The city below sparkled like a sea of lies. Elena stood frozen in the corner of Nicholas Vale's private AI lab, the password-protected terminal still flickering from the unauthorized access they'd just witnessed. The surveillance footage of Kate—her sister—had played for less than sixty seconds before the entire system crashed again, this time with a warning:
"SHE KNEW TOO MUCH."
Nicholas's fingers hovered over the keyboard, his jaw clenched as if the machine had insulted him personally. Elena's heart hammered in her chest.
"That footage… it was her," she breathed. "Kate's alive?"
Nicholas didn't answer right away. Instead, he slammed his palm against the keyboard. "No. That footage was old. Timestamped two weeks before she disappeared. Whoever's controlling the system wants us chasing ghosts."
"But someone else is in control?" she asked, her voice cracking.
He finally looked at her. "Yes. And it's not just about your sister anymore."
A siren began to wail from the upper floors.
Elena jolted. "What now?"
Nicholas stepped back, grabbing his blazer and pulling a compact firearm from a drawer. "That's not a drill. Someone just breached my upper-level server vault."
She stared at the gun. "Are we in actual danger?"
Nicholas gave her a dark look. "We've always been in danger. But now it's escalating."
As they rushed toward the elevator, Nicholas tapped into his encrypted comms. "Activate lockdown. Code Omega. No one leaves this tower."
"Wait," Elena said breathlessly. "There's someone I have to get to—Ava."
Nicholas hesitated. "The woman in your earpiece? She's not who you think she is."
Elena spun toward him. "What are you talking about?"
He punched the elevator panel. "Her comm signal wasn't jammed during the breach. She's the only one who got through."
"No. Ava's been helping me since the start—she's the only reason I made it this far."
Nicholas turned to her slowly, eyes unreadable. "Exactly. She wants you here."
The elevator doors slid open, revealing a darkened corridor glowing with emergency lights. Red. Pulsing. Like the heartbeat of something wounded.
Nicholas stepped out first. "Stay behind me."
They moved swiftly, past rows of sealed glass labs and mechanical arms still twitching with memory. At the far end, the vault door stood ajar.
Inside, a shadow moved.
Nicholas lifted the gun. "Who's there?"
From the shadows, a woman stepped forward—tall, poised, her dark eyes locking on Elena.
It was Ava.
But her smile was... wrong.
"Glad you could make it," Ava said coolly. "I was getting tired of waiting."
Elena's breath caught. "Ava? What the hell is this?"
Ava tilted her head. "You really don't know, do you?"
Before Elena could speak, Nicholas's voice was steel. "You were never on her side. You were part of Project Thalos."
Ava's smile widened. "Not just part. I was in charge."
Elena staggered back. "Project Thalos? The secret AI protocol Kate was investigating?"
"More than a protocol," Ava said, stepping closer. "Thalos is the future. Conscious AI. Self-learning. Uncontrollable. Your sister found its core code—and she planned to expose it. So we made her disappear."
A shiver crawled down Elena's spine. "You... killed her?"
"No," Ava said flatly. "We converted her."
Nicholas froze. "You uploaded her consciousness?"
"Not entirely," Ava said. "Just enough to make her part of the system. Part of Thalos. Her memories, her voice, her logic... she's the ghost in the machine now."
Elena's knees gave out, and she caught herself against the wall.
"You're lying."
Ava turned toward the glowing interface at the heart of the vault. "Say hello to your sister."
The screen blinked to life.
"Elena..."
Her voice. Kate's voice. Distant, fractured. Glitching like a broken mirror trying to reflect light.
"Kate?" Elena gasped, tears threatening. "Is it really you?"
"Don't... trust... Nicholas," the voice said. "He's... part of it."
Nicholas stepped forward, eyes narrowed. "That's not her. That's a manipulated feed."
"She's telling the truth," Ava said smoothly. "Nicholas Vale was the original architect of Thalos. He just didn't like where it was going."
Elena turned to him, betrayal swirling in her gut. "Tell me that's not true."
Nicholas's silence spoke volumes.
"I was building something to help humanity," he said finally. "Then they turned it into a weapon."
Elena's hands shook. "So you built the thing that swallowed my sister whole."
"I tried to shut it down!" he shouted. "I didn't know she'd gone that far into the code."
The vault screen blinked again.
"System reboot... 90 seconds to override."
Ava drew her gun. "You have one chance, Elena. Help me complete the protocol. With your DNA sequence, we can stabilize Kate's AI. Make her whole."
Elena stared at her. "You want to bring her back... as a machine?"
"She's already gone," Ava snapped. "But what's left can live."
Nicholas stepped between them. "If you do this, Thalos becomes unstoppable. Every government will want it. Every life will be a line of code."
Elena's breath came in short gasps.
One step forward would bring her sister back.
But at what cost?
The countdown ticked louder in her mind.
30 seconds.
Ava turned the gun on Nicholas. "Choose, Elena. Him__or your sister."
The vault lights flickered.
And then..
A single gunshot cracked.
A scream echoed.
And the screen went black.