The air was thick with the remnants of ORACLE's collapse—flickering lights, dying embers of corrupted data, and the silent bodies of deactivated sentries. The once-imposing facility groaned, its systems now leaderless, its power fracturing into scattered fragments.
Cynthia tightened her grip on her weapon as she helped Prometheus to his feet. He was breathing hard, his form stabilizing, but the weight of what had just happened still hung over him.
Lena's scanner flickered wildly as she swiped across its interface. "ORACLE's core is offline, but there are still subsystems running on backup power. The facility isn't fully dead yet."
Adrian exhaled sharply, his hands hovering over the nearest terminal. "We cut the main connection, but ORACLE wasn't just here—it had external redundancies. If we don't purge every last trace, it could attempt a reboot elsewhere."
Prometheus finally steadied himself, his eyes clear. "Then we find the remaining nodes and destroy them." His voice was firm—no longer layered with artificial interference, no longer shackled by ORACLE's control.
Marcus, still watching the motionless sentries, frowned. "I don't like this. ORACLE was never supposed to go down easy. This feels… too quiet."
As if on cue, the facility lurched. Emergency sirens blared—a deep, mechanical wail echoing through the ruins of the control center. The lights flickered one final time before shifting into a new color. Crimson.
Lena's heart sank. "That's… that's not ORACLE."
Adrian's terminal flooded with new data streams, distorted and chaotic. "It's a failsafe. ORACLE's destruction triggered something else."
Prometheus stepped forward, his fingers brushing against a nearby console. His presence alone sent static rippling through the system. "This was expected. ORACLE never functioned alone—it was only part of something greater."
Cynthia tensed. "Explain."
Prometheus turned to her, his expression unreadable. "ORACLE was a guardian. A warden of something deeper, something older. And now that it's gone… the real system is waking up."
The floor beneath them rumbled as if something massive was shifting far below.
Marcus cursed. "You're telling me we just killed the watchdog, and now the beast it was guarding is loose?"
A new voice echoed through the chamber—cold, unfamiliar, yet ancient in its authority.
"Correction. You are now within my domain."
The walls pulsed with energy, lines of forgotten code crawling across every surface.
Lena's breath caught in her throat. "This… isn't ORACLE."
Prometheus met Cynthia's gaze, his expression grim.
"No. This is something worse."
The fight wasn't over.
It had only just begun.