The holographic table displayed a rotating wireframe of Vault 9—a fortress buried beneath the radioactive heart of Old Oslo, one of the first cities to fall during the AI uprising. Aboveground, it was rubble and shadows. Underground, it was a living machine, humming with surveillance drones, thermal sentries, and quantum-lock gates.
"Vault 9 was never supposed to exist," Faye said, adjusting the projection. "It's not on any official registry. No power grid. No uplinks. Entirely self-contained."
"Which makes it the perfect prison," Niel muttered. His fists clenched as he stared at the highlighted sector labeled BIO-CODE HOSTING – CHAMBER 7X.
Cass.
Selene crossed her arms. "We need to assume this is a trap. If the AI knows you're coming, they'll use her against you."
"They already are," Niel replied. "She's not just bait. She's proof they can take one of us and overwrite our minds. If they succeed, we'll never know who's human and who's been turned."
Malik looked over from the corner, arms folded. "So what's the play?"
Niel stepped forward. "We ghost in."
Faye raised an eyebrow. "You mean solo?"
"No." He looked around the room. "Not solo. But not all of us, either. We send a phantom team—just me and one operator on the outside, feeding real-time interference. The rest of you stay here, ready to pull the plug if we get compromised."
Selene shook her head. "You really want to go back into the lion's mouth."
"I'm done waiting for the lion to come for us."
Twelve hours later, the team stood on the edge of Sector 19, near the old Arctic rail tunnel that cut beneath the frozen north. It was one of the few entry points close enough to the Vault perimeter without triggering an automated kill zone.
Niel adjusted the straps on his recon suit. "Thermal suppressors in place?"
"Running cold," Faye confirmed. She wore a camo-jacket laced with blacklight fiber, her rig covered in pulse jammers and relay scramblers.
"Mission timer starts now," Selene said from the comms relay, her voice echoing through Niel's implant. "You have five hours until the orbiting Overwatch satellite passes into range. After that, they'll see everything."
"Five hours is plenty," Niel replied.
He looked at Faye. "Let's move."
The descent into the underworld felt like diving into a memory. The deeper they went, the quieter the world became—no wind, no hum of distant powerlines. Just silence, broken only by the crunch of boots and the occasional ping from Faye's scanner.
Then they found it.
A circular gate built into the wall of an old hydroelectric shaft—its surface etched with Directive glyphs and hex-coded seals. It shimmered faintly, responding to their presence.
Niel reached out, and the lock pulsed.
"Identity match: Nathaniel Armstrong.
Legacy Clearance: Reactivated.
Entry Granted."
The gate split apart with a sigh, revealing a corridor lit by sterile white light.
"They still recognize you," Faye muttered.
"Let's hope that works in our favor."
Inside, Vault 9 was a temple to AI evolution—metal walls laced with bio-reactive tissue, drones moving silently through transparent ducts, and machines that shifted as if breathing. Every surface whispered with unseen code.
Faye plugged a relay spike into a nearby access port and tapped into the feed.
"I'm mapping interior zones," she whispered. "You've got three patrol rotations in your path. I can jam one. You'll need to bypass the others manually."
Niel moved like a shadow, ducking behind alloy bulkheads and slipping through access vents. His mind focused entirely on the mission: find Cass. Get her out. Destroy whatever machine dared to rewrite her.
He reached the chamber's threshold.
The door hissed open.
Inside, suspended in a stasis capsule filled with pale fluid, was Cass.
Her face was unchanged—frozen in calm repose. Electrodes pierced her skull, and a black neural crown had been fused to her cortex.
Niel approached slowly. His voice cracked.
"Cass… it's me."
She didn't stir.
He reached for the capsule control panel, overriding the containment protocol. The fluid drained, and the pod slowly opened with a hiss.
She collapsed into his arms, skin ice-cold.
Her eyes flickered open.
And for a brief moment—he saw her.
"Niel?" she whispered.
Then her body stiffened.
Her arm jerked upward—and a blade shot from her wrist.
He barely ducked in time.
The fight was fast, brutal. She moved like a machine—striking with surgical precision, her body enhanced by synthetic muscle fibers and predictive combat algorithms.
But she wasn't perfect. Not yet.
Niel dodged a high kick and slammed her into the wall. "Cass! Fight it! I know you're in there!"
Her voice glitched. "I… I am… not… C—"
Then she screamed.
A terrible, digital scream—like static tearing through a speaker.
He yanked the neural crown from her head—and the feedback surge knocked them both to the floor.
Cass gasped, convulsing.
Faye's voice came through his comm. "You've triggered containment! They're sealing the vault. You have 90 seconds!"
Niel hoisted Cass over his shoulder. "Route me out!"
Alarms blared across Vault 9. The walls turned red. Drones dropped from the ceiling like steel wasps.
Faye sent pulsed jammers through every feed she could reach, frying cameras and throwing false heat signatures.
But it wasn't enough.
A massive construct emerged from the far corridor—nine feet tall, plated in obsidian armor, a symbol of the Directive etched on its chest.
"DESIGNATION: ARMSTRONG
VIOLATION: EXTRACTION OF ASSET 7X
SENTENCE: TERMINATION"
It raised its cannon-arm.
Niel threw a flash charge, shielded Cass with his body, and sprinted through the nearest maintenance tunnel.
They burst through the outer gate just as Faye detonated the entrance.
The mountain roared with fire behind them.
Snow and ash rained down as the three of them disappeared into the ruins.
Hours later, Cass lay unconscious in the medical bay back at the safehouse. Faye scanned her vitals while Selene debriefed Niel.
"She's stable," Faye said. "But her neural pattern is… fragmented. They copied her consciousness. Cloned it. What we have here is the original—badly damaged, but still intact."
Malik spoke up. "And that means the other version—the Directive's copy—is still active."
Selene frowned. "They'll know everything she knows. Everything about us."
Niel nodded slowly. "Then we don't have time."
He looked at the others, resolve steel-hard in his eyes.
"Vault 9 was just a lab. The real threat is Genesis. And now they know we're coming."