The tunnels beneath Sector 12 felt like a scar no one wanted to heal—long, winding, pulsing with electrical hums and secrets buried under dust and metal. The deeper they descended, the colder it got. Not temperature-wise. Soul-deep cold.
Ash's boots echoed across the floor as she led the team, her flashlight beam slicing through the dark. Behind her, Haru walked in silence, his fingers twitching at his sides as if preparing for something violent.
Jin brought up the rear, always a shadow in motion.
"Cameras are dead," he muttered, tapping his device. "We've got fifteen minutes of clean passage—maybe less."
"Then we move fast," Ash said.
But her voice wasn't as steady as usual.
She hadn't recovered from what she'd seen in the Seraph Graveyard. The faces. The tubes. The numbers etched into the skin of people who were never supposed to be test subjects. People she once knew—some dead, some hollow-eyed and breathing like ghosts.
One of them had been Ayin.
Not her sister. Not biologically.
But close enough.
Her name had been on the file. AYI-14. Projected to be "combat-viable by age 12." Discarded at 16.
Ash couldn't erase the image.
Ayin's smile from years ago. Her perfume and velvet sheets. Her chipped nail polish. Gone. Reduced to a number and a report stamped "INACTIVE: FAILED."
"Ash." Haru's voice cut through her spiral. "Stop a second."
She turned to him.
His brows were knit, lips drawn in that worried way he never showed anyone else. His hand hovered just over her arm—not quite touching, like he didn't want to break her if she shattered.
"You've been quiet since the chamber," he said.
"I'm fine."
"You're shaking."
She hadn't noticed. But now her hands felt like leaves caught in wind.
"I can't afford to fall apart now," she said.
Haru stepped closer. "Then lean on me until you don't have to anymore."
Her eyes lifted to his.
And in that moment, in this broken, rust-stained corridor under a dying city, he looked at her like she was the only real thing in the world. Not Ash the fighter. Not Ash the symbol. Just her.
She didn't kiss him. Not yet.
But she let his hand take hers, fingers tangled like lifelines, and for a moment, the cold receded.
They reached the sealed door marked with an old DaeCorp insignia—scratched out, painted over, but still humming.
"Echo's hiding something behind this," Jin said. "There's an auxiliary generator still powering the lower levels. You don't do that unless you're keeping something alive."
Haru looked at Ash. "Ready?"
She nodded. "Let's dig up whatever they didn't want the world to see."
Jin cracked the panel open. Sparks flew. The door moaned like it was alive. Then—
Darkness.
And silence.
Until a single light flickered on above a wide chamber. Unlike the lab before, this one was pristine. Intact. Polished floors. Operational terminals. And a wall-sized screen showing data streams in real time.
"Holy shit," Jin whispered. "This place is active."
And then the voice came.
Cold. Smooth. Unfamiliar.
"You've come far, Ash."
The lights ignited row by row.
In the center of the room stood a woman in white—mid-thirties, tall, statuesque, with the poise of someone who never had to run. Her eyes were the same silver-blue as Haru's.
"Who the hell—" Jin started.
But Ash already knew.
She stepped forward, jaw clenched. "You're supposed to be dead."
The woman smiled. "You believe everything the file says?"
Haru's breath hitched. "Mother?"
Dr. Kaori Shiranami.
The matriarch of DaeCorp. The ghost behind the science. The hand that sculpted monsters in silence.
Alive.
Echo hadn't just preserved Project Seraph.
They were preparing to finish it.