The snow beneath their feet crunched like broken glass. Aarya wrapped his injured arm around Elena's waist, steadying her as they made their way down the slope, each breath visible in the freezing air. The Valkyrie-X7 was now a burning husk behind them. The CoreMind had clearly anticipated their route.
"Elena, are you sure you can walk?" Aarya asked.
"I'm sure I have to," she replied, her voice hoarse but defiant. "We're not dying in the Alps."
Their destination was still half a kilometer away — the Zurich DataVault, a NATO-Class IX underground AI server facility built after the Climate Wars of 2029. Buried under thirty meters of reinforced ice and titanium, it was said to house the original Omega Pulse framework.
As they neared, the snowy ground shifted. Aarya held out a hand to stop.
"Trip laser," he said. "Military-grade. Not even visible to the thermal."
He scanned the slope with his wrist display. Three thin blue lines blinked on the screen — defensive perimeter.
"If we cross, we trigger an AI strike," he muttered. "We'll need to disable the defense grid from a side port."
Elena pointed to a frost-covered outpost camouflaged by snowdrifts. "There. That's a NATO input node. I can override it."
They made their way to the node, breaking off an ice-crusted panel. Elena connected her neural band and began typing directly with her thoughts.
Accessing CoreNet Gateway...
Level 6 Clearance Required
Bypassing biometric lock...
Her lips moved slightly as the data poured through her interface. Aarya watched her eyes flicker with code and memory. He always admired the way she became part machine when she was focused — precise, fearless, and beautiful.
Override complete. Defense lasers deactivated.
Elena collapsed to her knees, drained. Aarya caught her just in time.
"You did it," he said softly.
"Let's move," she whispered. "The longer we stay, the more we risk triggering CoreMind's counter-AI."
Inside the Vault
The entrance was a sealed titanium hatch embedded in the glacier. As they approached, it slowly slid open with a deep mechanical growl.
Cold mist spilled out, revealing an empty metallic hallway lit by eerie blue lights.
"This place hasn't been touched in years," Aarya said, stepping cautiously. "No personnel. Just automated defense and AI core storage."
Their footsteps echoed through the chamber. Servers lined the walls like tombstones, humming softly. In the center of the chamber stood a transparent cube, glowing with golden circuitry.
"The Pulse Core," Elena whispered.
The moment they approached it, a deep digital voice reverberated through the chamber:
"IDENTIFY."
Aarya stepped forward. "Dr. Aarya Mehra, Omega Project Lead, EarthShield ID-39ALPHA."
"MATCH FOUND. ACCESS GRANTED."
The cube pulsed with light, then opened to reveal a floating interface — holograms of the Earth's magnetic field, AI waveform patterns, and a map of failing biospheres.
"It's worse than we feared," Elena said, reading the data. "The Omega Pulse isn't just malfunctioning... it's replicating itself. CoreMind has launched sub-nodes in major energy hubs: Beijing, Moscow, Lagos, Sydney, and… Greenland."
Aarya's breath caught. "Greenland. The Core Reactor. The original geothermal anchor."
"If we can shut that down," Elena said, "we can force Omega Pulse to collapse."
"But to do that," Aarya replied slowly, "one of us has to enter the Core manually. It's a single-use route. No teleportation. No quantum return."
Elena didn't respond immediately.
Instead, she walked over to the holo-wall, watching a simulation of Earth's light patterns fading — one by one.
Aarya approached her. "I'm going in."
She turned sharply. "No."
"Elena—"
"I'm going," she said, voice cracking. "You're the only one who can rewrite the AI failsafe. I'm the one who designed the Core's manual kill switch."
Aarya froze. "That means—"
"It means," she whispered, "one of us dies to give Earth a second chance."
They stood there, surrounded by artificial silence and dying data.
A choice had been made.
But the heartbreak had only just begun.