"And if you don't?" Mara screamed over the deafening mechanical roar of the encroaching Vanguard units. "If you don't, they walk through that door and execute all of us! Make the choice, Toby!"Toby’s hands hovered over the glowing, pulsing interface—a mess of wires stripped from the wall and grafted into the bioluminescent root-nodes. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and reflecting the erratic, flickering light of the chamber. "I'm trying to find a middle ground! There has to be a buffer in the neuro-matrix, but the network... it’s not responding like a standard server. It’s evolving. It’s hungry.""Stop talking about the damn technology and look at him!" Kael shoved his way toward Adrian. The young man stood perfectly still, his back arched, his skin translucent enough to reveal a network of pulsing, verdant veins that mirrored the rhythmic contraction of the roots embedded in the walls.Adrian’s breath came in long, ragged gasps that sounded less like human respiration and more like

"I need more time!" Toby shrieked, his fingers dancing across the console so rapidly they blurred, his knuckles raw and bleeding from the jagged edge of the interface. "The neural feedback is looping! If I dump the cache now, the surge will fry every circuit in this corridor—including your life-support packs!" "We don't have time for 'if'!" Elena lunged toward the blast door, her rifle barking rhythmically as she put rounds into the reinforced steel frame where the corporate Vanguard was trying to melt through. Sparks showered her, stinging her face, but she didn't blink. "Kael, check the fuel stores! If we can’t hold them, we burn them!" Kael didn’t hesitate. He limped toward the side alcove, clutching his side where a jagged shard of metal had bitten deep during the last scramble. His blood smeared the wall, dark and viscous. "The fuel line is ruptured, Elena! The whole sector is coated in chemical runoff and leaking bio-

"It’s not an archaeology project!" Mara screamed over the high-pitched whine of a corporate thermal drill vibrating through the hull. "It’s a containment protocol! The terminal—it’s dumping the site’s original directive. This wasn't just a research station. It was a bio-industrial integration farm. They weren't studying the roots; they were creating them to synthesize human biology with subterranean neural networks!" "Why are you telling us this now?" Elena snapped, her rifle muzzle smoking as she fired a blind burst at the pulsing door. The steel groaned, glowing cherry-red where the drill tip chewed through. "Does it stop the bullets, Mara? Does it make the mercs go home?" "It tells us what Adrian is becoming!" Mara hit a series of keys, her fingers frantic. "Look at him! Look at his hand!" The group’s attention snapped toward the center of the chamber. Adrian sat cross-legged, a tan

"I’m not trying to bypass the corporate encryption anymore, Elena!" Toby shrieked, his fingers blurring across the haptic display. Sparks erupted from the side of his terminal, stinging his face, but he didn't flinch. "I’m trying to create a firewall between Adrian’s nervous system and the local sector grid! If the mercs get through that door, they’ll trigger a remote uplink. They’ll hijack his neural pathways like a cheap server!" Elena shoved a heavy, rusted hydraulic pump against the base of the primary blast door. She gritted her teeth, her biceps bulging as she forced the iron lever down, wedging it against the encroaching root mass. "Do it faster! I’m running out of heavy debris to barricade this entrance!" The blast door buckled again. A fountain of sparks sprayed across the room as the thermal drill bit deeper, carving a jagged, glowing hole through the reinforced steel. The smell of scorched metal

"Toby, status!" Elena shouted over the deafening, grinding scream of the industrial drill. She slammed her shoulder against the makeshift barricade, a pile of iron pipes and solidified vine-matter shuddering under the force of the corporate assault. "They’re seconds away from ripping through!" Toby didn’t look up. His eyes were wide, glassy, reflecting a cascade of cascading code that looked less like data and more like a fever dream. "I’m in, Elena! I’ve got the port open, but the feedback loop… it’s like trying to plug a charging cable into a hurricane! Adrian isn't just connected. He’s the center of the storm!" "Pull him out!" Mara screamed from the corner, clutching a heavy-duty pulse rifle with trembling hands. "If that feedback kills him, the whole network collapses! We lose the only shield we have against those mercs!" "I can't pull him out!" Toby roared back, his voice c