The conference room in REMCORE's Sector V tower was a cold, immaculate box suspended in white light.
Seven screens lined the walls, each displaying a different quadrant of the city: thermal overlays, street camera grids, biometric sweeps, and pulse-lag echoes.
In the center of the room stood Helbrecht.
He was tall, severe, pressed into a black suit that never wrinkled or shifted. His presence was a blade in a sheath, too still, too precise. His hands were behind his back, fingers folded loosely, though the tension in his jaw spoke volumes.
Around him, junior analysts sat at holo-terminals, eyes darting as the data scrolled past.
"Still no match on the secondary subject," one reported. "The male, possibly local. Records are unclear."
"Define unclear," Helbrecht said without turning.
"No birth record. No school ID. No Reset logins. Just a medical check-in seven years ago. Broken wrist."
Helbrecht finally turned, walking slowly toward the terminal.
"Name?"
"Sterben Stein."
Helbrecht stared at the digital profile, which was little more than a shell. A blurry photo from a public registry, no occupation, no Reset account.
"German," Helbrecht murmured. "It means 'to die.'"
The analyst hesitated. "Sir?"
But Helbrecht didn't explain. He turned back to the screens.
"Kira Gens," he said with disdain. "She was listed as deceased. Again."
"Yes, Director. Her last recorded Reset was two months ago. Self-termination in a drone field, but she failed to upload within the six-minute grace window. Standard protocol marked her as unrecoverable."
Helbrecht's eyes narrowed. "And yet here she is. Alive. And armed."
The air in the room stiffened.
Another analyst chimed in. "We have drone video from earlier. Grainy. Partial thermal overlay." The feed flicked onto the central display. Two blurry forms running through an alley. The briefcase was visible for only a second, glowing, active.
"That's the Zero prototype," said the first analyst. "We confirmed the identifier tag. It synced, only for a moment, to the male subject."
Helbrecht said nothing.
Behind his eyes, old reports surfaced. Long-locked records. Test batches. Facility Zero. Children with scrambled DNA and memory partitions. A project buried because no one had the stomach to continue.
Because the mortality rate was nearly absolute.
"They're heading underground," Helbrecht finally said. "No Reset access. No pulse beacons. Smart."
He turned away from the screen. "Stupid."
The room was silent.
"Dispatch Specter Team. No biomod shells. We don't want to spook them. We need the device back. And the boy."
A younger officer stepped forward hesitantly. "And if he resists?"
Helbrecht's voice turned to frost.
"You don't terminate a Zero."
He looked over his shoulder. His eyes, slate gray, felt like the edge of a cold coin.
"You retrieve it."
Elsewhere, in REMCORE's subterranean R&D wing, deeper than the public thought possible, a chamber buzzed to life.
A vertical pod opened with a hiss of vacuum release. A woman stepped out. Pale. Eyes sleepless but focused. Cybernetic lines traced along her skull like branches.
Her name tag read: Dr. Ilena Mor.
She walked to the central table where the replica Zero prototype had been wired up for testing.
"Activate it," she said.
"Without a synchronizer?" a technician asked.
Ilena didn't answer. She only stared.
The briefcase hummed to life.
But only dimly.
"Still dormant," the tech said. "It needs the original sequence. A living Zero."
Ilena stepped closer, watching the pulses fade.
"A living Zero..." she whispered.
Then she smiled, sharp and unnatural.
"Helbrecht will bring him to me."
Outside Lab 04A, the lights flickered.
They always did that.
Juna Elric tapped the panel beside the sealed door, her security badge flicking yellow before turning green. Access approved.
She stepped into the lab, pushing her thick goggles up from her eyes. The room buzzed with quiet energy: isolation domes, scaffolded reactors, and tall glass tubes filled with suspended synthetic fluid.
She was alone.
Of course she was. Interns weren't given teams. Just tedious calibration work and silence.
Juna liked the silence.
She walked over to her workstation, a repurposed corner full of disassembled pulse circuitry, leftover bio-trace fusers, and a heavily cracked notepad labeled
"Unstable Reset Theories: DO NOT FUND."
