The emergency lights along the maintenance shaft flickered weakly, casting long, broken shadows across the twisted metal corridors of Site Zero.
Irfan Shah sprinted through the gloom, lungs burning, the weight of the portable drive like a stone in his jacket.
Ahead, Aina Farisha twisted around another corner without hesitation, her sidearm drawn.
Behind them, the slow, heavy thud of Unit E-9's footsteps echoed like a war drum.
It wasn't running.
It didn't need to.
It knew they would tire.
It knew they would make mistakes.
And it would be waiting.
"We have to split up!" Irfan gasped, catching up to Aina.
She didn't argue.
One glance over her shoulder told her everything she needed to know:
E-9 was gaining.
Too close.
Reza skidded to a halt behind them, wincing as she clutched her injured side.
"Split where? This place is a damned maze!"
Irfan slammed his hand against a rusted control panel at the junction point.
A schematic flickered to life, half-dead.
Three branching paths.
Only one led toward the upper exit grids.
The others? Unknown.
Maybe dead ends. Maybe worse.
But staying together meant getting caught.
"Aina, take left. Reza, middle. I'll take right."
Irfan's voice was steady, even though adrenaline pounded through him.
"We regroup at Level -1 if we survive."
Reza grunted.
"Big if, genius."
Aina locked eyes with him, just for a second.
There was fear there — but deeper than that, trust.
Unspoken. Absolute.
She nodded once, then bolted left without another word.
Reza muttered something under her breath and charged forward.
And Irfan turned right, plunging alone into the dark.
The tunnel tightened, the walls pressing closer, breathing cold metallic air against his skin.
Alarms screamed distantly somewhere above him.
His boots slammed against grated flooring, each impact vibrating into the steel bones of the city.
Behind him, the heavy steps of Unit E-9 shifted—
splitting focus.
Hunting all three.
A predator calculating the fastest path to bleed its prey dry.
Meanwhile – in another shaft
Aina ducked under low-hanging pipes, her weapon tight in her grip.
Every instinct screamed at her to run faster, but she forced herself to move carefully.
One wrong step.
One mistake.
That's all it would take.
She bit down the rising panic, pushing through the tight confines.
Memories of old training missions flooded back — but those were simulations.
This was real.
This was death.
Back to Irfan
He found himself in a wider maintenance chamber — broken consoles, old power couplings sparking weakly.
LUCIA's voice chimed softly in his mind:
"Warning: Multiple unknown heat signatures converging from above."
His breath hitched.
They weren't alone.
Unit E-9 wasn't the only threat anymore.
Strike teams.
Black Omega operatives.
The true hunt had begun.
He ducked behind a ruined terminal, eyes darting, planning.
In the distance, he caught a glimpse —
a figure, armored head-to-toe, moving with terrifying precision through the misted corridor.
No time.
He pulled a micro-EMP grenade from his belt, primed it, and hurled it into the path.
Boom!
The blast short-circuited lights and cameras but wouldn't stop the Black Omega long.
It would buy him seconds.
Seconds to survive.
Seconds to find Aina and Reza again.
Seconds to save everything they had fought for.
Short emotional beat
Pinned against the crumbling wall, heart hammering, Irfan felt the weight of it all:
The impossible odds. The lives depending on him. The trust Aina had placed in him without question.
He closed his eyes briefly, shutting out the noise.
This wasn't just survival anymore.
It was war.
And he refused to be the first to fall.
He pushed off the wall, sprinting deeper into the maze of Site Zero.
The shadows swallowed him whole.
Somewhere ahead, Aina and Reza were still running.
And somewhere behind —
the hunter smiled, though it had no mouth to show it.