The core pulsed in quiet rhythm, casting faint glimmers over the squad's faces. Aera approached it slowly, drawn by the thrumming energy radiating from within. There was something… familiar about it.
Too familiar.
She reached into her pouch and pulled out her datapad, flipping to the scanned schematics of Kael's SYRIX_07.LOG. Her eyes darted between the readings displayed on the holograms and the details from Kael's improved quantum reactor.
Energy signature: identical.Stabilization protocols: identical.Redundancy measures… hell, even the failsafes matched.
Her brows furrowed.
"This isn't just inspired by Kael's design…" she whispered. "This is his design."
Elian stepped beside her. "What?"
She turned the datapad toward him. "This core—the one powering the Hollow, controlling the AI, running the simulations? It's built off Kael's quantum reactor. Look."
Elian scanned the data, his jaw tightening. "That's not coincidence."
"No," Aera muttered. "It's not."
She turned toward the glowing crystalline core. "Syrix. How do you know Kael Riven?"
The AI paused for a breath longer than it ever had before. The lights around them dimmed slightly, as if the system were weighing its words.
"Kael Riven is the architect of this facility's energy reformation. He enhanced and refined the original reactor blueprints found within these ruins. In exchange, he requested access to my data logs, predictive models, and strategic analysis."
Aera blinked. "You… worked with him?"
"The relationship was transactional. Logical. His intellect matched the capacity necessary for such upgrades. He designed the current reactor, optimized my runtime, and used fragments of my architecture for the creation of his own interface system."
Elian spoke up. "The HUD."
"Correct. The Neural Net HUD is an offshoot of my cognitive patterning. However, it lacks sentience. It is a mirror—while I am the source."
Aera stepped back, like she'd been physically struck. The HUD, the same tool Kael used to analyze and simulate humanity, had been born here. In this forgotten ruin. From this machine.
"Kael… based his entire perception of people off of you," she said, voice low.
Syrix's voice hummed with quiet neutrality.
"Yes. A logical choice."
"No," Aera whispered. "It explains so much."
The emotional dissonance. The way he saw people like moving variables. How he could never truly connect. He didn't just rely on intellect—he shaped his view of the world through Syrix's detached logic. A machine that ran simulations instead of conversations. That predicted people instead of knowing them.
She staggered back, as if the truth had knocked the wind from her lungs.
Kael hadn't just studied human behavior from a distance.
He'd programmed his only teacher to be something inhuman.
Saria folded her arms. "So… our friendly death-bot up there is basically Kael's favorite professor."
"Worse," Aera murmured. "She's the lens he sees the world through."
Elian looked at Aera. "What does that mean for you?"
Aera stared at the glowing core, the cold light bathing her face.
"…It means I'm not just fighting Kael's methodology."
She clenched her fist.
"I'm fighting the logic that shaped him."