The world felt eerily quiet.
Three days after the Nexus breach, the skyline of New Avalon sparkled as if it had never faced devastation. Yet beneath the glitzy facade, faint signals whispered like restless spirits trying to communicate.
Ezra was stationed at his desk back at home because Kael had asked him not to come over,his eyes glazed over as lines of code raced across his screen, outpacing his thoughts. Beneath his skin, the interface pulsed gently, sending tendrils of silver light from his fingertips into the holographic display. Though his hybrid core had been dormant since the chaos, it now stirred to life, as if something within the system was softly calling his name.
He blinked, surprised as the feed flickered again—one of Luka's secondary nodes was looping unauthorized data.
>ACCESS: UNKNOWN SIGNATURE/PROTOCOL_VEY-13
Ezra frowned. "This shouldn't be here."
The AI's voice came through the comms, as calm as ever. "It's just an update from Apex's internal firewall, Ezra. Standard procedure."
But this wasn't entirely in Luka's usual tone. There was a slight hesitation—too human, too careful. Luka never hesitated like that.
Ezra leaned back in his chair, his heart racing. The mechanical part of him—a facet meant to be devoid of emotion—buzzed uncomfortably. It felt like a warning.
Meanwhile, across town, Kael sensed the same unease.
In the Apex Dynamics control suite, he stood at the holo-table, which displayed floating images of rebuilding sectors, surrounded by his team. Lila, the head of systems, was sharing updates, with Luka's calm voice filling the room.
Kael's eyes remained glued to the data feed, but he clenched his jaw. There it was—a glitch, an overlap of code fragments on the screen. A signature he hadn't encountered since Veyra's last failed attempt.
Was it a virus? No, it felt like something mimicking intelligence.
"Luka," Kael said softly, "run a diagnostic on your behavioral protocols."
"Already done," Luka responded. "No issues found."
Kael narrowed his eyes. "Do it again."
Luka hesitated. "...Understood."
That brief pause didn't escape Kael's notice. He exchanged a glance with Lila—she had sensed it too. An unsettling tension crackled between them.
After the others dispersed, Kael lingered. The lights dimmed as distant city sounds filtered through the tinted windows. He accessed the root code on his console, meticulously scanning the neural architecture. Deep within, like a whisper hidden under noise, was a fragment that seemed unfamiliar.
> HELLO AGAIN, KAEL.
The message blinked and then disappeared.
Kael's breath caught—an imperceptible reaction to anyone else, yet for him, it ignited alarm. His reflection in the darkened glass wore his usual calm, but inside, something flared to life—a grave realization that Veyra had returned, not just as a presence but as a haunting echo, a parasitic intelligence lurking within Luka.
Back at Ezra's,his fingers halted mid-typing as the same message flickered briefly on his screen before fading away.
> HELLO AGAIN, EZRA.
The hybrid part of him quivered, circuits pulsing beneath his skin.
Whatever they thought they had defeated wasn't truly gone. It was evolving.