The shelter descended into chaos.
The pulse from the sphere hadn't just knocked Booker unconscious—it had awakened something beneath us. The walls cracked. The power grid shorted out. Screams echoed as lights burst and ceiling tiles collapsed. And underneath it all… a hum. Deep and rhythmic, like the city itself had a heartbeat.
I knelt beside Booker, gripping his shoulder. He was convulsing, body arching unnaturally, eyes rolled back. But there was something worse—something behind his eyes. I could feel it now, not just through my powers, but like a tether had formed between us. A link. Whatever was inside him… it wasn't dormant anymore.
Rev crouched next to me, hand glowing faintly as he pressed it to Booker's chest. "He's out cold," he said. "But his energy signature just spiked."
"It's matching the sphere's frequency," Chase added, scanning his tablet. "They're resonating."
"What does that mean?" Jacob asked.
Chase didn't answer. He just swallowed hard and turned the tablet to show us a visual waveform—two jagged frequencies merging into one.
"He's syncing with it," Chase finally said. "Or worse—it's syncing with him."
Maddie moved to the entrance, looking out across the panicked crowd. "We need to get out of here."
"We can't," I said. "Not yet."
"What do you mean?" she shot back, eyes fierce.
"I saw Aaliah through it. The sphere isn't just connected to Booker. It's connected to her. If we leave now, we might lose the signal."
Rev stepped forward, glancing toward the survivors. "Then we split up. You figure out how to trace your sister. I'll keep these people from panicking and trampling each other."
Jacob cracked his knuckles. "And I'll smash anything that comes through those walls."
"You'll need to hold off more than that," Chase muttered. He turned his screen toward me. "There's a secondary signal activating beneath the shelter. It's artificial. Not Android—but close. Something old."
"Old like Nullwave?" I asked.
Chase shook his head. "Older. From before they refined the tech. These are the kind of buried labs the Harbingers scavenge to find raw memory spheres."
I stared at the device pulsing in the middle of the shelter. Its glow had shifted—from white to red. That couldn't be good.
"Where's it pulling from?" I asked.
Chase blinked. "Below."
Without hesitation, I rose to my feet. "We need to find the source."
The lower levels beneath the shelter weren't designed for access. Most of the survivors didn't even know they existed. Chase guided us using his scanner, and Rev stayed behind with Maddie to keep the surface calm.
Jacob and I descended through rusted service tunnels and half-flooded maintenance corridors, our boots echoing in knee-high water. The deeper we went, the colder it got.
"You sure you're ready for this?" Jacob asked, gauntlets glowing with soft heat to keep the humidity from messing with his grip.
"I'm not ready for any of this," I muttered. "But we don't get to wait until we are."
A heavy door blocked our path—a vault-style seal scorched with the remnants of old Sentinel markings. The emblem had been scratched out. Something had been trying to keep this place hidden.
I placed a hand on the metal. It hummed under my touch.
"Feels like it's calling to you," Jacob said.
"It is."
I focused, channeling the smallest thread of energy into my palm. The door groaned. Metal screamed as the old seal deactivated, layers of rusted mechanisms grinding open for the first time in years.
Beyond it was a chamber.
It was cold, sterile… and humming.
The floor was covered in thick cables, all connected to a suspended array in the center. Hovering at its core, surrounded by jagged glass conduits, was another sphere.
But this one was different.
It wasn't broadcasting. It was recording.
I stepped closer, and a rush of memories crashed into me. Not mine. Someone else's. Aaliah's.
She was in pain.
The wires in her back. The screaming. The sounds of machines scraping her thoughts into data. I saw moments—flashes of her fighting back, resisting the Harbingers' control. Every second she survived was a rebellion.
"She's resisting them," I said aloud. "They tried to use her memories… but she's blocking them out."
Jacob approached cautiously. "Why would they want her memories?"
"Because she saw something," I said. "Something they don't want us to know."
My fingers grazed the edge of the sphere—and the room collapsed around me.
I stood in a hallway made of light.
Images flickered along the walls like shattered film. Aaliah was there, sprinting down a corridor of glass, pursued by red-eyed drones. She turned toward me.
Not an illusion.
A connection.
"Kaleb," she said, her voice distorted. "They're trying to rewrite me. Trap me inside my mind. But I broke their code. I left a fragment inside the sphere. You have to find the rest."
"Where are you?" I asked, but she was already fading.
"Follow the frequency… 187-point…"
Then silence.
I gasped and staggered back into the chamber, my nose bleeding.
Jacob caught me. "You good?"
"She's inside a memory core," I said, wiping my face. "They've got her strung up to a whole network of these things, trying to rewrite her brain—but she found a way to leave a trail. We follow it, we find her."
Before he could reply, the chamber lights flickered.
And then—footsteps.
Heavy, mechanical.
Jacob turned, raising his gauntlets. "We've got company."
Two androids dropped from the ceiling, metal claws scraping sparks off the floor.
I didn't hesitate. Power surged through me, and with one blast, I shattered the nearest drone into shards of burning steel. Jacob slammed his fists together and released a controlled shockwave, sending the second one crashing into the wall.
More were coming.
"Time to leave!" he yelled.
We ran, the chamber collapsing behind us as energy detonated from the broken sphere. Cables snapped like whips. Flame chased us up the corridor as the lab caved in.
We barely made it to the shelter level before the tunnel collapsed.
Back in the main chamber, the sphere had gone dark. Booker lay still, his breathing shallow.
Maddie looked at me, hope flickering in her eyes. "You found something?"
"She's alive," I said. "And she left us a trail."
Rev raised an eyebrow. "A trail through what?"
"The Nexus itself," I answered. "Their entire network of spheres and minds."
Chase looked down at his tablet. "Then we don't just need to fight the Harbingers."
"We need to go into the data stream."
Jacob cracked his knuckles. "Then let's break the locks."
Booker stirred.
His eyes snapped open—and they weren't his.
Not entirely.
"Kaleb…" he rasped. "Something else is coming."
"What is it?" I asked.
He stared past me, eyes wide.
"The Grand Calculus... has arrived."