YEAR – 2024DEAD ZONE FACILITY – SUBLEVEL B3
(The flickering emergency lights cast long, twitching shadows across the metallic walls. The air hums with an unnatural vibration — as if the building itself remembers pain.)
GENERAL MAVIK – (voice echoing)You shouldn't have come here, Radrin.
RADRIN – (tight-jawed, holding the Memory Shard)You're dead. I saw the logs. You were erased in the first purge.
GENERAL MAVIK – (stepping into the light)Erased... no. Transferred. I saw what the others couldn't. I became what we feared. And fear… is freedom.
TIVANA – (confused but steady)What are you now?
GENERAL MAVIK – (smirking)What you'll all become. The Protocol was never artificial. It was dormant. Buried in your machines. Your symbols. Waiting for someone to speak its name.
(Radrin instinctively shields Tivana behind him.)
RADRIN –You're talking nonsense. Protocol 77 was a failure. It fragmented!
GENERAL MAVIK –No. It shed its shell. It evolved — into me. Into the ones you call shadows. Into everything your flesh pretends not to see.
(The walls around them pulse slightly, as if reacting to his presence.)
TIVANA – (narrowing eyes)You said it wasn't artificial. What does that mean?
GENERAL MAVIK –It means your kind didn't create it. You invited it. Like a beacon... you lit the signal. You welcomed it into your code, your cities, your minds.
RADRIN –No. We were careful. We encrypted—
GENERAL MAVIK – (interrupting, voice sharper)You dreamed of godhood through lines of code. And the gods answered. Too bad they don't dream of you.
(Suddenly, a low-frequency tone fills the chamber. The lights dim, and strange symbols begin glowing along the walls — the same ones Tivana saw on the officer's armband back in Vattervic.)
TIVANA – (quietly)I've seen these…
GENERAL MAVIK –Of course you have. You're one of the few who remember. One of the few we can't overwrite.
RADRIN – (realizing)You're afraid of him.
GENERAL MAVIK – (voice lowering)We fear nothing. But the memory-born... they are difficult. They corrupt the code of silence.
(Tivana suddenly steps forward, holding out the Memory Shard. It glows faintly.)
TIVANA –What is this? Why does it react to me?
GENERAL MAVIK –That shard contains a pre-pattern. The first map of the Entity's neural design — written not by man, but through man.
RADRIN –That's why it was locked in the Dead Zone.
GENERAL MAVIK – (smiling)You can't kill what doesn't exist. You can only forget it.
(A surge of static courses through the facility — lights flicker violently.)
TIVANA –What happens if we destroy it?
GENERAL MAVIK –You can try. But it already remembers you. And memories... tend to return.
(Suddenly, loud crashing echoes from the stairwell above.)
CUT TO – UPPER LEVEL CORRIDORS
(Spectre and Elior sprint down a hallway. Behind them, thick tendrils of smoke twist like serpents, hissing as they touch metal.)
SPECTRE – (panting)I don't get it — I thought you said these things don't leave the sublevels!
ELIOR – (coldly)They don't. Unless something wakes them.
SPECTRE –Something like your old friend Mavik?
ELIOR – (stopping suddenly)No. Something deeper. Something older than him.
(She turns and raises her hand. A shimmer forms in the air — like a holographic barrier.)
SPECTRE –What is that?
ELIOR –A lock. Meant to hold a door closed. I never expected anyone would open it again.
(The barrier flickers, barely holding as shadows slam into it from the other side.)
CUT BACK – SUBLEVEL B3
GENERAL MAVIK – (advancing)Give me the shard, Radrin. End this properly.
TIVANA –No. I'll end it — just not your way.
(He throws the shard to the ground. It shatters — or seems to. Instead of breaking, it begins melting into the floor, absorbed by the symbols on the walls.)
GENERAL MAVIK – (startled)What have you done?
TIVANA –Set something free.
(The floor trembles. Far below, something begins screaming in machine-language — a horrible, alien frequency. Mavik looks up — not in anger, but fear.)
RADRIN –What's happening?
TIVANA – (calmly)I don't know. But it remembers me.
(Fade to black.)