The roar reverberated through the tunnel, drowning out even Sentinel's low hum. Kai pressed his palm against the hatch's reinforced metal frame, vines weaving into the bolts as he fought to keep the barrier intact. Water seeped through the cracks, pooling at his boots.
Above, Ellie and Theo froze on the catwalk, eyes locked on the armored figure. Its mask reflected their barrier's glow back at them, fractured and indifferent. The shard in its hand dripped memory-mist onto the rail—each drop sizzling against the rail's warmth.
Ellie steadied her voice. "We don't know its origin, but we know its purpose: to harvest, to distort. If it reaches the seed network belowground…" She swallowed. "We lose everything."
Theo's barrier patch flickered, then rebounded to full strength. "I can reinforce it," he offered, fumbling for his moss-cord pack. "Just—give me a second."
Kai's reply crackled through the comm. "Hold the line here, Ellie. Mara and I will push this hatch open and meet you above."
Ellie's eyes narrowed. "Kai, that's—"
"Do it," he cut in. "We have to split its focus. I'll buy you time."
Mara slipped behind Kai, vines wrapping around her forearms in solidarity. With a heave, they forced the hatch upward, the barrier's dome contracting to shield both them and the descending water from breaching the doorway.
Sentinel roared in approval, its barrier flaring wider to encompass the opening. The armored figure paused at the catwalk entrance, head tilting as if reconsidering its path.
Below, the flooded platform's hiss grew louder. Kai stepped onto the first rung of the ladder, water gurgling at his heels. Mara followed, vines stitching the ladder rungs to reinforce their hold. Behind them, Sentinel's barrier flickered between the hatch and the vault, a living divide against the dark unknown.
Ellie raised her repeater. "Fall back two meters, Theo. Use the augmenter—blind it with light on my mark."
Theo nodded, clutching his projector with white-knuckled hands. The armored figure advanced, each step echoing like a drumbeat on the submerged rails.
Ellie's voice steadied. "Three… two… one—mark!"
A beam of pure white light lanced upward, striking the figure squarely in its mask. The whole corridor flared, and the figure recoiled, raising its gauntlet to shield those featureless eyes.
In that shimmer, Kai swung free his symbiote lace—a living whip of green energy—and lashed at the figure's shoulder plate. The vine tangled in the rusted armor, pulsing golden where it touched memory-mist residue.
The figure staggered, shard clattering to the floor and breaking through the barrier mesh with a hiss. The mist hissed back, swirling in the light.
Mara leapt off the ladder onto the platform, barrier patches snapping into place on her gear. She grabbed the shard as it landed in the water, curling her vines around it and yanking it free.
Ellie dashed down the ladder, repeater in hand, vines at her forearm flickering. As she reached the platform, she configured her device to emit a low-frequency pulse—
—and the mist recoiled, writhing in agony as the golden vines and blinding light converged on the creature.
But it did not flee.
It resolved.
And Kai realized with bone-deep certainty that this was only the beginning of their reckoning.
The creature's form quivered in the wash of pulsing frequencies and searing light, yet it stood its ground—masked, armored, and unwavering. Its gauntlet glowed with distorted memories, the edges of the shard flickering between scenes Kai couldn't fully grasp: childhood laughter twisted into screams, trains collapsing into rifts, faces he knew and faces he never saw.
Ellie yanked the repeater's trigger again, shifting to a higher harmonic that sent a shockwave through the mist. The vapor recoiled into a swirling vortex at the creature's feet, dragging the armored silhouette off balance.
Kai surged forward, vines extending like living chains to bind its ankles. "Now, Mara—seal the conduit!" he shouted. She uprooted a spare moss-seed and pressed it into the flooded track, vines exploding outward to encase the rail in golden threads. The water around the seed pulsed, neutralizing the memory residue with every ripple.
Theo dropped behind them, hissing whispers into the repeater as he tracked residual hotspots. "Platform is clear—corridor should hold for at least five minutes." His barrier patch flared in tandem, shielding them from the last tendrils of mist that slithered toward the broken shard at Mara's feet.
Ellie approached the creature, her voice low and steady as she pressed her hand against its armored chest. "You harvest memories, shape them into fear—let us show you what choice can do." She placed her palm over the shard Mara still gripped, and a beam of pure symbiote resonance shot through the barrier pulses, fusing the shard's edges into harmless glass.
The creature's form convulsed, its mask cracking where Ellie's light met its core. A final, jagged wail of static rippled through the chamber before the armored figure collapsed—an empty shell that dripped steam and shattered mystic residue onto the platform.
Silence fell, broken only by the drip of cooling water and Sentinel's low, protective hum as it sealed the vault hatch behind them.
Theo let out a shuddering breath as he dropped his repeater. The low-frequency pulse faded, and the vaulted chamber was left with only the drip of water and the hiss of cooling mist. Mara knelt beside the broken shell, drawing her hand back when a final wisp of memory-fog—sweet, sorrowful—brushed her palm.
"It's purged," she said, voice trembling. "No echo left."
Ellie moved to Kai's side, steadying her goggles as she brushed ash from the chamber floor. "We need to bring this back to the lab," she murmured, nodding to the shattered armor. "We still don't know its origin, and Dr. Cho will need to study—"
Kai crouched and wrapped a length of symbiote vine around the shell's base. It uncoiled with surprising strength, reinforcing the husk into a transportable form. "We brought the test rack," he said simply. "Let's move."
Sentinel's barrier expanded to lead the way back up the ladder, vines bracing the rungs for each step. Near the hatch, they paused as the steel door hissed shut, sealing out the mezzanine's stale air. Ellie took the larger of the two flare canisters, pressing it into her pack. "Backup," she said. "Just in case."
Mara and Theo fell in behind, each carrying a moss-seed kit and spare patches, eyes alert to any shimmer of returning haze. As they climbed back into the greenhouse's golden glow, Sentinel's barrier collapsed into its standby dome, the vines and seeds thrumming in quiet victory.
Kai let his vines slacken, the seed network's light pulsing gently beneath his skin. "Routine first," he said, meeting Ellie's gaze. "Then answers."
Ellie nodded, plugging her repeater into the console. "Let's get this shell examined—before the Rift learns to wear us like armor."
They stepped into the greenhouse proper, the hush of living vines and restored life offering a fragile shield against the shadows beyond. The breach had slipped through their defenses once more, but together, they had reclaimed their memories—and would not let their world be forgotten.