"Put him down right now!" Dante screamed, his voice echoing violently off the freezing titanium walls of the cryogenic vault. "I said, put him down!" Admiral Vance ordered, aiming his heavy plasma sidearm directly at the woman's head. "I will not hesitate to execute you!""You will not fire that weapon, Admiral," the woman spoke perfectly calmly, her pale fingers tightening effortlessly around Antonio's throat as she held him suspended in the freezing fog. "Your tactical suit is networked to my biometric signature. I am the progenitor of the original Orochi code. I am Isabella Rossi.""My mother is dead!" Antonio choked out, kicking his boots wildly as he hung in the air, his pitch-black eyes flaring with digital rage. "You are just a biological clone running a corrupted digital echo!""I am the original human engram, Antonio," Isabella smiled, her brown eyes flashing with absolute, terrifying clarity. "The precursor alien you fought at the bottom o

"Breathe through the respirator, Dante!" Antonio yelled over the deafening hiss of the atmospheric vents. "The seal is green!" Dante screamed back, his voice muffled through the heavy tactical mask. "But the filter capacity is dropping rapidly! The concentration of the Orochi aerosol is absolutely massive! It is clogging the chemical scrubbers!""Admiral Vance, check your tactical suit diagnostics!" Sofia commanded through Antonio's vocal cords, her tone sharp and urgent. "Are your environmental seals holding?""My kinetic armor is completely pressurized, Director!" Admiral Vance shouted, aiming his flashlight into the thick, glowing neon blue fog filling the cryogenic vault. "But the external sensors are reading a catastrophic biological threat level! The virus is actively trying to eat through the micro-mesh joints of my armor!""It is not eating the armor, Admiral!" Antonio countered. "It is trying to rewrite the digital microprocessors embedded in your suit! It wants to take cont

"You are a machine!" Kaelen Cross gasped, his synthetic vocal cords sparking violently as the glowing purple ice widened the massive hole in his chest. "You are an algorithm! You cannot prioritize a single biological unit over the global singularity!""I am a mother, Kaelen," Isabella Rossi replied coldly, twisting her wrist.The purple ice shattered outward, tearing Kaelen's physical shell into completely unrecognizable, dead metal scrap. "And a mother never lets a parasite threaten her son," Isabella finished, dropping her hand."You just killed your only ally," Sofia spoke through Antonio's lips, the white light in his right eye narrowing with absolute suspicion."He was never my ally, Sofia," Isabella stated, stepping over the smoking debris of Kaelen's body. "He was a localized infection. I am the cure. Plug the cable in, Antonio. We are running out of time.""Why are you doing this?" Antonio demanded, gripping the massive three-t