Beneath the bones of the city, beyond the collapsed subway lines and rusting generators, there was a space untouched by the Red Rain.
Astra led them in silence, her crystalline eyes glowing faintly in the dark. Lucien carried Ember, who was still regaining her strength. Danny trailed behind, trying to repair his drone with trembling fingers. Only Marcus walked forward without pause, drawn deeper by something he couldn't name.
[Warning: Signal Interference Detected – Environment Cloaked by Pre-Collapse Technology][Evolution System Access: Restricted (Passive Scan Only)]
"The Deep Vault," Astra finally said as they reached a sealed door with no handle, no panel, no obvious way in. "One of seven across the planet. Each contains truths the Protocol erased from public record."
Marcus eyed the seamless wall. "How do we open it?"
Astra stepped forward and placed her hand against the steel.
A pulse of memory—not light, not electricity, but raw human thought—radiated outward.
[Biometric Recognition: Sentinel-Class Confirmed][Vault Access Granted]
With a hiss, the wall divided like water parting. A staircase spiraled down into blackness, lit only by dim, living veins of power running along the walls.
Inside, the air smelled sterile, untouched by rot or blood.
"I was one of them once," Astra said as they walked. "A human reengineered by the Protocol to enforce balance. A Seraph-Class Executor. But something was missing. Something… imperfect."
She turned to Marcus.
"You."
Marcus frowned. "Me?"
"Not just you. The anomaly you represent. You resisted mutation, but not by accident. You're what the Red Rain was supposed to eliminate: a divergent strain of humanity."
[System Insight Unlocked – Hidden Gene Class: Vanta-9 | Origin: Forbidden Prototype]
Marcus's head pounded.
"I don't understand. Why eliminate it?"
"Because your kind can't be predicted. Can't be controlled. And the architects of the Protocol—" she paused, as they reached a massive circular chamber, walls lined with ancient servers and suspended pods—"they feared that."
She stepped aside. One pod was open.
Inside, covered in frost, was another Marcus.
Lucien cursed aloud. Ember gasped.
"What the hell—" Marcus stepped forward, heart racing. "That's—me?"
"No. That was a clone. A failsafe. A simulation of what you should've become under Protocol conditioning."
A hologram flickered on, displaying lines of data, simulations of Marcus surrendering to the Seraphs, submitting to system control, and being rewritten into an obedient soldier.
"You didn't follow the plan," Astra said softly. "And now the future has forked."
Marcus stared at his own face—lifeless, docile, glassy-eyed.
"I'd rather burn this world down than become that," he said.
Astra nodded. "Then listen closely."
She activated a screen. It displayed the Earth—pocked with craters, cloud systems distorted by high-atmosphere structures.
Above it, orbiting in low stealth… a structure. Massive. Alien. Unnamed.
"The Protocol wasn't Earth-made," Astra said. "It was seeded. A terraforming prelude. And the Architects… are returning to claim their harvest."
[Major Mission Unlocked: Confront the Architects | Failure = Global Reclamation Event]
Marcus clenched his fists.
"So we stop them."
"No," Astra replied. "You evolve beyond them."