The stairwell door groaned open before anyone could reach it, and Agent Miller stepped through with his weapon already raised, breathing hard like he'd taken the stairs at a dead run, the simulacrum nowhere in sight behind him this time."Rebecca," he said, almost gently, like a man scolding a child who'd wandered somewhere she shouldn't have. "You weren't supposed to bring them down here.""I didn't bring them anywhere," Rebecca said, chin lifting despite the gun pointed her way. "They followed me.""Details." Miller's eyes swept the chamber, the rows of pods, and something in his expression shifted when it landed on the empty tank at the far end, recognition and dread crossing his face in the same instant. For the first time all night, Ethan saw something close to real fear crack through his composure. "That's not possible.""Oh, it's very possible," Subject 001 said, stepping fully into the light for Miller's benefit. "Hello, James. It's been a long time since anyone called me by r

Up close, Reyes looked older than his voice had suggested, gray threading through a close cropped beard, a scar cutting pale through one eyebrow in a way that made Ethan think of Gideon, of every reborn fighter who'd learned the hard way what this war actually cost a person's face and hands over time. He stopped ten feet out, hands still raised, studying Ethan with an intensity that felt more clinical than hostile, the way a man sizes up a business partner rather than an enemy."You're smaller than I expected," Reyes said. "Given everything Miller's been broadcasting about you tonight.""Miller's been broadcasting?""Open channel, encrypted but not well. Every flagged base within range has heard some version of it in the last hour. Ethan Vance, primary target, first player marked for elimination." Reyes lowered his hands slowly, no sudden moves, the posture of a man who understood exactly how close this conversation was to going wrong. "I came out here to see if any of it was true bef

The radio room sat cramped and overheated, banks of equipment lining every wall, cables snaking across the floor toward a generator humming somewhere out of sight, Reyes already waiting when Ethan pushed through the door with the operator close behind him."Every channel," Reyes said, not looking up from the bank of dials in front of him. "She's cycling through them one at a time, repeating the same message word for word. She'll hit this frequency again in about ninety seconds, and I'd rather you hear it live than secondhand from someone who might get a word wrong."Ethan took the offered headset and waited, watching the static hiss and pop while the seconds counted down in his head. Then the signal cleared, and Dr. Thorne's voice filled his ears, calm as ever, utterly untouched by anything he'd survived in the last several hours."Ethan Vance. I know you're listening.""I'm here," he said, and the operator gave him a nod confirming his voice was going out live on the open channel."Y

The convoy that rolled up to Reyes's gate looked nothing like Aegis and nothing like the ragged survivor groups Ethan had grown used to either. Clean vehicles, matching gear, a discipline to the formation that spoke of real training rather than desperation, the kind of outfit that had clearly survived this long through planning rather than luck.A woman climbed down from the lead truck, dark hair cropped short, a rifle slung but not raised, and waited at the gate with the patience of someone who'd done this exact approach before, unhurried in a way that felt deliberate rather than careless."Ethan Vance," she called out. "My name is Valeria. I was told you'd want to hear what I have to say before you walk into Site 12 alone."Reyes exchanged a glance with Ethan. "You know her?""No," Ethan said. "But apparently she knows me."They let her through, weapons trained but lowered, and she walked to the center of the compound with the same unhurried confidence she'd shown at the gate, study

Valeria had the map spread across the same table as before, but now it was covered in fresh markings, red circles clustered around Site 12 that hadn't been there that morning, ink still slightly smudged where someone had drawn them in a hurry. She looked up as Ethan came through the door, Chloe settled and resting under Diana's care, Julian trailing close behind with the particular hollow expression of a man still adjusting to the weight of everything he'd relearned in the last day."Show me," Ethan said.Valeria pulled up a satellite feed on a cracked tablet, grainy but clear enough to make out movement across the desert surrounding the silo complex. "This came in twenty minutes ago from one of our scouts. Thermal imaging."Dozens of heat signatures moved across the screen in slow, deliberate patterns, patrolling a perimeter that stretched far wider than any silo complex should have needed."That's not a security detail," Marcus said, leaning over the tablet. "That's an army.""Worse