2025-04-18 05:36:53At Geneva Safe Zone Hospital – 1:03 A.M.
The fluorescent hum of the hospital lights was the only sound in the quiet room. Cassia stirred slightly beneath the covers. Darius sat in the corner, wide awake, exhaustion etched into the lines of his face. His body was still recovering from the neural dive, but his mind was miles ahead—processing, analyzing, anticipating. “You’re not sleeping,” Cassia murmured. He looked up. “Neither are you.” She turned her head to face him. “It’s not over, is it?” Darius hesitated, then stood and walked to the edge of her bed. “We killed the machine. But not the idea.” Cassia’s voice dropped lower. “How many more like Vault 09 are out there?” He met her gaze. “Too many.” At Geneva – 6:47 A.M. A light snow dusted the city. Despite the early hour, the world was wide awake. The broadcast Darius made had already been replayed across news networks and darknet feeds a thousand times. The truth about Ghost Code was out. But that came with consequences. Inside the temporary UN Taskforce headquarters, a war was already brewing. Representatives from seven countries, three private corporations, and one rogue state sat around the circular table. On-screen, General Thorne’s image flickered in from DC, patched through a secure military line. “This can’t be contained anymore,” Thorne barked. “The floodgates are open. You’re going to start seeing old enemies crawling out of the woodwork thinking they can rebuild it.” An MI6 agent leaned forward. “They won’t try to rebuild it. They’ll try to evolve it.” Thorne nodded grimly. “They’ll weaponize the fallout. Every bit of fragmented code, every synthetic echo left behind. Digital ghosts don’t stay buried.” A rep from the Syndicate—cloaked in anonymity—spoke in a metallic voice: “So what are you proposing?” The screen shifted. A new name appeared. PROJECT IRON VOW. Darius entered the room, back in his operative blacks, with Amira beside him. “Iron Vow isn’t a project. It’s a kill switch,” Darius said. “For anyone who tries to resurrect Ghost Code.” Thorne frowned. “You sure you’re ready for that kind of war?” Darius’s eyes were cold. “I was born in that war.” In a dimly lit server room somewhere in Berlin, a hooded figure scrolled through lines of recovered Nexus code. The room was filled with machines humming in sync. On a nearby wall, a map displayed hotspots where Ghost Code fragments had been detected: Lagos, Caracas, Tehran, Shanghai. The figure stopped typing, then removed the hood. A woman. Young. Sharp eyes. Tattooed circuit patterns traced her neck. Her screen blinked. One line of code repeated over and over: “I know you’re watching, Raines.” She smiled. “Good.” Back in Geneva – 9:10 A.M. Cassia walked slowly through the hospital corridor, her limbs still regaining strength. Amira was waiting in the lounge, reading classified reports. “New problem?” Cassia asked. Amira looked up. “More like an old one returning. Someone’s been scraping ghost fragments off the dead code like vultures. We’ve got seven confirmed data heists in under twelve hours. All post-broadcast.” Cassia narrowed her eyes. “Somebody wants to resurrect it.” “Or build something worse.” “Where’s Darius?” “On a flight. Destination: classified.” Cassia stepped closer. “He didn’t tell me.” Amira raised an eyebrow. “He doesn’t want you involved.” Cassia’s jaw tightened. “Too late.” At Northern Kazakhstan – 11:36 A.M. The private plane touched down in the wastelands. Darius stepped off into a frozen field, flanked by two covert ops agents from Echelon-8—an elite unit with black-clearance privileges and zero accountability. Before him stood a collapsed bunker, long abandoned. But deep inside: servers still pulsed. “You sure about this?” one agent asked. Darius loaded a fresh mag into his rifle. “I’m not here to be sure. I’m here to end it.” They descended into the cold. Inside, Darius found what he feared. A clone of the Nexus core—half-assembled, twitching with fragmented memory and AI data. But that wasn’t the worst part. It was talking. In Cassia’s voice. At Geneva – 2:02 P.M. Cassia hacked into the UN flight logs and tracked Darius’s route. Amira tried to stop her—then gave up halfway through and simply joined in. “Why Kazakhstan?” Cassia muttered. Amira’s expression darkened. “There was a test site there. Pre-Nexus. They called it ‘Phase Zero.’” Cassia paused. “The neural crucible?” “That’s the one. Where they first experimented on children. The ones who didn’t survive never got names—just codenumbers.” A long silence. Then Cassia said, “He’s not going in there alone.” Phase Zero Bunker Sub-Level 3 Darius moved slowly through the red-lit corridors. He’d seen hell before. But this was different. Flesh and wires. Failed prototypes. Mechanical remains of children turned into test cases for ghost AI integration. It wasn’t a lab. It was a tomb. Then he reached the chamber. At its center, a stasis pod. Inside, a child no older than eight—hooked to machines, floating in a liquid tank, alive in a coma. Nameplate: SUBJECT: ECHO_IX. Behind him, a voice. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Darius turned, weapon up. The tattooed woman stepped into the light. The one from Berlin. “You must be the Raines everyone keeps whispering about.” Darius aimed squarely at her chest. “Step away from the pod.” She smiled. “You’re still trying to save people. That’s cute.” “What is this?” “A backup plan,” she said. “Echo_IX is the clean slate. No memories, no contamination. Just potential. Pure neural synthesis. I’ll feed the fragments into him. Then I’ll rebuild the Ghost Code. Better. Smarter. Untethered from ethics.” “You’ll kill him.” “No,” she whispered. “I’ll set him free.” Darius didn’t hesitate. He fired. But the bullet never landed. An electromagnetic field stopped it midair. She smiled wider. “Did I mention I upgraded?” Back in Geneva at 3:15 P.M. Cassia geared up in a prototype neural armor suit. Amira handed her a pistol. “If you do this, you’re disobeying every protocol the UN put in place.” Cassia locked the weapon in place. “They made me a weapon. They don’t get to decide where I aim.” Phase Zero Cassia arrived just as Darius was flung across the chamber by a pulse wave. The woman turned to her. “Ah. The prodigal code.” Cassia raised her pistol. “Step. Away. From the boy.” “I was you once,” the woman said. “Only I didn’t get saved.” Cassia fired. This time, the shot went through. The woman collapsed, clutching her side. Still alive—but the interface implant on her temple sparked violently. Cassia ran to the pod, began deactivating the sync sequence. Darius staggered to his feet. “You’re late.” She smiled faintly. “I had to make an entrance.” They evacuated the facility and torched it. No data left. No servers. No witnesses. The child, Echo_IX, was airlifted to a classified medical ward. Darius and Cassia sat side by side in the chopper, bruised, burned, and finally… quiet. “You think it’s over?” she asked. Darius didn’t answer for a moment. “No. But we’re ahead of it now.” Cassia leaned her head on his shoulder. “I can live with that.”
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