"The logic bomb is stalled at ninety-nine percent. It’s a total brick, Rafi!" Maya’s fingers were a blurring, frantic mess of motion across the scorched keyboard. The server room was a graveyard of sparking circuitry and acrid, blue smoke.Rafi didn't look back from the blast door, his rifle barrel glowing dull red from the sustained fire. "Force the dump! I don’t care if you have to burn the motherboards to do it!""If I force it, we lose the backup nodes!""We don't need the backup nodes!" Rafi roared, kicking a discarded shell casing out of his way as a kinetic round punched through the bulkhead, spraying jagged confetti of steel across the floor. "We just need the manifest. The extraction files. That’s the kill switch, Maya. Once the rest of the sector sees those names, Citra’s board of directors won't be able to hide in their ivory towers anymore.""Blackwell! They’re blowing the secondary seal!" Arga’s voice was a jagged rasp over the comms. He was holding the corridor, his brea

"Rafi, don't! You're pointing it at me!" Arga’s voice cracked, his hands hovering uselessly near his own holster. He wasn't reaching for his gun. He was staring down the barrel of Rafi’s rifle, his eyes wide with a terrifying realization. "It’s me! It’s Arga!"Rafi’s finger hovered over the trigger. His face was a mask of twitching agony, his jaw clamped so tight the skin looked ready to tear. His body was stiff, vibrating with an unnatural, electric frequency."The protocol..." Rafi’s voice sounded like two plates of iron grinding together. "It’s... it’s rewriting the target list.""Maya, do something!" Tika shrieked, backing into the cold, humming wall of the server rack.Maya was frantically tapping at her tablet, her face pale. "I can’t! He’s hard-synced to the ship’s tactical mainframe! If I try to force a disconnect, the feedback loop will liquefy his brain!""I am... the scythe," Rafi muttered. His head tilted at an impossible, bird-like angle. The pale light in his eyes flared

"The core is burning, Dimas. If we don’t leave now, we’re going to be part of the cooling system." Rafi’s voice was ragged, his hands steady only because of the adrenaline screaming through his nerves.Dimas didn't look at him. He was staring at the massive, obsidian-black reactor core, his reflection distorted in its pulsing, violet surface. "We can’t just walk away, Rafi. If we leave this thing active, Citra wins. She doesn't just keep the ledger—she keeps the entire regional sector under her thumb.""She’s already lost, and she doesn't even know it yet," Rafi snapped, slamming a fresh power cell into his rifle. "The download finished. Maya’s got the whole archive. Everything.""But the overload," Tika interrupted, her hands dancing over the auxiliary control panel. "It’s not just a power dump. It’s a total system scrub. If I trigger this, the entire facility goes dark. Permanently. The containment locks, the life support, the security grids—they’ll all fry."Rafi grabbed her by the

"He’s not just watching us," Rafi whispered, his voice a jagged edge. "He’s calculating the kill."The double—the mirror-image freak of nature—stood poised over the edge of the violet shaft. He didn't look like a soldier; he looked like a blueprint. His movements were too smooth, too efficient."Who is he?" Tika screamed, her voice ricocheting off the sterile white walls. She was huddled against the console, her hands hovering over a dead terminal. "Rafi, that’s you! How is that possible?""He’s a clean slate," Rafi said, his grip on his rifle tightening until his knuckles turned bloodless. He wasn't looking at the double’s face anymore; he was looking at the way the floor plates were shifting beneath the man's boots. "He’s what happens when they strip away the 'mistakes'—the memories, the hesitation, the guilt.""Subject Zero," the double said. His voice was identical to Rafi’s, but stripped of all resonance. It was a flat, digital reading. "Target acquisition complete. Initiating pu

"Hold the threshold," Rafi rasped, his voice sounding like two dry stones grinding together. He didn't turn. His eyes were glued to the primary gateway, where the shadows of the Vanguard enforcers were beginning to bleed through the pressurized steam. "If they breach that gate, we’re not just dead—we’re data."Arga kicked a heavy cooling pipe, the metal shrieking as it groaned under the stress of the facility’s failing life support. "I’m down to half a magazine, Blackwell! And the blast doors are screaming. You told me this was the extraction point, not a tomb!""It’s both," Rafi snapped. He didn't look back. His fingers were flying across the cold, vibrating interface of the uplink console. The screen was a jagged mess of crimson telemetry and scrolling kernel errors. "Maya, how far?""The data packet is massive, Rafi! It’s not just the ledger—it’s the entire regional slave-network architecture," Maya yelled, her knuckles white as she gripped the edges of her handheld. "If I dump it