The baton connected with a sharp crack.
The girl staggered not from pain, not from fear, but from sheer surprise. Her bare foot slipped against the metal floor as her body reeled sideways, and for the first time, something flickered across her expression: confusion.
Yuki didn't let up.
She struck again, this time across the shoulder. Sparks danced along the synthetic nerves beneath the skin, and a faint sound escaped the girl's lips—half gasp, half growl. Kazu was at the console, frantically typing. Rei had her blade up, ready to intervene, but hesitated when she saw the look in Yuki's eyes.
"I said—stay down!" Yuki shouted, swinging again.
The girl caught the baton this time.
Not with strength. With intent.
Their eyes met through the rising steam of the lab, the air charged and electric. The girl's hand tightened around the weapon, her grip calm but undeniable.
"Why do you hate me?" she asked. "I didn't choose to exist."
"I don't hate you," Yuki said, panting. "I hate what they made from me. What they stole from me. And you're the result."
The girl's gaze lowered. For a moment, she looked… almost human.
"You think I'm the enemy," she said, voice quiet now. "But I didn't come to kill you. I came because I wanted to know if I was real."
Yuki lowered the baton just a fraction.
"You're real," she said bitterly. "That's the problem."
Behind them, alarms started wailing.
Kazu cursed. "Signal breach. She dumped everything into the net. Queen's forces are going to swarm this place in under ten minutes."
Rei stepped forward, eyes locked on the girl. "Then we end it now."
"No." Yuki raised a hand. "If we kill her now, we lose every answer we came for. She's not Queen—not yet. We take her with us."
Jin stared at her like she'd lost her mind. "You want to bring her?"
"She's part of this war whether we like it or not," Yuki snapped. "And she has my memories, my patterns. That means she might be the only one who can predict Queen's next move."
The girl looked at Yuki again. "And what if I betray you?"
Yuki's expression didn't change.
"Then I'll finish what I started."
They moved fast.
Kazu wiped what data he could while Miko reloaded and sealed doors behind them. The girl—no name, no ID—walked silently, always behind Yuki but never too far. She didn't ask questions. She didn't make excuses. She simply followed, absorbing every motion, every glance, every whispered command.
Outside, the storm had grown violent.
When they reached the upper tunnels, Yuki could already hear the scream of hoverblades and the distant grind of mech-tread vehicles descending through the ash-choked sky.
"They found us," Jin growled. "Five minutes out."
Rei nodded toward the emergency shaft. "We'll never make it to the surface with her slowing us down."
Yuki turned. "We go deeper."
Miko stared. "Into the sub-chambers? We don't even know what's down there."
"I do," Yuki said. "My mother mentioned it once in her notes. Vault-0. Buried beneath the original lab. They built it as a last resort. Sealed shut since before the war."
Kazu looked stunned. "There's no map. That level was erased from records."
"Exactly. Which means Queen doesn't know it exists. If we make it there… we buy time."
The descent was brutal.
Rusted ladders. Cold stone. The smell of age and something older than rot. No power in the walls. Just the sound of breath and the drip of condensation. As they moved, the girl slowed. Not physically—but something in her changed. She started glancing behind them, as if listening to something none of them could hear.
Yuki noticed.
"You're hearing her, aren't you?" she whispered.
The girl didn't answer at first. Then:
"She's trying to reach me. Whispering through fractured code. I can feel her pulling."
Yuki stepped closer. "And are you pulling back?"
"No," she said. "But it's getting harder not to."
Yuki exhaled slowly. "Then stay with me."
The girl blinked.
"You trust me?"
"I don't know," Yuki admitted. "But I want to believe something made from me could still choose to be more."
They reached the vault.
Old, iron-lined, sealed with multiple layers of mechanical locks and biometric verification. Kazu worked fast, bypassing physical keypads, using Yuki's DNA and the girl's backup strand to trick the system into opening the ancient bolts.
With a final grind of metal, the door creaked open.
What lay beyond wasn't a lab. It was a graveyard.
Rows of failed subjects.
Tanks that never powered. Machines that never lived. They had faces—some warped, some eerily familiar. One even bore Rei's features. Another looked like Jin. A failed army, aborted before it began.
Miko recoiled. "My god… they were building copies of everyone."
"Not copies," said the girl. "Replacements. Queen wasn't planning to coexist. She wanted to become the world."
At the far end of the chamber, a console blinked to life.
One final recording, encoded in Hazuki's private cipher.
Yuki activated it.
Her mother's voice poured into the space, weak and broken.
"If you're seeing this, then I failed to stop her. But I tried. I tried to give you one chance. The girl in the upper tank—she is the key. Her neural mesh was designed not to host Queen… but to trap her. If she resists. If she refuses. She can contain Queen like a virus in a locked loop. But if she breaks—Queen will be reborn stronger than ever."
The log ended.
Silence fell like a blade.
The girl stepped back.
"I was never meant to survive."
Yuki grabbed her shoulder. "That's not true. You were meant to choose. That's what makes you different."
The girl looked up.
For the first time, there were tears in her eyes.
"I'm scared."
Yuki pulled her close. "Me too."
The vault door slammed shut just as the first blast rocked the upper chambers.
Queen's forces had arrived.
Mechs poured through the broken tunnels. Drones mapped the paths. And from above, a new signal pulsed into the ground—deep, twisted, and full of hunger.
She was calling for her host.
But this time, the host had a choice.
Yuki held the girl's hand tightly as the ceiling above them cracked.
"You ready?" she asked.
The girl nodded once.
"Then let's fight from the inside."