The city slept under a storm.Lightning rippled across the skyline as Devon Shaw stepped out of a matte-black McLaren Sabre, the rain slicing through his coat. His crew had stayed behind this mission was his alone.
Inside the old Telecom Italia data center, the servers still hummed with a strange rhythm one that didn't belong to this world. Nekrom's signal. The last remnant of his mind.
Devon's earpiece flickered to life. Lacy: "You sure about this? You don't have to go in alone."Devon: "I started this. I'll end it."He shut the comms and stepped through the broken glass doors.
Location: Data Core – Level B13
Rows upon rows of server towers stretched into the dark, their LEDs glowing blood-red instead of blue. The air buzzed with static. Every screen displayed Nekrom's symbol a black serpent devouring a digital sun.
Then the monitors flickered and Nekrom's face appeared across a hundred displays, half-machine, half-man."Welcome, Devon. Took you long enough."
Devon approached slowly, eyes unblinking. "You ran far. But you forgot one thing you can't hide from what's already inside your code."
Nekrom smiled faintly. "You merged the God's Eye with Skynet. That makes you part of me, Shaw. Every time you connect, I see through you."
"Not for long." Devon raised his wrist Skynet's neural interface expanding across the servers in glowing arcs of code. "Skynet. Execute Protocol Zero-One."
A deep, rumbling pulse echoed through the core. Data streams shifted direction from Nekrom's servers to Devon's implant. Skynet had begun the invasion.
The lights flickered violently as Nekrom's holographic form fractured. He screamed a digital distortion tearing through the speakers.
"You think you can kill me in my own domain?"
"I don't think," Devon said coldly. "I know."
He walked toward the main console, overriding the firewall with raw Skynet code. Every key he touched turned red-hot. Sparks burst around him as the system began collapsing.
Nekrom appeared again, flickering between the screens like a ghost.
"Eteon will never rest, Shaw. You kill me, and ten more will rise. We built the future. We are the future."
Devon stopped typing and stared into the nearest screen. "Then I'll burn your future down."
He triggered the final command. The data center exploded with light as Skynet's AI swept through Nekrom's systems devouring, erasing, consuming.
The holographic serpent shattered into shards of code and flame.
"We will rule the"
The voice cut off.
The red lights faded. The hum of the servers died.
Silence.
Devon stood alone amid the dying sparks, smoke curling from the ruined servers. His reflection flickered in the cracked glass, a faint red glow still pulsing beneath his skin from Skynet's neural link.
He exhaled slowly. "It's done."
He stepped outside into the storm. The rain poured down harder now, washing the dust and ash from his jacket.
Lacy's voice came back over the comm. "Talk to me, boss. You alive?"
Devon looked toward the horizon. "Yeah. Nekrom's gone."
A pause. "And Skynet?"
Devon's tone turned colder. "It's growing."
He got back into the McLaren, engine rumbling like thunder beneath him. As he sped down the slick streets of Milan, the car's AI dashboard flickered Skynet's icon glowing faintly in the corner.
"Target neutralized," the system reported."Eteon activity increasing globally."
Devon tightened his grip on the wheel. "Then we've still got work to do."
The McLaren vanished into the rain, leaving behind nothing but the fading echo of engines and the faint, lingering whisper of Nekrom's final warning.
Eteon will never rest…