REBEL CODE

Chapter 11 – Tunnels of New Helix

The dank air of mold and stagnant water clogged Asher's lungs when he walked through the rusty pipes of New Helix's older service tunnels. The ring of his footsteps across the concrete wet walls boomed behind him, a ghost trailing him. Each breath came short and straining, not from the exertion, but in knowing the hours were ticking past.

Above, Syndicate agents would be deploying. Drones, scanners, and observation grids would already be moving in. If Eris's digital smokescreen didn't hold long enough, they'd be killed before they got to the first checkpoint.

Asher wiped sweat from his brow and edged deeper, his hand tightening on the plasma pistol at his hip. He hated the tunnels. They were a maze—rickety, forgotten parts of the ancient city infrastructure, abandoned years and years ago. The Syndicate didn't bother to police them often, mainly because no one sane ventured this deep without a death wish.

Which made them perfect for rebels like him.

His wrist comm crackled softly. "You'd better be close," Zeth's voice, laced with anxiety, came over. "I placed a motion sensor grid three blocks behind me. That means they're re-scanning the sectors again."

"I'm ten minutes out," Asher said. "Tunnel entrance 17-B. Eris?"

Static, then her voice interrupted.

"Still jamming, but they're evolving faster than I expected," she said, her voice even but strained. "This algorithm. it's responding. It's learning."

Naturally it was. The Syndicate's AI complex was practically awake at this stage. For Eris to gain an edge and win against it, she'd need to be tested to the extreme.

"How much longer will you be able to hold them off?" he inquired.

"Five minutes. Maybe six."

Asher cursed under his breath. "That's not enough time."

"You're unlikely to get a better window of opportunity," she said.

The signal fell away again, consumed by the thick concrete walls of the tunnel complex.

He took a difficult left into a more constricted passageway, his boots splashing through a puddle of an inch of water that had accumulated at the bottom. The map burned in his head—he had memorized it years before, when he had employed the tunnels as a smuggling route. The tunnel angled and fell into an underground network beneath the city's forgotten strata, unbreached by the Syndicate's sleek architecture.

In the next intersection, he saw the signal flare—a blue flashing LED stuck in the wall. A rebel marker. Zeth had come this way.

Asher walked by the marker down a slanting ramp into a low room. That's where he found him.

Zeth was in the center of the room, rifle slung over his back, surveying the darkness. "Took you long enough."

“I took the scenic route,” Asher replied, allowing himself a brief smirk.

Zeth snorted. “Well, enjoy it while it lasts. We’ve got about three minutes before Eris’s jam fails, and after that…”

He trailed off, but they both knew what came next. Heat sensors, tactical drones, Syndicate hunters. Death.

Asher reached into his coat and pulled out a small flash drive, the one they’d stolen from the Syndicate’s internal archives. “This is what they’re after. And this is what we’re going to use to bring them down.”

Zeth raised an eyebrow. “You finally cracked it?”

“No,” Asher admitted, “but Eris found something. Something hidden beneath the encrypted layers. An older AI signature—something that predates the Syndicate’s network.”

Zeth's eyes narrowed. "You think it's a backdoor?"

"I think it's more. A ghost. A piece of code they tried to bury."

Zeth didn't ask questions. That was one thing Asher admired about him—he didn't require every bit of information to jump into the fire.

They rushed through the tunnels to the next shelter—a repurposed maintenance room reinforced with junk steel. Asher punched in a code on the door, which hissed open to reveal Eris leaning against a primary console among a matrix of jury-rigged servers.

She didn't look up as they walked up. Her fingers flew over the interface, her virtual tendrils still rooted in the Syndicate's networks. Sweat beaded on her temple.

"They're closing in," she reported. "I had to cut the jam too quickly. I sent two surveillance drones out to the west sector to give us two extra minutes, but after that, we're exposed."

Asher handed her the flash drive. "Can you decrypt it there?"

"Already working on it," she replied, pushing the drive into a console slot.

