(Written by Rohit Malhotra)
Smoke still lingered in the sublevel of Sector 13.
The battle had ended, but its echoes remained like whispers in the walls. R-06's shattered body lay crumpled beside a broken generator. His once-perfect hybrid form now looked fragile, human even—cracked skin, severed wiring, leaking black plasma instead of blood.
Ronin stood over the remains, silent. His jaw clenched tight, and his fingers curled into trembling fists. He wasn't angry at R-06. He was angry at himself—for being too late, for not understanding sooner.
"He was like me," Ronin murmured. "He could've been saved."
Kael approached, her face hard, but not without sorrow. "No. He was gone long before we got here. That thing we fought… that wasn't R-06 anymore."
Ronin knelt beside the body, placing a hand gently on what was left of R-06's chest. The glowing mark there—once the sign of Project V-13—had burned black.
"I saw it in his eyes," Ronin said. "For just a moment. Fear. Like he knew what he'd become."
Behind them, Ruby stood near the door with Kai—R-07. The youngest of the surviving subjects, Kai had memories locked inside him that no one else did. His eyes—though youthful—were haunted by timelines far beyond his years.
"He called you 'incomplete'," Kai said softly. "Do you know what that means?"
Ronin looked at him, confused. "No."
Kael answered. "It means you never received the Final Code."
Ronin turned to her. "What final code?"
Kael walked to the center console and activated the data logs. "The Control Program had multiple phases—implantation, awakening, sync, and… transcendence. That last part? None of us made it to it. Not fully. But there was one more piece—The Omega Protocol. A final command that would've unlocked everything."
Ruby frowned. "But that's impossible, right? You said it was corrupted."
Kael nodded. "It was. During the lab explosion. But someone still got fragments. That's what corrupted R-06. He got the incomplete version."
Kai spoke then, eyes dark. "But the original code still exists."
All heads turned.
"Where?" Ronin asked.
Kai hesitated, then whispered, "In the Old Core. Where we were born."
Kael's breath caught. "You mean... the Omega Core?"
Kai nodded. "Buried beneath the Mariana Rift."
A long silence followed. Even the flickering console lights seemed to dim.
Ruby's voice broke the silence. "The deepest trench on Earth? Are you serious?"
"Yes," Kael said. "That was the first real facility. Not Sector 13. Not the mountain bunkers. The Omega Core was the origin. The first time they tried to integrate alien and human DNA."
"And the first time it went wrong," Kai added.
Ronin stood tall. "Then that's where we're going."
But Kai didn't stop. "There's more."
Ronin turned to him. "More?"
Kai looked down. "Before R-06 died… I touched his mind. Saw inside it. He wasn't working alone."
Kael narrowed her eyes. "What do you mean?"
"I mean… he was being guided. By something older than us. A signal. Ancient. Like an echo from before we were made."
Meanwhile – In Orbit, Above Earth
In the vast silence of space, an abandoned satellite rotated slowly, cloaked in debris.
Declared "destroyed" a decade ago, it had stayed dark for years.
Until now.
A single red light blinked.
Inside, a cryo-lab filled with alien-hybrid embryos stirred. Hundreds of small, translucent tubes glowed, each connected by black neural tendrils to a central core—AI UNIT 01.
Suddenly, it activated.
SIGNAL TRACE: R-01N1N – CONFIRMED
INITIATING PHASE 2
UNSEALING: "THE EYE"
A deep hum shook the satellite.
The forgotten army began to breathe.
Back on Earth – En Route to the Omega Core
The group drove in silence.
They had taken an armored crawler found deep in Sector 13's storage. Attached to it was an old submersible—a deep-sea exploration unit once used for undersea mining. Kael had reprogrammed it. Now it was theirs.
The road was broken, weaving through abandoned coastal bases and blackened forests. The sea loomed ahead, restless and cold.
Ronin drove. Ruby sat beside him, arms folded. Behind them, Kael meditated with her eyes closed. Kai sat quietly, drawing alien glyphs on the window's dust.
After a long pause, Ruby glanced at Ronin. "You haven't spoken since we left."
Ronin kept his eyes on the road. "I'm thinking."
"About?"
"About why we're still alive."
Ruby frowned. "What do you mean?"
He looked at her. "Project V-13 was shut down. The labs destroyed. We were supposed to be terminated—failures. So why are we still here? Why are we finding the exact tools we need, just in time? The submersible. The crawler. It's like something wants us to keep going."
Ruby's eyes narrowed. "You think someone's helping us?"
Ronin hesitated. "Or watching us."
Kael's eyes snapped open. "There was someone else."
Ronin glanced in the rear-view mirror. "Who?"
Kael's voice dropped. "R-05. Elira."
Kai looked up sharply. "She's alive?"
Kael nodded. "She could manipulate memory. Make you forget things. Or remember things that never happened."
Ronin clenched the wheel. "And if she's alive?"
"She's probably already waiting for us."
Nightfall – Shore of the Mariana Rift
They arrived at a forgotten naval facility by the sea. It was crumbling, half-submerged in rising tides. Storms gathered above like dark curtains, thunder cracking every few minutes.
Far in the distance, partially hidden beneath the waves, a massive dome jutted out of the ocean—a rusted relic, still pulsing faint light beneath alien markings.
"That's it," Kael whispered. "The Omega Core."
Kai stepped out and placed a hand on one of the ancient glyphs carved into a stone slab. It glowed under his touch.
Ruby shivered. "This place feels… wrong."
Ronin nodded. "This is where it all started."
Descending into the Omega Core
The team entered the submersible.
As it sank into the trench, the world above disappeared—replaced by cold, inky black.
The walls of the Core lit up ahead, glowing with alien energy.
Kael whispered, "I feel them. The other versions of us. Like ghosts."
Ronin closed his eyes, then stiffened.
A voice echoed inside his head.
"Ronin… you were never meant to wake."
"Why are you coming back?"
"This is where it ends."
His eyes flew open.
The pod docked. The hatch hissed open.
And as they stepped inside the Omega Core…
They didn't see her standing above.
Barefoot. Floating. Watching.
Her eyes burned golden. Her skin shimmered with shifting patterns.
R-05 had been waiting.
And she smiled.
To Be Continued...
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