ELLEN POV
The room was colder than I expected.
Concrete walls, the hum of old fluorescent light—everything here felt sterile, like a tomb pretending to be clean. The kind of place built for secrets that never make it back into daylight.
Rian Voss sat in the chair under the lamp, wrists bound in steel. His face was too calm, too practiced. The type who's been caught before and learned that silence buys time.
I circled him slowly, the echo of my boots filling the space between words.
"You watched people die for data," I said. "Tell me, Rian—did you ever stop to think they were more than test subjects?"
He lifted his gaze, eyes bloodshot but defiant. "I just handled the logs. I wasn't part of the experiments."
"That's the problem," I said quietly. "Everyone at Clayton says that."
Behind me, Narion leaned against the wall, arms crossed, unreadable. Clyde stayed by the door, restless, fingers twitching near his holster. We'd agreed—no pain, not unless necessary. But "necessary" was always a matter of perspective.
"You worked for Project Helios," I pressed. "You signed clearance forms, verified transfers, managed containment protocols. You knew what they were doing."
He smiled faintly, a crack in his armor. "You think I had a choice?"
I stopped in front of him, crouching so he had no choice but to meet my eyes.
"You had one the moment you signed their contract."
For the first time, his gaze faltered.
I turned to Narion. "Show him."
Narion powered the projector on. Static flared to life, then stabilized into a grainy video feed. A corridor. Harsh white light. Three men in lab coats escorting someone down a hallway—someone smaller, slower. Even distorted by the footage, I knew that walk.
Shin.
Rian's breath hitched. "Where did you get this?"
"Your archives," Narion said. "The same files you thought you deleted."
I leaned closer to Rian again. "You saw what they did to her. To all of them. So tell me—who ordered it?"
He swallowed, trying to hold his composure. "You don't understand. Helios wasn't just research—it was commerce. They were selling prototypes—neural tech built from live subjects. Clayton was just the front. The real buyers were offshore. Military, biotech investors—people who needed results fast."
My pulse thudded in my throat. "And the deaths?"
"They called them 'failures.' They—" he hesitated, then broke. "They covered it up. I was told to delete the reports, reformat the entries. But the directive didn't come from the labs—it came from above. Marcus Belle. Harrow. And someone from legal… Caldwell connected to United Nations."
The name hit like a hammer. "Caldwell?"
"She signed the NDAs," he said quickly. "She made the clause that let them move subjects across borders without documentation."
Narion cursed under his breath. Clyde just stared at me, waiting for my next move.
"And the cleanup?" I asked. "Who gave the kill order?"
Rian hesitated, eyes darting toward the flickering bulb. "They used a code—Meridian. Belle approved it. It was meant to erase everything—files, witnesses, even the scientists. I thought it was done. But… if you're still here, then someone reactivated it."
My jaw tightened. "Meridian. Where is it stored?"
"Offsite," he said weakly. "In mirrored banking servers under an agricultural firm in Sector Fourteen. There's a courier, Harlan Pike. Blue cap, always at eleven-fifteen. He carries the backups physically—encrypted ledgers. That's all I know."
It was enough.
Too much, maybe.
I nodded to Narion to release him. The ropes came off, but I kept my hand on the table between us—firm, deliberate. "You'll take us to Pike," I said. "After that, you disappear. Don't cross us again."
He flexed his wrists, wincing. "If you go after Clayton, they'll hunt you. They'll erase you."
"Let them try."
For a moment, he just looked at me—really looked. Maybe he saw the same thing I'd seen in the mirror lately: someone too far gone to turn back.
He opened his mouth to say something, but the sound that came instead wasn't his voice.
A metallic click.
From outside the door.
Clyde reacted first, gun drawn. Narion moved to the panel, checking the feeds. Static. Nothing.
Then, from the hallway, a command barked through a speaker—distorted, official.
"Unit Belle. Stand down. You are surrounded."
My blood ran cold.
I turned to Rian—but he was staring past me, terror etched into his face.
"They found you," he whispered. "I told you—they never let anyone walk away."
The light above us flickered once, and in that instant, I knew: the storm had arrived.
We had pulled too hard on Clayton's web—
and now, it was pulling back.
I tap my earpiece, "the shows begin!"