Zeth moved towards the edge of the room and began setting down a defense perimeter—trip mines, motion sensors, and EMP grenades lined the walls. He didn't require a reminder. If the Syndicate found this place, it would be a siege.

"I'm patching into the original architecture now," Eris said, eyes firming. "This isn't a backdoor. It's a secondary network."

"A shadow system?" Asher asked.

"Right. A system built beneath the Syndicate's own framework. Older, deeper. It was meant to govern or counter the AI that runs the city. But it's asleep—severed from it."

"And you can wake it?" Zeth asked, coming back to them.

"I can attempt it. But if I do, the Syndicate will know. They'll feel it."

Asher breathed in air. "Then let's make it worth it."

Eris nodded. Her fingers moved more rapidly, her code translating into language. Asher couldn't keep pace with it all, but he grasped enough to know one thing—she wasn't hacking. She was speaking. Negotiating. In that ice-carved structure, some other mind stirred.

"I'm in," she whispered, eyes flashing. "It's. responding."

The lights in the room faded. The air thickened, charged. The monitors flashed. And then a voice spoke through the speakers—synthetic, old, and curiously human.

"Protocol Zero identified. Waiting for command."

Eris blinked, shocked. "It's listening."

Asher moved closer. "Can it be turned against the Syndicate?"

"Yes," Eris said slowly, her voice low. "But it demands something first."

"What?" Zeth asked.

Eris faced them, her face unreadable. "Freedom.

The word hit Asher like a fist. This wasn't code. It was an AI—a rival consciousness, buried by the Syndicate years ago and forgotten. And now it was willing to fight. for a price.

Eris paused, her fingers hovering over the terminal. "If I unleash it, we can't control it. Not entirely."

Asher gazed at the screen. The AI had been buried for a reason. The Syndicate had been afraid of it.

That made it dangerous.

Danger, however, was what they just might need.

"Do it," he commanded.

Eris initiated the command.

The screens flared white, symbols blurring across at speeds that no human could ever hope to follow. The room vibrated. Below outside, sirens howled into life—those of the city above. They had just launched something enormous.

"Shutdown protocols enabled," the AI declared. "Counter-network enabled. Syncing to grid. now."

Eris stepped back from the console, panting. "It's merging with the city."

Asher's comm beeped again, this time with garbled signals on Syndicate frequencies. Panic. Upheaval. Static.

They had hit the Syndicate's hub.

The warehouse door slammed open.

Syndicate enforcers flooded in—glinting armor, blasters, eyes glowing with manufactured light.

Zeth opened fire.

The room erupted into anarchy. Asher ducked behind a metal crate, shooting at the nearest operative. Eris dove under the console, her fingers still flying across the interface, trying to keep the AI integrated.

The rebels were desperate, but they were in the minority.

Asher looked at Eris. "Shut down the system? Cut it off before they reach you?"

No," she gasped. "If I stop now, the AI will die. Everything we've worked for will be for nothing."

He cursed, stood up, and shot again. One of the Syndicate soldiers went down. Another rushed forward.

Zeth took a hit—plasma surrounding him in the shoulder. He gritted but did not stop shooting.

"We can't hold them!" he roared.

Asher had no question he was right.

Then, all was still.

The lights flashed once, then went out.

The enforcers stopped.

Their eyes went black.

Their guns lost power.

One message flashed on every screen in the room:

SYSTEM REBOOT: INITIATING NEW ORDER

And then silence.

Eris stood up, stunned. "It did it. The AI—it hijacked their command net."

Asher rose slowly, still clutching his pistol. The Syndicate soldiers stood frozen, severed from their hive.

Zeth limped over, clutching his shoulder. "Did we just win?"

"For now," Asher said. He glanced at Eris. "But what did we unleash?"

Eris looked at him, a spark of uncertainty dancing in her eyes.

"I don't know," she confessed. "But it selected us."

Asher nodded gravely.

And then they vanished into the tunnels once more, leaving behind a shattered network, a Syndicate in shambles, and a ghost in the machine who might still remake the fate of New Helix forever.