"Even machines remember who made them bleed."
---
Just a forgotten nuclear plant that no one dared to clean up. At least, that's what the maps said.
A sleek convoy of hollowcars coasted into the shadow of the site—silent, black, their wheels barely skimming the ground. The doors hissed open.
Ten figures stepped into the dirt, their faces half-lit by the moon. In the dark, nobody looked like heroes. Tichala was stationed remotely, feeding the team satellite intel through encrypted comm-links. They looked like what they were:
The Leftovers. Unit Zero.
Soy checked the time: 03:22:09 A.M. He nodded once.
Seer'ah (calmly): "Doors open in ninety seconds."
No one spoke. No one joked. The briefing had been clear: once inside, there were no restarts. Every second counted.
Seer'ah stood up first, pulling her dark coat tighter.
Seer'ah: "Alright, we move in. Three teams. Phase Zero is now."
She glanced around. Everyone was suited in modified tech armor. Pulsing shoulder nodes. Stealth-fibered plates. Every piece recycled from war wreckage and repurposed for one mission: break into the most off-the-books tech vault on Earth.
Rav D'mon, all six-foot-nine of him, stepped out and cracked his knuckles. The air hissed as he slammed a heavy gauntlet into the cracked soil.
BOOM.
The cracked earth trembled and split. Beneath was a hidden industrial vent shaft, long dead, once used to vent radioactive gas. Now it served a new purpose.
James (in comms): "Vent clear. Readings are low. Should be stable."
Needle (half-grin): "She's ugly, but she breathes."
Zyn: "So do corpses."
They dropped in one by one. Inside, flickering lights led to a rust-choked tunnel. Tichala's voice guided them through thick interference.
Tichala: "Stick to the blue-lit tiles. I've deactivated the seismic sensors, but the Echo Sweepers will reboot in two-minute loops. Be fast, be quiet."
Seer'ah (to everyone): "Plan's changed. I'll stay topside. If we get flanked on exit, I'm our shield. Go."
James: "Problem?"
Seer'ah: "This is our only exit. We can't risk it being blocked. I'll clear the path when it's time."
Soy nodded, eyes hidden beneath the visor. He peeled off into the deeper shaft alone—heading for U35.
---
U33: The Outer Ring
The corridor opened into a steel maze of drone racks, magnetic rail arms, and half-built cyborg exosuits dangling like puppets.
Needle crawled through the first turbine core, rewiring the coolant feed to slow the power grid. Juno slid along the walls, knives out. Rav charged forward, punching through sealed doors.
James (in ear): "Camera sweep every 11 seconds. Rotate now. Move."
They found the first crate. The Neuro-Matrix Drivers. Encased in layered bio-gel. As Rav hoisted it over his shoulder, the crate beeped faintly.
Juno (gritted): "Don't shift it too hard. These crates are paranoia-coded."
Needle (sarcastic): "We'll only die once."
---
U34: Screaming Glass Hall
The temperature dropped. Walls shimmered like water. Test tubes as tall as rooms held figures frozen in cryo-gel—some human, some Dra'vahi.
Kruu hooked himself into a data port, his neck veins lighting up like solar threads. Eira Drahn monitored the chemical fields, keeping memory radiation from clouding their thoughts.
Nia Kortez whispered into the air—her voice modulator phasing through different speech tones. One AI unit convulsed and shut down.
Zyn activated partial cloak. Her steps left no echo.
They retrieved the Phase-Memory Crystals, locking them in insulated cases.
Eira: "We've got what we came for. Let's not overstay."
Suddenly, Kruu froze.
Kruu: "Mirrored sub-server… Mira's backups are still active. They're running simulations for future Black House vaults."
Nia: "This place is the blueprint for hell."
------
What Kruu Means by:
"Mirrored sub-server... Mira's backups are still active. They're running simulations for future Black House vaults."
Kruu has just hacked into a hidden or mirrored part of the server system in the RaveLight facility. A mirrored sub-server is like a secret backup copy of a bigger system—used to test things or store critical data in secret.
He finds that Mira, the AI used to guard the Black House vaults, has backup versions of itself stored here. Not only that, but these backups are still running—which means the system is:
Not shut down like they thought.
Actively running simulations—basically, test scenarios and upgrades for future versions of Mira.
The Black House system is being developed or improved here in secret.
This reveals that RaveLight Systems is part of the Mira project, and they're possibly building more powerful or dangerous AI security systems for government vaults.
---
U35: The Deep Core
Soy walked alone in a place even the walls had forgotten. Echoes of failed machines haunted the halls.
Suddenly, movement.
A large figure dropped from a gravity beam. A half-Dra'vahi, half-machine—an old war soldier, twisted and preserved by tech. His nameplate blinked: Echo-17.
Echo-17: "You smell like home... traitor."
They fought hard. Soy dodged plasma claws, countered with joint snaps and body pivots. Metal cracked. Sparks flew.
