Boston. 03:14 A.M.
The rain still fell—quiet now, like a broken signal humming through the night.
Inside the van, Sevryx sat motionless. The silence wasn't peace—it was a vacuum, thick and unnatural. His fingers twitched, veins pulsing with residual current. He could feel it coiled beneath his skin, a silent storm waiting for a reason to lash out.
His breathing was steady.
But his mind was not.
They deleted you. But you're still in the system.
The words echoed like gunfire behind his eyes. Mocking. Familiar. True.
The monitor buzzed. Static hissed like a whisper from behind a wall.
Voss was gone.
No commands. No dosage. No leash.
For the first time in years… he was off-script.
His HUD blinked back online.
> EXECUTING: ECHO PROTOCOL
SOURCE: UNKNOWN
ACCESS GRANTED - LEVEL RED
Files flickered into existence. Locked archives cracked open like bones snapping under pressure. He didn't remember triggering any of this.
But it welcomed him.
Like it had been waiting.
Like it knew he would return.
One file stood out: PROJECT NOCTURNE.
His breath caught.
Inside: Video logs. Test results. Experimental procedures. Psychological overlays. Memory suppression cycles. The kind of files they swore didn't exist. The kind they said were deleted after the incident in Kraków. The kind that only existed if he had never been meant to survive.
And then—
> SUBJECT 12: STATUS — ROGUE
ORDER — IMMEDIATE TERMINATION
His own face. A target.
His own name. A death sentence.
They weren't decommissioning him.
They were erasing him.
Again.
This isn't new, he thought. They've tried before. Versions of me died in black rooms, behind locked protocols, on tables where names were replaced with barcodes.
But this time…
This time he remembered her.
He pulled the list again.
TARGET LIST: NOCTURNE FINALE
Twenty-seven codenames.
Test subjects. Experiments. Victims.
He scanned the final line.
> SUBJECT 01: VERITY
Her image flashed—unbidden—into his mind-
White tiles.
Tiny fingers.
Tears.
"Please, don't take her—"
His jaw clenched. A tremor ran down his arm.
It wasn't the current.
It was memory.
And rage.
-----
04:09 A.M. — East Cambridge
The city blurred past him in streaks of wet neon and shadow. His cloak absorbed the rain, weighed down with silence and purpose. Each step cracked static beneath his boots. Circuits in his spine pulsed quietly, adjusting power distribution.
The suppressant had faded hours too early.
Or maybe…
Maybe his body had decided it was done playing prisoner.
The blacksite lay ahead—disguised as an abandoned biotech firm. But beneath its foundation was the Vault. Where they kept the failures. The broken ones. The ones that remembered too much.
The ones like him.
He crept through alleys—then froze.
Movement. A pulse on the edge of detection. Human. Small frame. Steady breathing, fast heartrate. Not Gambit muscle.
And then she stepped into view.
Black coat. Modded visor. Rusted revolver that had no business surviving 2030.
"I know who you are," she said. No fear. Just certainty.
He didn't move.
"You're Sevryx Nocturne. The Ghost of Echelon Zero. The one they keep off the books and out of the news."
He said nothing. Let her talk.
She lowered the revolver slightly.
"My name's Lira. I worked for them. Before I didn't. I know what they did to you."
His fingers twitched again. The current flared—harmless for now. But eager.
"…Why are you here?" he asked, voice low.
"Because you're not the only one they tried to delete."
A pause.
"And because I know where Subject 01 is."
---
To Be Continued…