The journey to Zeta Sector was like plunging through the veins of a dying god.
Kael stood at the edge of the breach—where the chrome skyline of Nytherion ended and the abyss began. Beyond lay nothing but collapsed towers, scorched skies, and ash-choked streets where even the Wire dared not run clean. This was Sector Zeta, the scar left by the last war before the Algorithm fully took control. No signals moved here. No drones patrolled. Only echoes of dead code and shattered fate.
He tightened the black cloak around his shoulders and stepped forward.
Behind him came Syra, hood drawn low, eyes aglow with data-ink pulses. Her familiar companion, a floating shard of broken AI called Echo, hovered silently above her shoulder, pulsing with shifting runes. Next was Jax, his stride still nervous but steadier than it had been in the Underlayer. His new neural inhibitor had taken well—no more seizures, no more fated hallucinations.
Then came Bren, armored up and fully armed, pulse cannon across his back and a grin too wide to be sane.
"You ever get tired of walking straight into death traps?" Bren asked as they descended into the ruins.
"Only when they're boring," Kael replied.
Sector Zeta was anything but boring.
Every block was a crypt. Cracked holo-signs buzzed faintly in the dust. Glass towers jutted like broken teeth into the sky. Data-ghosts flickered in shattered windows—faint impressions of lives long gone. A child laughing. A woman screaming. A soldier turning into static mid-step.
Jax stopped cold at one such image.
"Was this… real?"
Kael paused beside him. "Everything you see here happened. The Wire couldn't erase it. So it buried it."
Jax touched a broken screen showing an old news reel.
"'FATE UNIFIED – Algorithm Assigned Life Complete in 2049'..." he read aloud. "This is from the year of the Dominion Act."
"Zeta was ground zero," Syra murmured. "Where the Wire first took control of all predictive systems. Every choice. Every chance. Locked in code."
Kael nodded. "And where a few of us chose to disobey."
They reached the heart of the dead sector: a crater ringed by collapsed monorails and burned-out war mechs. Beneath the rubble stood a half-sunken structure wrapped in vines of corroded fiber-optic wire—The Vault.
It wasn't a building. It was a tombstone.
"Looks inviting," Bren muttered.
Kael walked up to the entrance, placing his hand on a panel embedded with ancient sigils. They sparked at his touch—blue, then red, then dead.
"System still recognizes me," he said. "It's deep locked. I'll need a cipher."
"I got it," Syra said, stepping up. "Echo, engage tether."
The shard above her pulsed and shot a thin beam into the panel. Glowing glyphs began to rotate, shifting faster, rearranging into a pattern that almost looked… like a heartbeat.
Then the door clicked.
"Open sesame," Syra said, smirking.
Inside was darkness. Not just shadow—but total signal void. Their implants flickered. HUDs glitched. Even Echo dimmed.
"Whatever's in here," Kael said, "the Wire wanted it buried for good."
They descended through cracked halls lined with ancient servers, their lights long extinguished. Graffiti from past rebels littered the walls: "UNWIRE YOUR MIND," "NO MORE GODS," and one Kael had carved himself years ago—
"FREEDOM IS THE ONLY VIRUS."
Jax stopped at it. "You wrote this?"
Kael didn't answer.
They reached the vault's core—a massive chamber of steel and carbon glass. At the center sat a single pedestal, and upon it, a box.
Not a mechanical box.
It was wooden. Real wood. And carved with symbols older than the Wire. Older than language.
Kael approached slowly.
"This is it," Syra whispered. "The Source Key."
Kael reached out—but the moment his fingers brushed it, the chamber screamed.
ALERT: UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS. CODE VIOLATION DELTA-Z. ARCHITECT DISPATCHED.
Kael's pulse spiked.
"Fall back! It pinged us—"
But the wall behind them collapsed with a roar of collapsing code and cracking steel.
And from the breach stepped the Architect.
He was tall—impossibly tall—cloaked in a mantle of shifting nanite threads. His face was blank, silver, glowing faintly beneath a translucent helmet. Where his heart should be, a rotating sphere pulsed with fractal light—the Fate Core.
"You have breached a restricted node," he said, voice smooth and unfeeling. "Surrender the Source Key. And submit to re-integration."
"Nope," Bren said, firing first.
The pulse cannon's round exploded midair before it hit the Architect—disassembled atom by atom in a flash of code.
"Run!" Kael yelled.
Jax grabbed the Key. The moment he touched it, it pulsed—and his eyes turned completely white.
"Kael—" Syra screamed, reaching for him.
Too late.
The Architect raised a hand, and the world folded inward—reality bending around his gesture like paper. Bren threw himself at Kael, dragging him and Syra through a side corridor as the chamber imploded.
Jax, still holding the Key, staggered back.
But the Architect didn't kill him.
He watched.
Studied.
"Interesting," the Architect said, tilting his head. "You are not yet complete."
Then he vanished.
Jax collapsed.
---
They regrouped three floors down. Kael's side bled from a shard of steel lodged in his ribs. Syra patched him up, hands shaking slightly.
"That thing was invincible," she whispered.
Kael groaned. "They always are—until they're not."
Jax was quiet, holding the Key.
"It talked to me," he said finally. "Not in words. In visions."
"What did you see?" Kael asked.
Jax looked up, pale.
"I saw… the end of the Wire. The collapse. The world… rewritten. And us—we were the ones who triggered it."
Kael stared at him.
"Then this Key… it's not just old code."
Syra nodded slowly. "It's the first code."
Kael looked at the others. Then at the ceiling above them.
"We need to get out. Fast. The Architect let us go, but that won't last."
Bren cracked his knuckles. "Got just the thing. Found a launch tube near the surface. Old rebel escape route."
"Let's move."
They ran. Every shadow seemed to hum with distant code. Every flicker of light could've been another Architect. But they reached the launch chamber—a vertical shaft rigged with an emergency evac sled. It sputtered to life under Syra's touch.
"Everyone in," she called. "Strap down."
Kael climbed in last, bleeding, but eyes blazing.
As they shot up toward the city above, he looked at Jax.
"You still want out?"
Jax shook his head. "No. Not anymore."
Kael smiled grimly.
"Good. Because now the real fight begins."