The Reborn Soldier's Revenge

The Woman Who Wasn't Chloe

The fortress doors opened onto darkness, and for a moment nobody moved. Then the first machine stepped through, red eyes scanning the room, servos whining softly in a silence that felt worse than the noise outside had been.

[TARGET ACQUIRED.]

Ethan fired. Its head burst apart and it dropped, but another came behind it, then ten more, pouring through a doorway that wouldn't close, the whole entrance a churning mass of metal limbs and red light.

"SHUT THE DOOR!" Nobody moved, because the control panel was dead and there was nothing left to shut it with.

Gideon charged the line. "GET BACK!" His weapon connected with a sickening crack, sending a creature flying, while Dominic planted himself in front of the others, shield raised. "Behind me!"

Ethan spun, searching. "Chloe!" Gone. His blood ran cold. "Where is she?"

Nobody answered. Then Diana screamed, a machine's claws already closing around her, and Ethan's shot took it apart a half second before it mattered.

"Are you hurt?"

"No!"

"Good." Another charged and Gideon smashed it without being asked. "You're welcome."

"Where's Chloe," Ethan said again, ignoring him.

"She disappeared," Marcus said.

"Find her."

"She's dangerous!"

"I know."

"Then why look for her?"

"Because I need answers."

"You're going to get us all killed."

"Then keep me alive," Ethan said, and ran.

The fortress had no turrets, no automated weapons, nothing built to survive what was pouring through its open door. Ethan fired until his weapon overheated and threw it aside, grabbing a metal pipe when a machine charged, ducking beneath its claws and swinging. CRACK. Again. CRACK. The metal skull finally caved and the creature dropped.

His system flared.

[COMBAT EXPERIENCE GAINED.] [LEVEL UP.] [LEVEL: 8.]

Level eight, from level six, minutes apart. The system was feeding him experience far faster than it should have been able to.

[SYSTEM ENERGY: 12%.]

Dropping fast, and he had no idea when it would recover. Another machine came, and he kicked it into the wall, and a glowing blue symbol bloomed in front of him.

[CHEAT CODE AVAILABLE.]

The one thing that had made him nearly unstoppable in his old life, offered now instead of earned three months in.

[WARNING.] [ACTIVATING CHEAT CODE WILL TRIGGER AN UNKNOWN CONSEQUENCE.]

He'd never seen that warning before. Never needed to, not once in an entire previous life spent leaning on that exact code to survive. He looked around at the blood, the machines, his friends fighting for their lives in a fortress that was supposed to be their sanctuary and had instead become another kill box, and pressed the button anyway.

[CHEAT CODE ACTIVATED.]

A shockwave tore out of him and everything stopped, even the machines, even the flickering lights. Blue energy wrapped around his body as the system screamed.

[ERROR.] [ERROR.] [ERROR.]

He dropped to one knee, veins glowing, vision blurring.

[CHEAT CODE ACCEPTED.] [USER AUTHENTICATION: FAILED.] [WARNING.] [THIS CHEAT CODE DOES NOT BELONG TO ETHAN VANCE.] [ORIGINAL OWNER: CLASSIFIED.]

Someone else had used this exact ability before him. Someone who knew the system from the inside. The message gave him nothing else, only a new line.

[NEW ABILITY UNLOCKED.] [SYSTEM OVERRIDE.]

A machine charged and he raised his hand on instinct. "Stop." It froze, and Ethan could suddenly see straight through its programming, its control signal, everything that made it move.

"Turn around." It obeyed. "Attack." It slammed into another enemy, and Gideon stared like he'd just watched the laws of physics change shape.

"What the hell?"

Ethan didn't answer, because he didn't know if he'd just found something powerful or something had just found him. "Everyone, behind me." He raised his hand at the remaining swarm. "Stop." Every machine froze at once, hundreds of red eyes going still. "Turn. Leave." They obeyed, filing back out into the desert like nothing had happened.

Toby stared after them, pale. "That's not possible. Those things don't have independent control, they're connected to the main system. If you controlled them, you just accessed Aegis's own network."

The room went quiet. Ethan looked at the glowing words still hanging in front of him. He'd been trying to survive. Instead he might have just walked straight into the enemy's house with the door wide open behind him.

