The elevator groaned like something waking from a hundred-year sleep.
Axel Vega stood alone in the marble-paneled hallway of the VegaTech Tower's 89th floor—his home since childhood, now just a mausoleum of silence. Rain tapped against the wide glass windows, tracing jagged rivulets over the view of New York's neon-lit skyline. But Axel wasn't watching the storm outside.
He was going below.
Dressed in a charcoal-gray hoodie and slim black joggers, Axel's lean frame looked deceptively casual. But his eyes—steel-gray like a brewing thunderhead—gave him away. They flicked across his father's ID badge, now hanging loosely from a beaded chain around his neck.
He tapped the badge to the wall panel. The false wall slid open with a pneumatic sigh.
The hidden lift revealed itself: older, dustier, and lit by a dull red glow. No buttons. Only a single scanner, blinking blue.
Axel hesitated. He'd found this corridor by accident two nights ago—chasing a half-remembered blueprint in his mother's research logs. Everything about it screamed Don't go down.
So of course, he did.
The scanner pulsed once and read his retinal signature. "Clearance confirmed: Dr. Elias Vega, junior proxy accepted."
Proxy, he thought bitterly. That's what I am now. A ghost with a trust fund.
The lift descended. And kept descending. Beyond sublevels Axel never even knew existed.
The air grew colder.
When the doors parted, he stepped into darkness.
The lab didn't look like anything upstairs—no chrome, no aesthetics. Just raw, unfinished cement walls and consoles covered in dust. Monitors flickered weakly. One wall was entirely carved with branching wires and copper veins like a mechanical tree.
A small plaque on the far wall caught his eye, half-covered in ash.
"Project ThunderCore – Dormant until Subject Sync."
He stepped closer.
Suddenly—the storm hit.
A tremor rumbled beneath his feet. Every screen in the room exploded to life, glowing with lines of code he couldn't decipher.
And then, it happened.
A lightning bolt—inside the lab—ripped through the copper tree on the wall. It lanced through the air, struck the floor just beneath him, and swallowed him in white.
Axel didn't scream.
He simply... vanished.
He woke on the floor, skin steaming, clothes in tatters. His pulse thundered louder than his thoughts. His body didn't hurt—not exactly. It hummed. Every nerve alive. Every breath charged.
A light blinked in the corner.
He turned, eyes flickering with sparks that hadn't been there before.
There, embedded into the wall, was a sleek black case labeled HELIOS: Assembly Protocol. Beneath it, a handwritten note:
"If you're reading this, son... you survived. Assemble it. It's the only thing that can explain what you are now."
His fingers trembled as he opened the case.
And then—another screen activated behind him.
It displayed a countdown:
00:00:59.
00:00:58.
00:00:57.
"What the hell did you leave me, Dad?" Axel whispered, voice rasping like thunder far away.
The lights began to flicker. Sparks danced across the wall. The countdown ticked on.