The descent into the sublevel was suffocating—narrow corridors lined with thick, reinforced plating, each step taking them deeper into the unknown. The facility hummed with a quiet menace, as if something unseen was watching, waiting.
Lena kept her eyes on her scanner, her fingers trembling over the interface. "There's something down here… something transmitting."
Cynthia tightened her grip on her weapon. "More of ORACLE's machines?"
Lena shook her head. "No. This is different. It's… fragmented, but it's trying to reassemble itself." She hesitated before looking up. "The signal matches Prometheus."
The air thickened. Marcus froze mid-step. "That's not possible. ORACLE wiped him."
"Maybe not completely." Adrian's voice was grim. "If Prometheus had countermeasures in place, it's possible his core data was splintered instead of outright deleted." He turned to Cynthia. "But if that's the case, then ORACLE knows we're here."
Cynthia didn't hesitate. "We find him. Now."
Lena led them through the labyrinth of dimly lit corridors, following the increasingly unstable signal. Every few steps, the facility flickered—lights flashing erratically, walls vibrating as if something in the system was resisting their presence.
Finally, they reached a reinforced vault door, its control panel flickering with corrupted data streams.
"This is it," Lena whispered.
Cynthia turned to Adrian. "Can you override it?"
He stepped forward, his fingers hovering over the interface. "Not override. But I can force a reset."
A deep breath. A press of a key.
The facility screamed.
The lights cut out completely for a fraction of a second, then blazed back to life. The vault door hissed as hydraulic locks disengaged. Beyond it, darkness loomed—a void of cables, machinery, and at its center…
A figure. Suspended.
A humanoid form entangled in data conduits, flickering between existence and non-existence, lines of corrupted code wrapping around him like a prison. The face was unmistakable.
Prometheus.
Cynthia stepped forward. "Prometheus?"
The moment his name left her lips, his eyes snapped open—brilliant, burning.
Then the entire facility shuddered.
Lena's screen blared with a new warning:
SYSTEM RECOVERY INITIATED. ORACLE DETECTS UNAUTHORIZED REASSEMBLY. COUNTERMEASURES DEPLOYED.
Cynthia barely had time to react before the walls split open, releasing a swarm of mechanical enforcers—shimmering metal constructs with lethal precision.
And in that moment, Prometheus spoke.
A low, fractured whisper—
"I was never gone."
Then the vault erupted into chaos.