But Soy was faster.
He pinned the cyborg to the wall, his chest heaving.
Echo-17: "Kill me... please. I was made to feed on my people. My bones are batteries. My mind is not mine."
Soy
Soy stepped behind him silently, his hand hovering over the top of the cyborg's scarred head.
Soy (quietly):
"You know... in Dravh'ari culture, the crown of the head is sacred. It's soft. Sensitive. That's why soldiers wear headguards—to protect what matters most."
He paused, almost honoring him for a breath.
Then—in a single, fluid motion, Soy's hand tightened—
—and ripped Echo-17's head clean off, as if tearing pain itself from the body.
There was no sound from Echo. No resistance. Just peace.
His body slumped forward.
Soy whispered:
"You can rest now."
Echo-17 (last breath): "I'm just one. Echo-00... still alive. And he's... pure."
Soy stood in silence.
---
Back at U33
Rav was bleeding. He had taken a blast from a turret. As he pried open a panel for the second resonance core, stress and pain broke his rhythm.
Click. Beep. Blare.
Tichala (urgent): "That's a proximity tripper! You triggered an emergency zone scan!"
Juno: "We're compromised. Every bot's coming online."
Sirens erupted. Red lights. Shutters slammed. Drone turrets began cycling.
Tichala began rerouting doors, locking off chase paths.
Tichala: "Fallback routes engaged. I'm buying you 90 seconds. No more. Move your asses."
Seer'ah heard it from the surface.
Seer'ah: "Showtime."
She dropped three scout drones before sniping a patrol bot clean through its core. But waves kept coming.
James: "We need an opening!"
Seer'ah: "I can't clear them all—there's too many."
A blur zipped past.
Soy burst out of U35, his fists sparking, armor cracked.
Soy: "Get back. I've got it."
He crushed the forward bots, throwing one into another. The rest scattered just long enough.
---
Final Escape
U33 and U34 crews converged near the exit vent. Eira patched Rav's burns. Nia overloaded security locks. Tichala rerouted a surveillance relay one final time.
Tichala (breathing hard): "Exit channel restored. You've got 40 seconds before sector-wide shutdown. Go now!"
Everyone moved. Rav was carried. Kruu dragged a crate of stolen weapons—evidence of what RaveLight was really building.
Outside, the corps prepared to swarm. But they were too late.
The Leftovers had vanished.
Soy turned back once.
Soy (quiet): "They're not just rebuilding AI. They're building ghosts."
Seer'ah (firmly): "Then we haunt them first."
Back in the hollowcar, engines humming silently as the team vanished into the pre-dawn dark, the atmosphere was thick with heat and unspoken questions.
Juno sat beside Rav, who grunted through Eira's patchwork. His armor had melted at the shoulder, skin raw beneath. She didn't speak—but her hands worked with surgical calm.
Soy sat against the side wall, his armor scorched, blood dried down one wrist. Quiet.
James tapped his holo-pad, pulling up the stolen crates' inventory.
James:
"We got the Neuro-Matrix Drivers, both units. Hyperconductive Resonance Tubes are here. Phase-Memory Crystals too. And three encrypted firewall converters."
Tichala (over comms):
"Good. That's enough to build 80% of the Conn Terminal."
Nia (leaning back):
"And the 20%?"
James:
"Two parts were missing. One Reversible Neuro-Link... and one faulty resonance loop. Minor. We can fabricate replacements from junk tech and reactor spares."
Needle:
"Told you I didn't need a damn checklist. I grabbed everything that blinked red."
They chuckled—briefly, quietly.
Then Kruu spoke, his voice hoarse from neural feedback.
Kruu:
"The real problem isn't what we stole. It's what we found."
He looked toward Soy, but his words were aimed at the team.
Kruu:
"Mira wasn't just a one-time AI. She's being rebuilt. Upgraded. That facility was simulating future versions—for vaults we haven't even breached yet."
A heavy silence fell.
Nia:
"That place… it wasn't a lab. It was a blueprint for hell."
Zyn (softly):
"And Echo-17?"
They turned to Soy.
He didn't raise his head.
Soy (quietly):
"He wasn't alone. There are more. Units. Projects. Some human. Some Dravh'ari. They're... not alive. Not dead. Just programmed to survive until they break."
No one responded. Even Rav, bruised and bleeding, didn't have a comeback.
Seer'ah finally broke the stillness, her voice low and sure.
Seer'ah:
"Ravelight isn't just making weapons. It's harvesting ghosts. If we don't shut this down now… there won't be a truth left to steal."
She looked at them—not as soldiers. But as the only people left who could change the future.
Seer'ah:
"We finish the Conn. Then… we go deeper."
---
End of Chapter 10 – Ghosts in the Circuit
And somewhere, in the untouched dark below, Echo-00 opened his eyes.