"Where's Chloe," he asked.

"That way," Marcus said, and Ethan ran, following emergency lights strobing red and black down a corridor that seemed to stretch longer with every step. He found a room. Empty, except for blood on the floor, fresh, still warm. No body.

"Chloe?"

A whisper answered from behind him. "Ethan." She stood at the end of the corridor, alone, eyes clear, face streaked with tears.

He raised his weapon. "Don't come closer. Prove it's you."

"You hate coffee," she said, voice breaking, "because your mother put too much sugar in it."

Nobody knew that. His mother had died when he was a baby, and Chloe was the only person he'd ever told. He lowered the weapon slightly.

"How did you get here," he asked.

"I don't know. I woke up here. I remember running." Her breathing sped up. "From Julian."

"Julian is dead."

"I saw him. Today, at the house. He was alive." Her eyes went wide with the memory. "He was wearing your armor. He told me you were going to die again."

Something in Ethan's chest dropped straight through the floor. "Again?"

Before she could answer, a message bloomed in front of him.

[EMOTIONAL RESPONSE DETECTED.] [SUBJECT ETHAN VANCE: ATTACHMENT LEVEL, HIGH.]

"Who's doing this," he demanded of the empty air. "Dr. Thorne!"

A screen lit the wall, and her face appeared, smiling. "Hello, Ethan."

"Where is Julian?"

"That's what you're asking? You should be asking why your wife is still alive."

"What did you do to her?"

"Nothing. She volunteered." Chloe's face went white. "She wanted power. She wanted to become stronger than you, so they could bring him back."

"You're lying," Ethan said, though he was already looking at Chloe, already watching her fail to deny it.

"I thought they could bring him back," she whispered. "I loved him."

The words still hurt, even though he'd already died once knowing them.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"No. You don't get to apologize. You betrayed me. You stole my armor. You left me to die."

"I know!" She collapsed to her knees, sobbing, and for the first time Ethan saw something in her that looked like real regret. He'd learned better than to trust tears from someone who'd already betrayed him once.

"Get her out of my sight," he told Marcus. "Lock her in one of the unfinished rooms."

"Ethan, please!" He kept walking. Then she screamed his name again, different this time, edged with real terror.

"There's someone else inside the base." A man in a black suit. Agent Miller, though Miller had already left once tonight. "He was standing beside a woman." Her voice dropped to almost nothing. "Your mother."

Ethan stopped breathing. His mother had been dead for twenty four years.

The lights cut out again. A scream, then a gunshot, then another, and Ethan ran toward the sound with Marcus close behind. Toby lay in the main corridor, blood spreading fast across his shirt, Diana already pressing glowing hands to the wound.

"I can't stop the bleeding."

The bullet in him wasn't ordinary. Ethan's system confirmed it.

[UNKNOWN PROJECTILE DETECTED.] [WARNING.] [PROJECTILE CONTAINS SYSTEM DELETION CODE.]

"Ethan," Toby breathed, grabbing his arm. "Don't trust Rebecca."

His voice faded before Ethan could ask why, and when he looked up, Rebecca stood at the end of the corridor, hands raised, face unreadable.

"I didn't shoot him."

"Then who did?"

She pointed past him instead of answering. Ethan turned to find a figure in the dark, black suit, black gloves, a gun still smoking in one hand.

Agent Miller. And beside him, a woman with long dark hair, a pale face, and a necklace Ethan had only ever seen in an old photograph.

His weapon lowered on its own, arm going slack like the message hadn't reached the rest of his body yet. "No."

"Ethan," she said, and his whole body went still, because that voice belonged to a woman dead twenty four years, buried in a grave he'd visited exactly once as a child and never again, and yet it was coming from the face standing in front of him now, unchanged, untouched by time in a way that made his stomach turn.

"Did you miss me?"

Dr. Thorne's voice crackled through the speakers overhead, almost pleasant, like she was narrating a play she'd already watched a dozen times.

"Phase Two has officially begun."

The woman smiled and raised the gun, aiming it straight at his chest, steady in a way no grieving mother's hand should ever be.

"I'm sorry, son."

The gun fired, and the last thing Ethan saw was the bullet closing the distance between them, faster than any thought he had left time to finish.