The lift shuddered as it descended, ancient motors groaning beneath Rotham and Directive-7. A single flickering panel marked their destination:
CORE LAYER 0 – RESTRICTED.
Rotham stared into the flickering light. Each level they passed felt like descending into time itself — further from the present, deeper into forgotten choices.
Directive-7 stood silently beside him, now docile, obedient. But Rotham couldn't shake the words from before.
"You were meant to seal it."
As the lift stopped, a hiss of decompressed air announced their arrival. The doors opened to darkness — a space untouched for decades, maybe longer.
Rotham stepped forward.
Unlike the rusted, broken upper decks, Core Layer Zero was pristine. Cold. White. Sterile. As if frozen in the moment it was abandoned.
He walked past stasis chambers — most empty, some shattered. The walls hummed faintly with containment fields.
At the heart of the room stood a massive crystalline structure, suspended in an energy field.
A spiral, slowly rotating in midair — the original signal source.
Directive-7's voice echoed softly:
"The Core was designed to contain it — the Memory Code. A construct of consciousness itself. Not artificial intelligence… something older. It infected minds. Rewrote identities. Even your own."
Rotham's knees weakened. He looked up at the spiral, now pulsing faster.
"You came here to trap it," Directive-7 said. "Instead, you made a deal."
Fragments of memory surged through Rotham's mind — visions of Selin pleading, systems collapsing, and his own voice whispering "It's the only way."
His reflection stared back from the energy field.
The past wasn't just echoing.
It was waking up.