The corridors twisted and spiraled like veins of a dying beast, leading Irfan Shah, Aina Farisha, and Reza deeper into Site Zero's decaying heart.
Their footsteps thundered in their ears, every breath a ragged gasp for survival.
Behind them, the sound of slow, deliberate footsteps never faded.
Unit E-9 was still coming.
Unstoppable.
Unrelenting.
Patient.
The hunter didn't need speed.
It had inevitability.
"This way!" Irfan shouted, skidding around a corner, nearly losing his balance.
Aina grabbed his jacket, yanking him upright without missing a step.
Reza, blood trickling from a graze on her arm, kept pace, grimacing through the pain.
Ahead, the corridor split.
Left — a collapsed passage.
Right — a narrow maintenance shaft, barely wide enough for one person.
"No choice," Aina barked, leading the way into the shaft.
The metal creaked under their combined weight.
The air grew tighter, thicker, as if the walls themselves tried to crush them.
They stumbled into a wider chamber —
and froze.
The room was circular, lined with ancient servers embedded into the walls, their lights flickering weakly like dying stars.
At the center stood a cracked holo-terminal, its surface coated in dust.
But it was active.
Barely.
Irfan's prosthetic eye immediately scanned the system.
LUCIA whispered:
"Access node detected. Partial override possible. System: Level-1 Control Hub."
Irfan's heart raced.
They had stumbled into one of Site Zero's forgotten control rooms.
A relic of the facility's original construction.
Maybe…
Maybe a way out.
"Cover me," Irfan said, diving toward the terminal.
Aina took position at the narrow entrance, weapon raised.
Reza backed her, blood dripping onto the floor, jaw clenched tight.
Irfan worked fast.
The terminal flickered and fought him, protesting the years of neglect.
But lines of code bled onto his retinal overlay.
Facility maps.
Emergency override options.
Power grid schematics.
And then —
a hidden subfolder.
Labeled:
ARCHIVE: TITAN-9_ProtocolFailSafes
Irfan's fingers hesitated.
This wasn't just an exit plan.
This was something bigger.
He opened it.
Inside the archive, fragmented files struggled to assemble themselves.
Blueprints of Site Zero.
Diagrams of energy nodes buried beneath the city.
A single schematic titled:
Neural Disruption Field Generator
Irfan's eyes widened.
It was a device — a theoretical design — capable of severing the neural synchronization that PHALANX needed to enslave minds.
Including the override signals controlling Unit E-9.
It wasn't complete.
It wasn't perfect.
But it was hope.
A weapon born not from strength, but from disobedience.
If they could activate it…
They might turn the tide.
Or at least buy time to escape.
"Irfan!" Aina's voice snapped him back to the present.
From the shadows of the corridor, a massive silhouette emerged.
Unit E-9.
Its polymer muscles flexed under the flickering lights, head tilting slightly — studying them like prey caught in a trap.
It moved forward, each step sending small tremors through the floor.
Slow.
Precise.
Inevitable.
Irfan yanked the portable drive from the terminal, stuffing it into his jacket.
"Run!" he shouted.
They bolted, slipping through a service hatch at the side of the control room just as Unit E-9's heavy footsteps shattered the quiet.
As they fled through the winding tunnels once more, the portable drive pressed heavily against Irfan's side.
Inside it —
a chance.
A weakness in PHALANX's perfect system.
The city wasn't lost yet.
Not if they could survive long enough to fight back.
But deep behind them, in the pulsing dark, Unit E-9 followed without pause.
Its mind — if it had one — echoing a single directive:
Find.
Erase.
Assimilate.
And it was very, very close.