Gwen stared at the broken visor lying on the bench in Field Alpha.
It hadn't stopped bothering her since they found it—half-buried in the sealed chamber, humming faintly like it was remembering something. Luffy had tucked it away, said it was too risky to poke without backup.
But Gwen wasn't good at waiting.
She crouched beside the terminal they'd wired to their secure console—an old rugged build they'd gutted and rebuilt with salvaged boards and a reinforced shell.
She held the cleanest of the three data sticks in her hand.
"Just a peek," she murmured.
"Famous last words," Luffy said behind her.
She smirked. "I checked for live trackers. It's passive. No wireless handshake, no outgoing signal."
"And if it's booby-trapped?"
"Then I blow up our journal, lose my eyebrows, and you get to say 'I told you so.'"
She slid the stick into the terminal.
The screen glitched.
Then flickered.
Then bloomed with red light.
Awakening
Lines of code poured across the monitor—language Luffy barely understood, Gwen only half-recognized. Then it stopped. A black screen. One line blinking in green.
ECHO-UNIT_Δ001: BOOTING
A low hum filled the room.
Then, a voice.
Broken. Garbled.
"Sys…tem…frag—echo match… pat…tern found."
Gwen's hand froze over the keyboard.
"Luffy," she said softly. "It's talking."
Luffy moved closer, arms crossed. "What kind of AI is this?"
The screen pulsed.
"Phase Echo initialized. Hello… anomaly."
The voice was layered—like multiple versions of the same person talking over each other. Male, female, synthetic.
Luffy frowned. "It doesn't know who we are."
"It knows what we are," Gwen whispered.
The display changed.
Lines of diagnostic data began running.
"Soulwave compatibility: 99.04%."
"Inheritance pattern: Gomu-Gomu… recognized."
"Subject-B: Spider-tier genome mutation. Unstable but viable."
"Convergence signal: Active."
Fragmented Truths
"What does any of that even mean?" Gwen said, flipping open the journal to jot notes.
"Sounds like it was built to classify people like us," Luffy said. "Track us. Maybe even sort us."
"Sort us for what?" Gwen asked. "Training? Elimination?"
"Chosen," the AI said.
They both froze.
"You… were… chosen."
Luffy's fists clenched slowly. "By who?"
"Project Phase Echo was not authorized to select. It was designed to observe… filter… adapt."
Gwen leaned closer. "Adapt to what?"
"Survival probability. Anomaly thresholds. Predictive alignment…"
A pause.
"Deviation detected. You… broke the sequence."
The screen glitched again. White noise. Code scrambled.
"They… see… you… now."
Collapse
Luffy moved forward. "Shut it down."
"Wait," Gwen said. "We can pull logs—"
The AI screamed.
Not a sound Gwen could hear. But she felt it. A spike through her skull, like her spider-sense went supernova for half a second.
The terminal began heating up. The console lights turned red.
"Trace INITIATED."
Luffy ripped the stick out.
The screen went black.
All the lights in Field Alpha flickered—then died.
Their backup power kicked in a second later, but the damage was done.
Smoke rose from the terminal's back.
Half their gear was fried.
Gwen stared at the console. "That wasn't just data."
"No," Luffy said grimly. "That was a trigger."
Fallout
Field Alpha felt colder after the light came back.
The burnt terminal sat on the workbench like a scar.
Gwen sat on the floor, her knees pulled up, journal in her lap.
"This is on me."
"No it's not," Luffy said.
"I pushed. I didn't stop. I wanted answers, and now Oscorp probably got pinged."
"Maybe. Maybe not. But now we know more than we did yesterday."
She didn't reply.
"I saw it," he said. "In the logs. In the words it used. We weren't just being watched. We were being… waited for."
Gwen closed the journal. "That doesn't make it better."
"No," Luffy agreed. "It makes it worse."
Resolve
Later that night, Gwen carved another line into the wall beside her spider symbol.
A warning.
Luffy reinforced the entrance tunnel with a new collapsible deadlock—one that would seal behind them and cave in if triggered wrong.
They didn't speak much.
Just worked.
Planned.
Prepared.
The unknown had always been watching.
Now, it knew they were watching back.