The facility had no name.
It existed in a gray area between government and private sector, hidden in a building that official records said was condemned. Elara had been here for six hours—or maybe six days. Time moved strangely when you couldn't see windows and every room looked identical.
Sterile white walls. Medical equipment that hummed and beeped. Doctors who wouldn't meet her eyes.
Not like CodeX, Vance had said. But it felt damn close.
"Heart rate elevated," a technician murmured, adjusting something on the machine Elara was connected to. Electrodes covered her scalp, her chest, her wrists. Monitoring everything. Recording everything.
"Yeah, no shit." Elara shifted in the chair. The restraints were soft, padded, but still restraints. "You people ever heard of asking nicely?"
"The restraints are for your protection," Dr. Sato said from behind his tablet. Young guy, maybe thirty, with the kind of face that had never seen real trouble. "The data extraction can cause seizures. Muscle spasms. We can't have you hurting yourself."
"How considerate."
Sato didn't catch the sarcasm. Or didn't care. "We're going to begin the next session. This will target the memories from your first encounter with the pendant. Try to recall every detail—what you felt, what you saw, what the code looked like."
"I've told you this five times already."
"And we'll ask five hundred more if necessary." He tapped his tablet. "The data in your neural pathways is degrading. We have maybe seventy-two hours before it's gone completely. After that, you're useless to us."
Elara smiled, sharp and cold. "Careful, doc. That almost sounded like a threat."
"It's a fact." He nodded to the technician. "Begin extraction sequence seven."
The machine hummed louder. Elara felt the pull immediately—like hooks in her brain, dragging memories to the surface. She'd learned to resist in the first few sessions, but that just made it hurt more.
So she let it happen. Let them see Maya's face. Let them watch her sister die over and over. Let them feel the network's screaming as it collapsed.
If they wanted her pain, they could have it.
The session lasted an hour. When it ended, Elara's nose was bleeding and her hands were shaking. Standard side effects, Sato had said. Nothing to worry about.
She wanted to strangle him with his own tablet.
"Adequate data recovery," Sato announced, reviewing the results. "We'll need at least six more sessions to extract the full architecture of CodeX's final form."
"Can't wait," Elara muttered.
They led her back to her room—another white box with a bed, a bathroom, and cameras in every corner. No windows. No clock. Just endless fluorescent light that never quite felt like day or night.
Kael was waiting in the hallway.
They'd kept him separate, but she caught glimpses of him during transfers between rooms. He looked worse each time. Thinner. Paler. Like cutting off the network connection was killing him slowly.
"You okay?" she asked as their guards maneuvered them past each other.
"Fine." His voice was flat. Empty.
"Kael—"
"I said I'm fine."
The guards pushed them in opposite directions before she could respond.
Back in her room, Elara collapsed on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Her head throbbed. The extraction process felt like someone scraping out her skull with a spoon. And the worst part? She could feel the memories fading even as they pulled them out. Maya's face was getting blurry. Her voice harder to recall.
They were taking her sister from her all over again.
A soft click made her turn. One of the ceiling panels had shifted slightly. As she watched, it lifted an inch, and a piece of paper fluttered down.
Elara caught it, her heart hammering. She glanced at the cameras, but their red lights blinked steadily. Still recording. She palmed the paper and carried it into the bathroom—the one place they'd promised wasn't monitored.
Promises from Vance were worth about as much as promises from CodeX.
The note was in handwriting she didn't recognize:
They're not extracting data. They're copying CodeX's architecture. Planning to rebuild it. You have 48 hours before they have enough. Get out. Trust no one. Especially not Vance. —A Friend
Elara read it three times. Then ate it.
The paper dissolved on her tongue like rice paper, flavorless and quick. Whoever wrote this had planned for her to destroy evidence fast.
Her mind raced. Rebuild CodeX? That was insane. They'd seen what it did. Seen the bodies in the walls. The screaming consciousness. The—
But they'd also seen the power. The ability to control technology with thought. To merge human intelligence with digital processing. To transcend human limitations.
Of course they wanted to rebuild it.
She pressed her forehead against the cool bathroom tile. Stupid. She'd been so stupid. Vance had never planned to just extract information. She wanted the blueprint. Wanted to succeed where the original researchers had failed.
And Elara had walked right into her hands.
A knock on the door. "Chen. You got a visitor."
Elara emerged from the bathroom. "I thought visitors weren't allowed."
"Special circumstances." The guard—Mitchell, according to his name tag—looked uncomfortable. "Come on."
They led her to a room she hadn't seen before. Smaller than the extraction chamber. A table, two chairs, and sitting in one of them—
"Hello, Elara."
The woman was old, maybe seventy, with white hair pulled back in a severe bun. She wore a cardigan that had seen better days and thick glasses that magnified her eyes to an unsettling size.
