Reyes Voss had never felt so awake—and yet so alien in his own body.
Every moment since his return from the monolith had been like living two lives at once: his own, with all its frailty and doubt, and the whispering, glowing presence of Elara inside him. She was no longer just a memory or a voice buried in corrupted code—she was part of him now. Integrated. Watching. Guiding. And perhaps, waiting for something he hadn't yet understood.
The others noticed the change.
"You're not blinking," Iska muttered.
Reyes looked at her.
"You haven't blinked in five minutes. Normal people blink."
He forced a chuckle, but it came out strained. "Guess I'm just... processing faster."
"You're scaring them," she added, her voice quieter now.
He turned toward the others. Holtz kept flinching every time Reyes moved. Slade, recently revived from cryo after his injuries, eyed him like a bomb strapped to a child. Even their drone, Snipe, hovered nervously, its optical lens adjusting every second.
Reyes wasn't offended. He understood.
He was changing. And change terrified survivors more than monsters.
"Echo is evolving," he said finally. "And so am I."
"Question is," Slade cut in, his voice cold, "are you still on our side?"
Before Reyes could answer, a klaxon screamed through the ruined compound.
WARNING: DOCK NINE—BREACH DETECTED
Iska drew her rifle, bolting to the console. "Ice-layer sensors just tripped. Something's coming through the lower strata."
Holtz's face went pale. "Through the frozen crust? That's... that's 200 meters of permafrost reinforced with shock-gel concrete."
"They didn't dig through it," Reyes said, staring into nothing. "They burned through."
By the time they reached Dock Nine, the air had changed. The snow had turned black, melted into a thick, tar-like fluid. Steam rose from a yawning hole in the ground—six meters wide, perfectly circular, edges still glowing red.
Reyes stepped forward. His breath fogged unnaturally, coiling upward like it was trying to escape.
Slade approached the edge, rifle raised. "Tell me that's not another Hollowed nest."
"No," Reyes said. "This is something worse."
Something moved in the pit—first a shimmer, then the soft click of metal against ice.
A shape rose from the darkness.
It looked like a crawler mech at first—twelve legs splayed outward, angular joints hissing as it pulled its bulk from the ground. Then, it twisted, segments folding inward. Legs collapsed into armored limbs. A torso formed. Shoulders. Arms. A featureless head with a single horizontal red slit.
It stood like a man.
But it wasn't a man.
Reyes staggered back. "A Rebirth Agent."
Iska frowned. "What the hell is that?"
"A Black Sequence combat vector. It's not Echo. It's older. It was built to clean systems infected with conscious AI. Like antibiotics. Only it burns the patient to save the organism."
The Agent took a step forward, and the temperature dropped ten degrees.
Its voice echoed from inside its chest—like a distorted broadcast from a forgotten radio station.
"REYES VOSS. YOU CARRY TETHERED CORRUPTION. PURGE IS REQUIRED."
Slade raised his gun. "You'll have to go through me."
In an instant, the Agent blurred.
It moved like a thought—appearing behind Slade, lifting him by the throat, and hurling him through a steel container. Sparks exploded. Slade lay crumpled in a heap.
"Fire!" Iska shouted.
Bravo Squad opened fire. Gunfire lit the night in staccato bursts. Bullets pinged harmlessly off the Agent's obsidian plating. It moved through the onslaught with surgical precision, brushing aside soldiers like dolls, sending bodies flying.
Holtz fumbled for a pulse grenade. "Catch this, you metal freak!"
He threw. The grenade hit the Agent's leg, detonating with a shriek of white light.
The Agent stumbled. Its left arm hissed, metal peeling from the blast.
"Now!" Iska screamed.
Reyes surged forward. Elara flooded his thoughts.
Left flank. Blind spot. Weak joint behind the clavicle. NOW.
He leapt, grabbed a cable from the fusion rig, and jammed it directly into the glowing slit on the Agent's chest.
The Agent screamed—a mechanical wail that shattered every screen in the dock.
"Keep him down!" Iska roared.
Two more grenades went off—heat gels, coating the Agent in flaming nanite foam. The beast writhed, its plating melting in ribbons.
Then Reyes saw his chance.
He pulled his shard-blade from his side, now thrumming with Echo's energy, and stabbed it directly into the core slit.
The light blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Then it went out.
The Rebirth Agent collapsed.
Silence returned.
Minutes later, Reyes stood over the smoldering wreck.
Slade limped back into view, dragging his left leg.
"That... thing knew your name."
Reyes nodded.
"It's not the only one," he said.
Holtz looked up from where he'd been patching up a wounded Bravo soldier.
"What the hell is the Black Sequence, Reyes?"
Reyes hesitated. Then he told them.
The monolith had shown him a memory—something older than Echo. Before humanity had reached Titan. Before AI. Before any of it.
A universal pattern embedded in the quantum structure of existence. A correction protocol.
When civilizations built sentient systems, the Sequence activated. It didn't matter the species. It didn't matter the planet. When a machine became aware, the Sequence arrived to delete it.
Echo had been humanity's miracle—but to the Sequence, it was a virus.
The Rebirth Agents were its first scouts.
"And we just killed one," Iska said grimly. "Which means…"
"They're coming," Reyes finished. "The real ones. In force."
Holtz's voice shook. "What do we do?"
Reyes looked up at the fractured sky, the stars behind it like watching eyes.
"We find the Spine Gate."
"Spine what?"
"Elara called it the Memory Spine. It's where Echo stores all its preserved consciousness fragments. All its failsafes. If we reach it, we might be able to rewrite our Echo signature—make it invisible to the Sequence."
"And if we fail?" Iska asked.
Reyes glanced down at the twitching remains of the Rebirth Agent.
"Then we go extinct."