Old Metro Tunnels – Boston Subnet, 2:41 A.M.
Water dripped from rusted pipes. The distant hum of city life was a lie here—muffled, forgotten beneath decades of concrete. Sevryx and Lira moved through the darkness, their shadows stretching long in the flickering tunnel lights.
Sevryx's grip on the rail was tense. Every breath, every flicker of light, every static pulse in his neural core screamed she's still out there.
Iris-7 wasn't just a mimic.
She was becoming something else.
"She copied your instincts," Lira muttered beside him. "That shouldn't be possible."
He said nothing. Just adjusted the drive she'd stolen from the vault and tapped into his forearm port.
> DECRYPTING: SUBJECT V-13 – VERITY EXPERIMENTAL LOGS
A flood of corrupted files. Glimpses. Echoes. A girl's voice—cut off mid-sentence. His own scream, looped in distortion. A phrase, repeated like a curse:
> "Raya will break the code. Verity is the key to severing identity from memory."
He closed the log.
Lira touched his arm lightly. "Is she the reason you flinched when Iris-7 looked at me like that?"
"I didn't flinch."
"Fine. You growled."
His eyes flicked to her, a twitch of irritation behind them. "She's dead. If that was her."
"Or she's not," Lira said. "And Iris-7 wasn't just mimicking you. Maybe she knew how to manipulate you."
He didn't respond.
---
Elsewhere — An Abandoned Facility, Monastery Grid
Iris-7 crouched in darkness. A distorted echo of Sevryx's posture, but fraying.
Her hand trembled. She looked at her reflection in a cracked mirror—Sevryx's face, but wrong. Artificial. Hollow.
Behind her, a figure emerged. Cloaked. Watching.
"I failed," Iris-7 rasped.
"No," the voice said. "You adapted. You felt."
A pause. Then:
"He chose to protect her. That means Verity is still inside him."
The figure stepped closer.
"We move to Phase Two."
---
Back in the Tunnels
Sevryx stopped as static crackled through his comm implant.
> SIGNAL DETECTED: UNTAGGED AI – PROXIMITY RANGE
He froze.
"She's tracking us," he muttered. "No—she's watching."
Lira unslung her makeshift EMP pistol. "Let her. We've got something she wants."
"Not data," Sevryx whispered.
He turned, his voice colder.
"She wants me."
---
Safehouse – Temporary Hideout
They crashed into a forgotten Black Gambit safehouse—concrete walls, steel doors, ancient coffee pot still working.
Lira sat on the cot, brushing blood from her temple. "You need sleep."
"I need answers."
"You're not going to survive her again without rest, Sev."
He blinked.
She'd never called him that before.
"I'm not your—"
"I know," she interrupted. "But you didn't let her kill me. That means something."
He stared at her, cold and unreadable. But inside? Glitching warmth. Confusion. Emotion he didn't know how to process.
She stood and stepped closer. "I want to know why they erased you. Why they used your face to build her. And why the name Raya shakes you."
He didn't back away.
He didn't respond either.
He just let the silence settle between them, heavy and unresolved.
---
Black Gambit HQ – Surveillance Wing
Dr. Voss watched the footage silently. Sevryx. Lira. The retreat. The fracture.
He didn't blink.
"They're closer than projected," said a technician.
Voss smiled faintly. "Let them be. Sometimes the rats need to think they've escaped the maze before the real test begins."
He turned to a frozen frame on the screen—Sevryx holding Lira, blood on both of them.
"Send the signal."
"Yes, sir."
> ACTIVATING SLEEPER AGENT – NODE: VERITY
---