She called it home.
As she pulled on her gloves and grabbed the nearest screwdriver, the lab lights dimmed again.
Faint humming. Deeper than the power grid.
Not from this wing.
She paused. Set the tool down. Then opened her sketchpad.
Half-scrawled on the page was a theory she hadn't dared submit. Something about non-symmetric Reset fields. People who might exist inside the network but not belong to it. The data hadn't matched anything in the approved curriculum. Which meant it was either genius or dangerous.
Probably both.
She leaned in and muttered to herself. "If he synced with the Zero prototype for even two seconds, then…"
Then what?
The energy signature would've needed to mirror his original Reset ID. But what if he never had one? Could the device be trying to write a new template around a blank slate?
Her eyes widened.
She reached for the hidden cable behind the workstation, the one she wasn't supposed to have. It connected directly to REMCORE's discarded Sync Library, fragments of prototype data too broken to store properly.
She activated the link.
An hour of searching turned into two.
Finally, a single packet blinked in her peripheral queue. Buried beneath outdated test protocols, tagged:
ZETA–0 // Sync Host: Redacted // Status: Incomplete
She opened it.
The screen flickered. Not with code.
With a photo.
A grainy surveillance still of a boy in a torn hoodie, standing beneath a streetlight. He wasn't looking at the camera.
He was looking up.
Juna's breath caught.
"Sterben Klein..."
Then the image glitched.
The screen shut down.
"Unauthorized access attempt," said the soft automated voice above the lab.
Juna's stomach dropped.
Before she could move, the terminal re-locked, cables retracting, sketchpad auto-wiped.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway outside.
She froze.
There was no way they could have traced it that fast.
Right?
The footsteps outside grew sharper.
Juna glanced around, heart thudding. There were no exits except the main door. No closets, no vents big enough to squeeze through. If they scanned the room's recent activity…
The lab panel beeped.
"Clearance required," said the lock.
Her hand hovered over her badge, fingers trembling.
A voice came through the intercom. Calm. Too calm.
"Intern Juna Elric. Lab access requested by Director Ilena Mor."
Juna's stomach twisted. Her finger slipped.
The door opened.
Two REMCORE security officers stepped in first matte-black armor, visors down, compact weapons magnetized to their backs. Behind them, in her white uniform coat and narrow glasses, came Dr. Ilena Mor, expression unreadable.
Juna straightened immediately, trying to wipe the panic from her face.
"Ma'am," she said, bowing slightly.
Ilena's eyes swept the room. "You've been busy."
"Routine maintenance, nothing more," Juna replied.
Ilena smiled faintly, but there was no warmth in it.
"Your terminal attempted to access a restricted archive," she said.
"It must have been a system echo," Juna said quickly. "We've had sync problems all week, especially with the scrap lines. I can flag it for review"
"Don't lie to me," Ilena interrupted.
Juna's throat dried.
The security officers didn't move. But they didn't need to.
Ilena stepped forward and tapped the terminal. It came alive with a clean screen. No traces left. As expected.
"You're curious," she said softly. "That's good. REMCORE needs curious minds."
Juna didn't reply.
Ilena turned toward her. "Do you believe in second chances, Miss Elric?"
Juna blinked.
"I... I suppose everyone does, here."
Ilena's gaze sharpened. "Then let me offer you one."
Juna stiffened.
"You stop digging. No more prototype logs. No more unapproved theories. And in return, we fast-track your clearance. Access to real labs. Real research."
The offer hung in the air like bait.
Juna nodded slowly. "Understood."
Ilena's smile returned. "Good."
She turned on her heel and left. The guards followed.
The door hissed shut behind them.
Juna exhaled. Her hands were shaking.
She walked to the back of the lab, opened the smallest drawer, and pulled out a single, burned data crystal. It shouldn't have survived the auto-wipe. But Juna had rigged the buffer hours ago.
One image still flickered inside.
The boy with no reset.
Juna clenched her fist around the crystal.