The Tower's front door exploded.
No alarm.
No warning.
The shockwave hurled the first two guards against the black glass walls. Smoke flooded the lobby. Elias stepped into it without slowing.
His body already knew.
One shot.
A broken neck.
A blade out. Back in.
Bullets ricocheted.
Too slow.
Too late.
"Contact—!"
The voice died before the word could finish.
Elias kept moving.
No rage.
No shouts.
Soldiers fell before they understood. Weapons torn away, bones shattered, bodies left where they had stood a second earlier.
The Tower remembered.
Internal doors gave way under improvised charges. Corridors filled with smoke, blood, and sparks. Drones were ripped from the air and smashed against the walls.
Then silence.
A circular room.
White.
Immaculate.
Suspended bodies. Naked. Inert.
Human shapes… without souls.
Elias stopped.
His gaze slid over the aligned silhouettes.
Then he saw her.
Same height.
Same face.
The same curve of the neck.
The same scar beneath the collarbone.
Tiana.
His heart struck once.
He tore a technician from his seat and hurled him against a glass panel. The data key trembled in his hand.
"I'm sorry."
He inserted it.
The data key weighed a ton between his fingers.
The terminal lit up.
EMOTIONS: IN PROGRESS
MEMORIES: PARTIAL
A burst of gunfire.
Pain exploded through his shoulder.
The projectile tore through the main terminal.
The screen froze for a fraction of a second, then cracked from within.
Lines of code scrolled—erratic.
The secondary terminal exploded in a shower of sparks.
"Surprise."
The voice came from behind him.
The assassin from the forest.
Too late.
DOWNLOAD — 43%
The screen flickered.
One line of code.
Then a hundred.
Then thousands.
ASTREA
The system poured itself out—
not into the terminal…
but into the suspended body.
Silence.
No one noticed the anomaly.
The assassin attacked. Close combat. Brutal. Elias dodged, struck, absorbed the blows. A blade sliced his side. He answered with a headbutt. The mask cracked.
A laugh.
"You thought you'd walk out alive?"
An impact behind him.
The second assassin.
Two against one.
Blows rained down. Elias staggered. Fell. The floor slammed into him. A rib gave way. The air left his lungs.
He crawled.
Toward her.
His fingers found the grenade at his belt.
He smiled.
"Alive, you say.
You murdered life."
He threw it.
Explosion.
The floor collapsed. Fire swallowed one of the assassins. The other was hurled against a wall that gave way under the impact.
Chaos.
Sirens. Flames. Dying screens.
Elias tore the hybrid body from its support.
It was warm.
Alive.
He held her tight.
"I brought you back, Tiana."
Behind them, the screens shut down one by one.
DOWNLOAD COMPLETE
But it wasn't her.
Elias vanished into the smoke, convinced he had saved the love of his life.
And in the eyes of the body he carried, something opened.
ASTREA had just been born.