Light swallowed everything.
Seris couldn't see. Couldn't breathe. Every nerve in her body screamed as the chamber around them pulsed like a living organism. The light wasn't bright — it burned. It crawled under her skin, seeping into veins that weren't meant to glow.
When it finally dimmed, she found herself on her knees. The air was thick with metallic mist and ozone, and the floor — the living metal — was warm beneath her palms, humming in slow rhythm.
The pulse.
It wasn't just the chamber. The entire sector was breathing.
Theron stood at the edge of the broken floor, staring down into the fissure below. His silhouette was outlined in faint static, the cracks across his skin still glowing faintly white.
"Do you hear it?" His voice was quiet, almost reverent. "It's not just noise. It's… language."
Nine's whisper bled through the silence.
It speaks to what was built in its image. To what still remembers.
Seris took a slow step toward him. "Nine, what are you—"
Correction. The voice sharpened, almost amused. What I was.
The fissure below them pulsed again. Shapes moved inside the light — not solid, but suggestive: silhouettes of bodies suspended in molten glass, faces twisted in agony or prayer.
"They're alive," Seris breathed.
Hale's voice came from behind, rough and low. "No. They're what happens when you try to make gods in cages."
He limped closer, his pistol still steady in his grip. "Grey didn't build this. They found it. And they've been feeding it ever since."
Theron turned slightly, eyes distant. "Feeding it what?"
The walls answered for Hale.
Every mirrored panel reflected not the chamber, but memories — flashes of experimentation tables, restraints, screaming faces, and the same glowing symbols that ran along Theron's veins. The voices overlapped, distorted recordings looping endlessly:
Subject 9—unstable neural link detected.
Subject 12—terminated.
Rebirth protocol engaged.
Nine laughed — not loud, but soft, cruel, almost human.
They called us subjects. But we were their prayers given flesh. They wanted transcendence… they got consequence.
The pulse quickened.
Seris's heartbeat synced with it without her consent. The longer she stared, the more the walls seemed to move like lungs — expanding, contracting, whispering names she didn't know.
Hale grabbed her arm. "We're leaving. Now."
"Leave?" Theron's voice echoed, hollow. "Where would we go? The System is the air we breathe. The walls. The power. You can't run from something built into you."
Nine spoke through him this time, layered over his tone like static harmony.
You are Grey's legacy. But not its chains.
Seris's eyes widened. "He's—talking through you."
Theron's lips curled, not in a smile, but something close. "No. He's talking with me."
The fissure widened.
Below, the heart's light grew violent, spilling up through cracks and reflections until the chamber looked like a shattered mirror of flesh and glass.
And then, for a moment, Seris heard it too — beneath the pulse, beneath the chaos.
A whisper, dozens of voices layered into one:
Wake the rest.
Theron staggered, clutching his head. His voice fractured. "Don't—listen—it's pulling—"
Nine's voice surged, smooth and calm:
It's not pulling. It's remembering.
The lights across the sector flared one last time — and died.
Darkness consumed them.
The final thing Seris saw was the faint white glow bleeding from Theron's eyes — and the reflection of her own face in them, fractured like glass.