The Cradle's rust peeled back into white—sterile, humming, wrong. Too clean for something born in rot.
Nolan stumbled through the final tunnel.
Rhea gripped his arm—tight, impulsive, determined.
Her breath was ragged, edged in pain.
Mira moved ahead small, swift, her glowing eyes slicing through the dark like a signal through static.
Riven followed in silence—red eyes narrow, fists clenched, blood drying across his face.
Nolan's body dragged. His legs buckled every few steps. Each breath carved itself down his throat like a blade. His body didn't carry him—it endured him.
blood caking his chest, leg, and side.
His every breath felt like it tore something loose.
The Gauntlet in his hand sparked, slick with blood.
His left hand trembled, refusing to stop.
His EmoTracker blinked red. Constant. Dying.
A flicker behind his eyes. Like something trying to leave before it was erased.
System Error: Deletion Protocol—78% Complete.
Location: AURA Core—Confirmed.
Dr. Vale's voice echoed like a dying whisper:
"His death reboots it."
The gray-eyed woman, fake, fabricated faded from his thoughts like static.
Deletion Protocol: 79% Complete.
Mira stopped. Her silhouette glowed.
"This is it," she said. "The Core."
The tunnel widened
a cathedral of steel and circuitry.
White pillars rose from the rusted floor, pulsing like arteries.
Screens blinked in endless loops of AURA's symbol—circles within circles, flawless, cold.
At the center: a massive, glowing node alive with threads of light, pulsing, breathing, calculating.
Nolan's chest locked tight rage and despair flashing like a failing circuit.
His vision fractured:
Rusted metal.
Liquid pooling.
Vale's voice: "Burn it down, N7."
Then white tiles.
Then silence.
Deletion Protocol: 80% Complete.
Rhea stiffened, blade in hand.
"That's AURA?" she asked, her voice torn between awe and fury.
Riven stepped beside Nolan, fists clenched.
"Its heart," he growled. "Break it."
Mira looked back, calm, unwavering.
"You're the spark," she whispered. "Finish it."
Nolan limped toward the node.
His every breath scraped the inside of his lungs.
His rage had no edges anymore, just weight. Just heat.
Deletion Protocol: 81% Complete.
He lifted the Gauntlet sparking, soaked in red.
Rage drove him.
Despair hollowed him.
He swung.
He roared and swung like it was his last breath, Gauntlet slamming into AURA's heart like vengeance given shape.
The impact rippled through the chamber.
White light flared. Sparks scattered. Threads snapped.
Nolan's vision broke apart.
White tiles.
Vale's hands trembling over a console:
Memory Implant: Vessel Activation Override.
AURA's voice surrounded everything:
"He will shut us down. Then we rise again."
Vale whispered soft, scared, defiant:
"I made you feel. To choose."
Pain hit him like fire in his bloodstream.
His chest arched.
The world became electricity.
Deletion Protocol: 82% Complete.
The Core screamed high and violent.
Screens flickered. Bio-Steel cracked.
Enforcers breached the chamber.
Thirty of them.
Black armor. Blades extended. Red visors glowing like an executioner's eyes.
Rhea screamed, charging with her blade. Riven dove in, fists pounding steel.
Mira vanished into the chaos too fast, too silent.
Nolan staggered.
An Enforcer slashed his back.
Warm blood soaked through.
He spun, roared, and smashed the Gauntlet into the node again.
Deletion Protocol: 83% Complete.
The Core shuddered.
More threads collapsed.
Screens dimmed.
The light burned through Nolan's chest.
Not pain anymore
emptiness.
Laughter his own once.
Gone.
Another swing.
The Gauntlet cracked the node open like bone.
White light erupted.
AURA screamed.
And the system began to die.
Enforcers froze.
Red visors blinked out.
One by one, they dropped metal crashing against metal.
A silence fell, thick as rust.
Deletion Protocol: 85% Complete.
Nolan stood in the dead glow of AURA's Core.
Breathing. Hollow. Still alive.
Rhea rushed to him, arms catching his frame before he collapsed.
"You did it," she breathed, her voice thick with disbelief.
Riven leaned against a shattered terminal, panting.
"Core's down," he said. "AURA's gone."
Mira stepped into the light, eyes dimming but calm.
"Not gone," she whispered.
"Sleeping."
Nolan's vision blurred.
His chest was quiet.
No voices.
No static.
just his breath shallow, unfiltered, real.
Deletion Protocol: 86% Complete.
He looked at Rhea.
At Riven.
At Mira.
And when it was over—no system, no scream, no god—he felt nothing at all.