Rian gave me a look, surprise.
Then a loud bang of guns echoed while I just sitting here in front of Rian who look so shocked.
"Who are you really?" he asked.
"The Clayton's nightmare."
The door burst open before Rian could finish his thought.
Drake shoved two men forward—Clayton security, judging by the black insignia on their sleeves. Both were bleeding, one clutching his shoulder, the other trembling so hard his weapon slipped from his grip and clattered across the floor.
"Perimeter's breached," Drake said, voice calm but sharp. "We've got maybe five minutes before they bring in the drones."
I stood, finally, the chair scraping softly against the floor. The noise outside was building—boots, shouts, gunfire ricocheting off concrete. The storm had fully arrived.
"Get them to containment," I ordered. "Rian stays."
Narion moved fast, dragging the guards out. Clyde followed, his weapon raised, disappearing into the chaos.
Rian's eyes darted between us, panic creeping through the cracks of his composure. "You can't fight them," he said. "You don't know what they have."
"Oh, I do," I replied. "I used to build for them."
His jaw slackened. "You—what?"
Before he could ask again, the ceiling groaned. Dust rained down as something heavy slammed into the roof—metal legs, mechanical whirs. Drones.
Drake cursed. "They've deployed Sentinels!"
I grabbed Rian by the collar, pulling him close. "If you want to live, you'll tell me the failsafe command for those drones."
"There is none!" he gasped. "They're automated—biometric triggers only respond to Belle's codes!"
I smirked faintly. "Then we improvise."
From my jacket, I pulled a small black sphere—pulse detonator, EMP-tuned. Drake's eyes widened. "Ellen, that'll fry everything in a hundred meters."
"That's the point."
The walls shook again, this time from inside the hallway—Narion shouting, static filling the comms. "They're breaching the north corridor!"
I looked down at Rian, who was trembling now, his earlier arrogance gone. "You said Pike carries the backups. Where?"
His voice cracked. "Train yard—Sector Fourteen. Tomorrow morning."
"Good," I said, flicking the detonator's safety switch. "Then we still have time."
He stared at the device in my hand, realization dawning too late. "You wouldn't—"
I pressed the trigger.
A flash—white, soundless—consumed the room. The lights exploded, glass raining like dust. For a heartbeat, everything went still.
Then came the aftermath—darkness, smoke, the distant echo of collapsing metal.
I coughed once, the taste of ozone heavy in my throat. Somewhere behind me, Drake groaned, but he was alive. The drones? Not so lucky.
Through the haze, I saw Rian slumped forward, alive but unconscious. His pulse fluttered weakly under my fingers.
I tapped my earpiece—static, then Narion's voice broke through. "Status?"
"Alive," I said. "Barely."
"And the data?"
"Still with Pike. We move tonight."
Outside, the world burned in hues of orange and ash. The empire of Clayton was starting to crumble—
but so were we.
As I stepped into the ruined corridor, the last of the emergency lights flickered back on, revealing a symbol scorched into the far wall.
A single word, painted in black.
MERIDIAN.
And just below it—fresh, smeared with someone's blood—
RUN.
The night bled into morning, but the city never slept—not for people like us.
Sector Fourteen was a graveyard of industry: half-collapsed hangars, rusted rail lines, the smell of burnt ozone lingering in the air.
We'd made it this far, but the silence was wrong. Too calm. Too expectant.
"Eyes up," I murmured into the comm. "Meridian's mainframe should be beneath the central grid. Clyde, take the left flank. Narion, keep our six."
"Copy," Narion replied, voice clipped. "Drones inactive. For now."
For now. The phrase pulsed like a warning.
I crouched beside the reinforced hatch—an old maintenance entry hidden behind stacks of steel drums. The code Rian had given me still glowed faintly on my wrist display. One wrong digit, and the failsafe would fry everything—us included.
"Ready?" I asked.
Clyde smirked faintly. "Born ready. Just not for dying."
"Let's not make it mutual then."
The hatch groaned open, releasing a gust of stale air. Inside: darkness, cables coiled like veins, red lights blinking deep within the concrete throat of the tunnel.
We descended quietly. Step by step.