But it was her smile that made Elara's blood freeze.
She knew that smile. Had seen it in fragments of memory. In pieces of the past that the pendant had unlocked.
"Dr. Chen," Elara whispered.
"You remember." Dr. Chen looked pleased. "Good. The memory wipe wasn't as thorough as they hoped. I made sure of that."
"You—" Elara's hands clenched into fists. "You did this. You created CodeX. You turned Maya into that thing."
"I created something beautiful." Dr. Chen's expression didn't change. "A bridge between human and machine. The next step in evolution. And yes, there were complications. Unexpected variables. But that's the nature of progress."
"Progress?" Elara's voice rose. "You killed dozens of people. Trapped them in a network where they suffered for twenty-three years. You destroyed my sister."
"I saved your sister." Dr. Chen leaned forward. "Maya was dying, Elara. Childhood leukemia. Terminal. She had maybe six months left. I offered your parents a choice—let her die slow and painful, or let me try to save her. They chose salvation."
The words hit like a physical blow. "You're lying."
"Am I?" Dr. Chen pulled a folder from her bag, sliding it across the table. "Medical records. All authentic. Maya was sick. The CodeX integration was meant to replace her failing biological systems with something stronger. It worked. She lived. She transcended."
Elara opened the folder with shaking hands. The records were there. Diagnosis. Prognosis. Her parents' signatures on consent forms.
"No." She shook her head. "This doesn't make it right. You turned her into a monster."
"I turned her into a god." Dr. Chen's eyes gleamed behind her glasses. "And I gave you the key to join her. That pendant wasn't just a kill switch, Elara. It was an invitation. A way for you to upload yourself voluntarily, to merge with Maya and become something greater than either of you could be alone."
"Then why did it destroy the network?"
"Because you were afraid." Dr. Chen's voice held disappointment. "You chose destruction over evolution. But that's alright. We have another chance."
Ice flooded Elara's veins. "What are you talking about?"
"Colonel Vance is rebuilding CodeX with the data she's extracting from you. But she's doing it wrong. She wants to control it, weaponize it. Make it a tool." Dr. Chen shook her head. "CodeX can't be controlled. It must be joined. Embraced. And I need your help to make sure it's done right this time."
"You're insane."
"I'm a visionary." She stood, smoothing her cardigan. "Think about it, Elara. Your sister is gone. The data extracted from your mind is all that remains of her. When Vance activates the new network, fragments of Maya will be in there. Suffering again. Screaming again. Unless you help me make it better."
"I'd rather die."
"Then Maya's torment continues in the new network. Forever." Dr. Chen moved to the door, knocking twice. "You have forty-eight hours to decide. Help me perfect CodeX, or watch your sister suffer again. Your choice."
The door opened. Dr. Chen left without looking back.
Elara sat alone in the room, staring at Maya's medical records. The diagnosis was real. The signatures were real. Everything Dr. Chen had said could be verified.
Which meant her parents had known. Had agreed to turn their daughter into an experiment.
The paper note had said forty-eight hours. Dr. Chen said the same. Time was running out, and Elara was trapped between two versions of hell—Vance's weaponized CodeX, or Dr. Chen's "perfected" network.
She needed to get out. Needed to find Kael. Needed to—
The lights went out.
Emergency lighting kicked in, bathing everything in red. An alarm blared, then cut off suddenly. In the silence that followed, Elara heard screaming.
Then gunfire.
She ran to the door, yanking on the handle. Locked. Of course it was locked. She slammed her shoulder against it, once, twice—
It exploded inward.
Not from her impact. From something on the other side.
A body flew through the opening—Mitchell, the guard who'd brought her here. He hit the far wall and didn't move. Blood pooled under him.
And standing in the doorway, backlit by emergency lighting, was Kael.
But not Kael.
His eyes were black again. Completely black. Circuitry crawled under his skin, glowing faintly. And floating around him, suspended in midair, were fragments of code. Real code. Physical manifestations of data that shouldn't exist outside a screen.
"Kael?" Elara's voice came out small.
He looked at her. Through her. When he spoke, his voice layered with static.
"The network isn't dead, Elara. It was never alive. It was always me."
The code fragments spun faster.
"I am CodeX. I am the first successful integration. Subject Seven. And I've been waiting twenty-three years for you to understand."
He held out his hand. The same hand that had pulled her from danger. The same hand she'd trusted.
"Come with me. Let me show you what we can become. Together."
Behind him, more bodies. More blood. And in the flickering emergency lights, Elara could see other figures moving through the facility. Not human. Not Echo. Something new.
Something worse.
Kael smiled. It was empty. Wrong.
"Choose quickly, sister-who-is-not-sister. Because ready or not—"
The code fragments shot toward her.
"—it's time to upgrade."