Location: Subterranean Complex Zeta-9, Codename: Golgotha FacilityTime: Night Cycle, Beneath the Isu Wastes
The air stank of ash and ozone.
Kaelen crouched in the underdepths of the old world, staring at the ancient vault door as it began to unseal. The corridor pulsed with light from failed memory conduits, long forgotten. The deeper they went, the more the walls seemed to breathe.
Golgotha.
Not a prison. Not a lab.
A cradle for nightmares.
"Are you sure this is the place?" Lysara asked, scanning the glyphs on the vault.
Kaelen's jaw tightened. "It's where I was born."
With a thunderous groan, the vault hissed open.
Inside—darkness. And whispers.
Inside the Hollow Garden
The chamber beyond defied nature.
It was called the Hollow Garden—a twisted monument of biometal vines, glass pods, and decaying memories. Dozens of containment tanks floated mid-air, housing comatose figures suspended in stasis.
Humans.
Children. Adults. Some hardly recognizable.
Their bodies bore strange signs—Isu circuitry grafted into skin, golden light leaking from their eyes even in sleep.
Lysara froze. "What… what did they do to them?"
Tyreon, who had accompanied them despite the risk, whispered bitterly: "They tried to overwrite souls. But the human will was stronger than they thought."
Kaelen approached a pod marked Subject: 136-A.
A boy. No older than twelve. His DNA—identical to Kaelen's own, save for one fragment.
"He's my... sibling," Kaelen said quietly. "A failed copy."
The boy's eyes fluttered open for a split second.
Kaelen nearly collapsed from the mental pressure. A flicker of his own memories invaded him—fractured, reversed, altered.
"Save… us…"
Alarms and Invasion
They didn't have long.
A harsh siren blared. Red light bathed the Hollow Garden.
A deep voice echoed through the chamber:
"Facility breach confirmed. Subject 135-X has returned. Protocol Lazarus activated."
Kaelen's blood ran cold.
From above, defense constructs descended—gold-plated war machines with curved blades and no eyes. The Garden became a warzone.
Rynn opened fire. Lysara leapt into the fray. Tyreon summoned a null-field to slow the enemy.
Kaelen hesitated—then turned toward the control altar.
He slammed the Last Directive crystal into the terminal and overrode the stasis grid.
Dozens of pods cracked open.
Humans collapsed to the floor, gasping, screaming, blind and terrified.
But alive.
The Cost of Mercy
The Veiled Ones fought their way back through collapsing corridors with the rescued behind them. Some could walk. Most had to be carried.
Kaelen bore the boy—Subject 136-A—in his arms.
Behind them, the facility began to burn.
The Last Directive crystal overloaded the neural core. The system was crashing.
They had saved thirty-two lives.Thousands remained… somewhere deeper. But not today.
As they escaped through a supply shaft and vanished into the storm-churned wastelands, Kaelen looked back once more at Golgotha.
His legacy.
Their pain.
Their future.
Lysara approached. "You saved them."
Kaelen looked down at the boy clinging weakly to his tunic.
"I saved myself."