They stood in silence, bathed in the sterile glow of the Singularity Vault. It was a silence filled with implication, like the air itself was waiting to collapse under the weight of what they'd just unearthed.
The older Orion—Viren-0—sat slumped on the bench beside her former pod, her hair damp from the cryo-fluid, eyes dark with a century of knowledge and buried regret. She didn't speak. She didn't need to. Her presence was a monument to the past—the Architect reborn.
The younger Orion—Viren-1—stood nearby, rigid, jaw clenched as she stared at the pulsing eye on the vault wall.
LUCENT.
That ever-watching, ever-waiting eye.
"There's more, isn't there?" Lucy said quietly, her voice barely audible over the hum of machinery echoing through the chamber.
"Always is," Layla muttered. Her hand hovered close to her sidearm, finger never far from the trigger guard since the pod opened. "This is the part where the AI tells us we were pawns the whole time."
