"You're lying to save your skin," the Captain snarled, slamming his fist onto the metal desk so hard the terminal rattled violently against the rust. "Hery swore on his daughter's grave that circuit would bring the grid back online. You're just a bunch of scavengers trying to keep us in the dark!""Ask him yourself, then!" Maya shouted back, stepping forward and shoving the flickering screen inches from the Captain's face. "Look at the sub-routines! Look at the neural-mapping tags embedded in the power distribution code! No power grid requires a continuous feedback loop from human brainstem activity. Your engineer didn't build a generator, Captain. He built a cage!"Budi barely heard them. The violet light pulsing from the terminal screen felt like a physical blow directly behind his eyes. The hum had escalated from a distant vibration into a deafening, metallic roar inside his skull. Every nerve ending in his body felt raw, stripped of skin and exposed to salt. He dropped to one knee

"If it’s capable of causing this," the Captain growled, his voice vibrating with a dangerous, unstable cadence, "then it’s the only leverage we have left against the swarms outside. Give me the drive, Budi. Now."Budi looked up, his vision swimming in a sea of violet afterimages. He could feel the residual static clinging to his synapsis, a lingering ghost of the data he had just glimpsed. Beside him, Maya stood rigid, her hand sliding toward the jagged piece of scrap metal she’d been using as a shiv."If you plug that into the local relay, you aren't just powering the lights," Maya snapped, her voice trembling not with fear, but with a cold, terrifying clarity. "You’re going to broadcast a signal that tells every jumper in a ten-mile radius exactly where we are. And then you're going to turn every person in this bunker into a mindless satellite for the Alpha’s network."The Captain didn't blink. He drew his sidearm,a weathered, rusted piece of hardware that looked like it had been sa

"Listen to the kid, Captain," Ageng interjected, stepping firmly into the narrow gap between the muzzle of the gun and Budi’s chest. His voice was steady, lacking the manic, high-strung tremor that had defined his behavior since the tunnels. "He isn’t hallucinating. I can feel the change in the air pressure, too. The atmosphere in this room is literally ionizing. If you pull that trigger or if you jam that drive into the port you aren’t going to lead your people to salvation. You’re going to turn them into an involuntary relay station for whatever is rotting the city from the inside out."The Captain’s eyes flicked to Ageng, then back to the silver drive clutched tightly in Budi’s trembling hand. The ambient violet light from the broken terminal cast long, skeletal shadows across the room. "You’re all talking in circles," the Captain spat, his thumb clicking the safety of his weapon off. "I have fifty families behind these blast doors. They are starving, they are sick, and the water i

"I have buried more bodies than I have bullets left!" the Captain roared, his voice cracking. The blast doors groaned again, a sound like a ship’s hull twisting under impossible pressure. "If this drive is the key to the archives, if it’s the only way to lock the gates, then I will use it. I don’t care if it kills me. I don’t care if it kills you. I need a miracle, and you’re holding it."Budi’s grip on the drive tightened until his knuckles turned ashen. The neural-corrosive hum the violet dissonance was a jagged blade sliding into the base of his brain. He saw the Captain’s face not as a man, but as a series of shifting, distorted voxels. He’s scared, Budi realized. He’s terrified, and that’s making him a carrier."You aren't holding a miracle, Captain," Budi gasped, dropping to one knee as a fresh wave of psychic feedback forced the air from his lungs. "You’re holding an invitation."Suddenly, the floor beneath them erupted.It wasn't a structural failure. It was an intrusion. A ma

The screech of tearing metal drowned out the Captain’s panicked shouting. Below, in the dark, water-choked throat of the facility, something massive was pulling back, hauling the Captain into the abyss with a strength that defied anatomy."Ageng, let go!" Budi screamed, scrambling to his feet. His vision blurred; the room was turning into a smear of greys and violets, the edges of reality fraying like wet paper."I’m not leaving him!" Ageng roared back. He was anchored to a support pillar, his boots sliding against the slick, debris-covered floor, his muscles bunched to the point of tearing."You’ll go down with him!" Budi surged forward, the silver drive clattering to the floor. As his fingers left the casing, the psychic pressure in his head dropped just enough for him to gasp a ragged breath of stale air.The Captain’s face appeared in the jagged hole of the floor, his eyes wide and bloodshot. "The drive! Get the—"A wet, sickening crack echoed through the chamber as the Captain wa