At the bottom waited the beast—Meridian's heart. A sphere of glass and titanium suspended in magnetic clamps, humming with energy. Streams of code crawled across its shell, reflecting like living fireflies.
Narion whistled low. "Looks like hell decided to go digital."
"It's worse," I said, connecting my terminal. "This isn't just a server—it's self-learning architecture. Clayton built it to protect their sins."
Clyde glanced around. "So we destroy it?"
I hesitated. The hum of the sphere resonated through my bones. "No. We rewrite it."
I tapped into the control matrix, pulse racing. Code flared across my screen—layers of authorization requests, system locks, even biometric traps. Meridian fought back like a living thing, adapting faster than I could strip it.
"Ellen," Narion warned, "it's resisting."
"I know."
I rerouted the power surge, fingers flying across the holographic keys. Then, with a deep breath, I injected the override I'd prepared—Project Eclipse.
The system screamed.
Alarms blared.
Lines of data turned red.
"Containment breach detected."
"System destabilizing."
"Protocol: TERMINATION."
"Pull back!" Clyde shouted.
But I stayed. Watching the sphere flicker, fracture, and finally split open. A rush of hot air hit my face as the stored data—every name, every file, every experiment—unraveled into nothingness.
Clayton's empire, erased in one breath.
And yet… the screen didn't go dark.
A single window blinked open—one final message, unsigned.
> MERIDIAN BACKUP: ACTIVE NODE REMOTE — UNIT 7. STATUS: OPERATIONAL.
My throat tightened. "No… it replicated."
Narion cursed. "You mean it's still alive?"
"Somewhere out there."
I shut down my terminal, staring at the sphere now collapsing in on itself. "Then we hunt again."
Outside, the dawn finally broke, slicing through the fog and dust. For a second, it almost looked peaceful.
But deep within the broken mainframe, beneath the static and ash, a faint blue light blinked—steady, deliberate.
> REBOOTING MERIDIAN 2.0.
And somewhere, far away, a voice I hadn't heard in years whispered through the comms—calm, composed, too familiar.
"You shouldn't have done that."
The line went dead.
And the war began again.
The entire chamber trembled as the power surged one last time. Meridian's systems fought like a living thing, cables snapping loose from the ceiling like veins tearing apart. Every alarm screamed in unison. The air reeked of ozone and burning circuits.
"Ellen, the core's overloading!" Narion shouted, shielding his face from the sparks. "We need to get out—now!"
"Not yet!" I yelled back, forcing my terminal to reconnect. My gloves were slick with sweat, but I didn't stop. The core was rebuilding faster than we could destroy it—every strand of data trying to cling to existence. I couldn't let it. Not this time.
I overrode the firewall and typed in the last command—the one even Rian Voss had never seen. My voice trembled as I whispered it aloud, almost like a prayer.
"Execute: Black Silence."
The lights around the core shifted from blue to red, the hum deepening into a low, resonant growl. Code spilled down my screen, disintegrating line by line. Meridian was resisting, its synthetic voice fracturing through the speakers.
"... you can't erase me... I am the memory of your Shin's sins..."
"Then I'll bury her sins with you," I hissed.
Clyde grabbed my arm. "We've got thirty seconds before this place goes up!"
I slammed my fist onto the final key.
The core screamed. A wave of heat and light tore through the chamber, throwing us all backward. The glass sphere at the center imploded—first in silence, then with a roar that swallowed everything. Meridian's face flickered one last time on a broken panel, the blue light fading into nothing.
Then—silence.
Only the crackle of dying electricity filled the air. The heart of Meridian was gone.
I forced myself to stand, coughing through the smoke. The mainframe lay in ruins, split open like a carcass. No pulse. No data signature. No voice.
Narion stared at the wreckage, disbelief etched into his face. "It's... really gone?"
I nodded slowly. "It's dead."
Clyde exhaled, finally lowering his weapon. "So that's it. Clayton's ghost, wiped clean."
"Maybe." I looked down at my terminal—its screen cracked, but still alive. Only one message blinked in dim red text before it faded forever.
> BLACK SILENCE: COMPLETE.
The hum stopped.
The power died.
And for the first time in months, I felt the weight lift from my chest.
Meridian's heart was gone.
And with it, the last of Clayton's empire burned into silence.