The alarm didn't start as a sound.It started as a pressure.
A thud in the walls.A metallic heartbeat.A vibration that crawled along the vents and into the bones of the building.
Then—
WEEEEOOO—
The sirens ignited.
Red spirals spun across the corridors.Security shutters slammed halfway, jittering as if unsure where to lock.
Alex and Phineas stopped dead.
"What did we do?" Phineas whispered.
Alex shook his head.
"…that wasn't us."
They stood in the middle of the corridor-that-shouldn't-exist, the Citadel-carved passage humming like a throat clearing.The red lights strobed across the walls, fracturing shadows into jagged shapes.
A synthesized voice boomed overhead:
"ALERT. RESONANCE BREACH.CONTAINMENT PRIORITY: LEVEL ZERO."
Phineas blinked.
"Level zero…? Zero exists?"
Alex's pulse spiked.
"Kayden," he breathed."He did something."
Not a guess.A certainty.
Something behind the walls vibrated—a thrumming, alive and unstable.APEX's reboot was still echoing through the compound's internal systems.
A door at the far end of the hall—one they hadn't noticed before—lit up in a pale blue.
Not red.Not SRD.
Blue like the Citadel's quiet approval.
Phineas pointed."We follow that or we die, right?"
Alex grabbed his arm.
"We follow that and we might die."
Phineas grinned despite the panic.
"Better odds."
They ran.
The corridor bent around them—not turning left or right,but simply rearranging where left and right existed.
Lights dimmed.Red strobes cut in.Sirens roared louder as they pushed deeper.
The hum intensified.
APEX's hum.
Kayden was close.
Alex felt it like an ache behind his sternum—a pressure that told him he was standing on the border of something catastrophic.
Phineas skidded to a stop.
"Alex—look!"
Ahead, a security checkpoint arm—thick, metallic, nearly indestructible—lay melted on the floor.Not cut.Not broken.
Melted.
A soft pool of metal glistened like silver water.
Alex stared.
"…Kayden did that?"
"Or whatever's inside him," Phineas whispered.
A wave of dread rolled up Alex's spine.
They stepped over the melted barrier.
Beyond it lay a hallway in chaos—operators running, shouting, shoving emergency carts.Doors slammed shut.A sputtering drone careened into a wall and dropped like a stone.
And every monitor lining the hall showed the same thing:
KAYDEN VOSS – RESONANCE SPIKE – UNCLASSIFIED SIGNAL
Alex felt like the air had been punched out of his lungs.
"That's him," he whispered."He's awake."
An SRD guard spotted them.
"YOU TWO—STOP—IDENTIFY YOURSE—"
The lights above the guard flickered.
A ripple passed along the ceiling—soft, cold, surgical.
The guard's tablet shut down.His earpiece screamed feedback.His visor glitched into static.
He stumbled backward, swatting at invisible noise.
Phineas winced.
"Citadel's covering us."
Alex didn't waste the chance.
"GO!"
They sprinted past the guard, who never saw them.
They crossed a stairway.A half-collapsed panel.Another melted railing.
All pointing to Kayden.
The hum in the walls strengthened—not uniform,not mechanical.
More like a pulse.Like a heartbeat.Like something syncing itself to him.
Phineas gasped for breath."How close are we?!"
Alex didn't answer.He didn't need to.
He felt Kayden's presence like a gravity well.
And then—
The hallway ended.
A reinforced steel door stood before them—thicker than anything else in the compound,lined with inhibitor coils,flanked by dead cameras.
A flickering label above it read:
OPERATOR ORIENTATION – PHASE UNIT 3
Alex pressed his palm to the door.
It trembled under his touch.
Not from impact.
From something inside.
Phineas sucked in a breath.
"…holy—Is he—?"
The lights above them blinked—one long flicker—a familiar hum threading through the air like a cold finger across glass.
The Citadel.
Watching.
And approving.
The door's inhibitor coils sparked,then died in a soft, defeated sigh.
Alex's eyes widened.
"Phin…someone wants us to go in."
Phineas swallowed.
"That's the problem."
The sirens outside kept screaming.The resonance spike warnings doubled.Operators shouted orders behind them.
But behind this door—
Kayden trembled in a chair.APEX breathed in his skull like a half-revived star.Reality shook around him.
Alex felt tears burn hot behind his eyes.
"We're right here, Kay," he whispered."Just one door."
Phineas stepped beside him.
"Okay," he said softly."So we open it together?"
Alex nodded.
"Yes. Together."
They placed their hands on the reinforced door.
It vibrated,metal groaning as if remembering how to be solid.
The Citadel hum deepened.
Something inside clicked—
CHNK.
A lock releasing that should never release.
Not for humans.Not for SRD.Not without a command rooted in future-tech logic.
The door cracked open by an inch.
Cold, sterile air rushed out.The room inside flickered blue-white with unstable light.
Alex's heart hammered.
He could hear breathing.
—
Kayden's breathing.
—
Alex pushed the door open.
The three arcs—Kayden's awakening,APEX's reboot,their infiltration—
finally collided in a single breath.
And everything after this moment would change the warbefore the war even began.