him the way it should have. Whatever Cipher had laced into his neural structure was still burning through his veins.They passed another row of collapsed support beams. Somewhere below, gunfire rattled the floors.“This place is falling apart,” Lorenzo muttered hoarsely.“It’s not falling apart,” Mara said without looking back. “It’s being taken apart.”“You mean the Architect?”“No,” she answered. “

The rain came down hard, sharp needles piercing the ruined glass roof of the sub-level transit shaft. Adrian barely felt the cold as he sprinted along the collapsed walkway, Mara right behind him, her breathing steady despite the chaos burning around them. Sirens screamed overhead, a fractured echo against stone and steel. Far behind them, the pillar that once housed Cipher’s Central Relay cracked like a dying heart.“Left!” Mara yelled.Adrian swung into the adjoining corridor, dark, half flooded, the smell of ozone so strong it coated his tongue. Lorenzo staggered beside him, half-conscious but moving on sheer muscle memory.The ground trembled.A tremor rolled like thunder beneath their feet.“That wasn’t a collapse,” Mara said. “That was the ignition.”Adrian didn’t slow. “Meaning?”“Ghost Protocol Phase Three.”Adrian stopped dead.Lorenzo stumbled into his back.Mara froze too, not from fear, but from realization. “They’re forcing a systemic rewrite.”“The Architect’s doing,” Ad

The first sensation Adrian registered was weight.Not on his shoulders.Inside his skull.A pressure, subtle at first, then steadily sharpening until it felt like invisible fingers were prying open the seams of his mind. The corridor lights flickered overhead as if reacting to the strain building in him.He forced himself upright.The concrete floor trembled beneath his boots.Mara stood ahead of him, breath short, eyes fixed on the far end of the hall where Cipher’s constructs poured through broken steel doors. Their steps were synchronized. Their faces are blank. Their movements are too precise to belong to anything still human.“They’re not here to kill us,” Mara said quietly.Adrian’s voice came out cold. “No.”“They’re here to take you.”Lorenzo pushed himself up beside Adrian, wincing as a streak of dried blood cracked along his jaw. “Then they’re going to be disappointed.”The pressure in Adrian’s skull spiked again, sharp enough to make his vision ripple. The constructs slowed

The city beneath the blackout did not sleep.It twitched.Adrian stood at the edge of the abandoned rail platform, rainwater dripping from cracked concrete above, watching the distant glow of emergency flares stain the clouds a sick, artificial red. Power was returning in fragments. One block alive. Three dead. A pulse, then silence. Cipher’s signature wasn’t gone. It was fractured, bleeding into places it had never touched before.That was worse.Mara moved behind him, her boots soundless on the wet stone. She had changed since the reset. Less command in her posture. More weight in her eyes. Like someone who had finally stepped out of a long lie and realized the truth was heavier than the fiction.“We lost contact with Cole,” she said quietly.Adrian didn’t turn. “When?”“Seven minutes ago. His vitals flatlined, then came back scrambled. He’s either inside a dead zone or inside something that doesn’t want us to see him.”Adrian exhaled slowly.Cipher adapting again.Lorenzo sat again

The underground complex was still shaking when the lights died completely, not flickering this time but collapsing into true darkness. Concrete dust drifted through the air in slow clouds, catching in throats and burning lungs. Somewhere far above, steel screamed as supports twisted under stress.Adrian Kaine stood in the dark with his hand wrapped around a live cable, electricity biting into his palm but not enough to slow him. His heart hammered once, twice, then steadied.He had felt this moment coming.Around him, Cipher soldiers shouted orders that dissolved into confusion as their HUDs went blind. Guns clicked uselessly as smart targeting failed. Doors that should have been sealed refused to respond.The machine had lost sync.Lorenzo staggered into Adrian’s shoulder, breath ragged, blood running from his hairline. “Tell me this was intentional.”Adrian didn’t answer immediately. His eyes were fixed on the far wall where the emergency systems should have kicked in.They didn’t.