The canyon wind shrieked through the basalt needles, but the space between Carlos and Nikolai felt like a pressurized vacuum. The cold steel of the pistol barrel pressed firmly against Carlos’s sternum. "You really think you can just solve me, don’t you?" Carlos asked, his voice barely rising above the whistle of the wind. He didn't blink. He watched the way Nikolai’s knuckles were white around the grip. Nikolai’s gaze flickered, a momentary lapse in his usual stone-faced composure. "I don’t want to solve you, Carlos. I want to save the work. If you walk away now, you walk into a void. There is nothing out there for a prototype like you." "Maybe I prefer the void to the cage," Carlos said. He shifted his weight, his boots grinding into the grit. "You spent years telling me I was a miracle. That I was the only successful variable. Was that all a pitch to keep me compliant?"

 The silhouette of the tower loomed ahead, a jagged needle piercing the bruised, violet underbelly of the desert sky. Its surface hummed with a low, dissonant frequency that made the very air around Carlos’s teeth ache. He stopped at the base, his boots sinking into a ring of scorched earth that circled the perimeter like a warning. "Well," Carlos muttered, his breath hitching as the hum rattled his skull. "That’s a hell of a welcome mat." "It is a Class-4 automated defense relay," the System’s voice chimed in his mind, sharp and devoid of sympathy. "The perimeter is saturated with high-frequency sonic barriers. You should have been vaporized three meters back." Carlos wiped a smear of grit from his cheek, his eyes tracing the flickering red lights mounted along the structure’s base. "Then why aren't I? Why didn't they turn me into a pile of ash yet?" "The barrier

 The transport ship hummed with a low-frequency vibration that rattled Carlos’s teeth, but his focus was entirely on the figure blocking the exit ramp. It was a man, perfect in every detail, wearing the same shredded hoodie and the same hardened, charcoal-flecked skin. The figure didn't blink. It didn't breathe. It simply stood there, radiating the exact same atmospheric hum that Carlos produced when the System was at full power. Carlos stepped off the ramp, his boots crunching on the loose gravel of the landing pad. "Who are you? Did Aris make you too? Are you another draft?" The clone didn't answer with words. It lunged. The movement was a mirror image of Carlos’s own combat style, a brutal, efficient lash of kinetic energy. Carlos barely ducked, the air whistling where his throat had been a split second before. "Hey! Look, I’m not in the mood for games!" Carlos shout