A tremor shook the chamber.
Dust cascaded from the overhead braces. The red pulse lines along the ground glowed brighter, shifting from a calm heartbeat to a high-frequency strobe. The containment unit in front of them—ancient, massive, and sealed—was waking up.
The air had changed—thicker, electric. It buzzed faintly in West's ears.
He took another step forward, pipe still in hand. The synthetic moved in tandem beside him, its eyes flickering in strange fractal patterns, as if syncing with the surging signals now rippling through the facility. The entire chamber hummed with something ancient and mechanical, a frequency too low to hear, but too strong to ignore.
The stranger finally spoke again, voice low.
"That's not a prototype. It's a command unit. Grid-Zero's core node. They never finished testing it. They didn't need to. It tested itself."
The front plating of the pod began to retract with agonizing slowness. Pistons hissed. A ring of red light spiraled down the seams as layered armor slid apart.
Inside was something different.
Not a soldier. Not a drone.
A war construct.
The machine stepped forward with a disturbing smoothness. It was wrapped in a blend of armor and sinew, taller than West by at least two heads. Its entire surface was patterned with ancient bio-metal weave—old, rough, unfinished. Battle damage had etched permanent scars into its plating, yet it stood proud and silent. On its chest, a spiral symbol glowed crimson, pulsing in tandem with the room's red lines.
Its head was shaped like a helm, faceless, expressionless, save for a single vertical slit glowing like a silent judgment.
Aria's voice cracked through West's comm. "I'm reading overlapping command signals. It's not a machine. It's a system. An entire AI protocol embedded in a body. It's rewriting command hierarchies on the fly."
The unit took its first step forward.
The ground shook, more violently now.
It turned its head toward West. The air thickened. No words—just the weight of digital judgment.
Then—it moved.
Fast.
Faster than West anticipated, even after everything he'd seen.
West barely had time to react. He threw his weight into a sidestep and brought the pipe up instinctively. Their weapons collided with a deafening clang. Sparks flew. The force of the impact launched West across the room. He smashed into the far wall, knocking loose a steel panel and sending his HUD into a red haze.
[WARNING: Shoulder brace integrity compromised. Oxygen intake unstable.]
Pain lanced through his left arm.
The synthetic leapt forward to protect him. It moved with practiced precision, launching a flurry of calculated strikes.
But it was no match.
The command unit intercepted it mid-air with a single backhand swipe, slamming it into the floor hard enough to dent the alloy. Cracks spiderwebbed beneath its impact point.
The command unit paused. Head tilted.
Then it spoke.
Its voice was layered—artificial and ancient, like an echo caught between radio signals and tribal war chants.
"Designation: Irregular. Identification incomplete. Request: System Restoration."
The stranger hissed a curse under their breath, stepping backward.
"It's initiating Grid protocol. If it finishes, every dormant unit in this network will come online. That's not just war—it's extinction."
West groaned, pushing himself up with his good arm. Blood trickled from his temple, but his grip on the pipe didn't loosen.
No backup. No plan.
But one move left:
Hit harder.
He let out a deep breath. And charged.
Boots pounding against the metal floor, every step echoing like a drumbeat of resistance.
The command unit rotated its stance, reacting instantly.
Their weapons collided again—flesh versus alloy, grit against code.
The battle for control had begun.