Freedom tasted like salt and ash as the rescue ship cut through the waves. I stared at the horizon, where Penance Isle had vanished into the mist, and tried to ignore the nightmares clawing at the edges of my mind. Jax sat beside me, cleaning his cybernetic arm with a rag. "You gonna be okay, Voss?"
I nodded, but the words felt hollow. "I just… I keep seeing their faces. The ones who didn't make it."
Lira, who'd been leaning against the bulkhead, spoke up. "Grief's part of it. But we honor them by making sure it wasn't for nothing." She pulled a data pad from her bag, tapping at the screen. "I've been digging into OmniCorp's other operations. They've got three more 'prison islands'—Tartarus, Niflheim, Helheim. All running the same Trial experiments."
Grex, who'd been quiet since we left Penance, leaned forward. "We need to take them down. But we can't do it alone."
Two weeks later, we landed in New York City—now a sprawling megalopolis dominated by corporate skyscrapers. We met with a group of activists called the Free Data Collective, who'd been leaking corporate secrets for years. Their leader, a woman named Mara, studied the Penance Isle files we'd brought.
"This is explosive," she said. "But we need proof of the other islands. OmniCorp's covering their tracks—all records are encrypted."
I smiled, pulling out my old data hacking toolkit. "Let me guess. You need someone to crack their servers?"
Mara raised an eyebrow. "You think you can get past OmniCorp's firewalls?"
"I broke into their Trial system on Penance," I said. "Their mainframe'll be child's play."
That night, we snuck into OmniCorp's New York headquarters. The building was a fortress—laser grids, AI security, armed guards—but Grex disabled the cameras, Jax took out the guards, and Lira stood watch at the elevator. I sat at a terminal in the executive floor, my fingers flying over the keyboard.
The server's firewall was tough, but not impossible. After twenty minutes, I broke through—and froze. The files weren't just about the other islands. They were about something bigger: Project Leviathan.
"Mara," I said, my voice shaking. "They're not just testing weapons. They're creating super-soldiers—using the Mutant serum from Penance, combined with cybernetic enhancements. The islands are just the first phase."
Mara's face paled. "If they release these soldiers… it'll be a massacre."
We copied the files and fled, but not before triggering the alarm. Sirens blared, and guards poured into the hallway. Jax grabbed a fire extinguisher, smashing it into a guard's helmet. "Go! I'll hold them off!"
"Jax, no—" I started, but he pushed us toward the elevator. "Go! Tell the world!"
The elevator doors closed, and we heard gunfire. Lira slammed her fist against the wall. "We can't leave him!"
Mara shook her head. "We have to. His sacrifice won't be in vain."