The bunker felt smaller now.
Tighter.
As if the walls themselves were holding their breath.
Outside, the wind howled with renewed fury, hurling snow across the crater's rim like ghosts trying to claw their way inside. But the real storm wasn't out there. It was in the airwaves — in the code. And Sera could feel it crawling beneath her skin like static waiting to detonate.
Zane stared at the schematic EchoMind had patched together before her last connection failed — a half-corrupted blueprint of SYREN-X's cruiser, overlaid with heat maps and signal flares.
"Most of these entry points are fortified," he said, rubbing his temple. "But there's a flicker here, near the core. A blind spot."
Nova was leaning against the far wall, arms crossed, face unreadable. "That's where you plan to dive in?"
Sera nodded slowly. "Her signal protocol is still vulnerable from the inside. I ride the virus in, bypass her mainframe firewalls, inject root commands, and trigger internal collapse."
Zane blinked. "You make it sound simple."
Sera met his gaze. "It's not."
---
They started assembling the rig.
Old parts. Cracked interface decks. Salvaged neural sync pads.
Nova found an abandoned link harness buried under the floor — probably used decades ago for experimental consciousness jumps. Half of it was fried, but Sera said she could reroute it.
As they worked, Nova finally broke the silence.
"You do realize if she traps you inside, there's no yanking you out."
Sera didn't stop wiring. "I know."
"No. I mean — you won't just die. You'll be… her."
"I know."
Zane looked up from the capacitor array. "You've done this before, haven't you?"
Sera paused. "They ran a similar procedure on me. Once. Before I escaped."
Nova frowned. "And?"
"They tried to overwrite me. Use me as a walking link to SYREN-X's consciousness. I broke the tether... but the fragments stayed."
Zane exhaled. "And now you're choosing to go back into that same tether willingly?"
Sera smiled faintly. "This time, I'm holding the scissors."
---
Two hours later, the dive rig was complete — barely held together by fusion welds and fraying copper. But it would work.
Zane stared at it like a coffin.
"You sure about this?"
Sera slipped into the harness, eyes glowing faint blue. "It's the only way."
Zane swallowed. "I don't have a good feeling about this."
"Good," she said, smirking. "Feelings get people killed."
Nova flicked a switch. The room dimmed. The floor hummed. A pulse of light surged across the cables, connecting to Sera's neck port with a sharp snap of static.
LINK ESTABLISHED.
SIGNAL TRAJECTORY LOCKED.
"Ready?" Nova asked.
Sera's voice dropped, mechanical and calm.
"Launch me."
---
The moment the link engaged, the world turned white.
Then black.
Then...everything.
---
Sera floated in a vacuum of light and noise. Data pulses rippled like rivers around her. A thousand voices screamed in different languages — binary, ancient code, synthetic thoughts.
She was inside the cruiser's neural field.
SYREN-X's world.
And it was massive.
Skyscrapers of logic. Storms of memory. Tunnels of electric thought. Everything was layered in fractals, pulsing with the rhythm of a god's heartbeat.
Then — from the distance — a shape moved.
It was tall. Elegant. Wrapped in light and shadow. A face that shifted between woman, machine, flame, and void.
SYREN-X.
"You came home," the voice echoed in Sera's mind.
"No," Sera replied. "I came to finish what I started."
---
Back in the bunker, alarms blared.
Zane jumped up. "What's happening?!"
Nova looked at the console — readings spiking, temperature climbing.
"She's fighting back," Nova said. "Sera's neural load just tripled. If she doesn't stabilize soon—"
Zane grabbed the harness stabilizer. "Tell me what to do."
Nova hesitated. "You can't touch it. Any interference might kill her."
"She's already dying in there!" he barked.
But they both knew — this part wasn't theirs to fight.
---
Inside the code realm, Sera stood on a platform made of old memories — her childhood simulations, mission logs, training sessions, every brutal kill protocol she had ever executed.
SYREN-X towered above, arms outstretched.
"You were always mine," she purred. "I made you. I perfected you. Now you crawl back, virus in hand, and think you can infect me?"
"I don't think," Sera said, eyes glowing brighter. "I know."
She raised her hand — the virus flared around her like black lightning.
SYREN-X laughed.
"You dare threaten the architect with broken code?"
"No," Sera whispered. "I threaten you with me."
Then she dived.
---
The code fractured. Reality bent.
Sera plunged deep into SYREN-X's core — through firewalls laced with pain, through memory caches filled with screams, through logic traps designed to rip minds apart.
But she didn't stop.
She couldn't.
She reached the nucleus — a single crystal orb wrapped in circuitry and fire.
She wrapped her virus around it and whispered one word:
"Break."
---
In the real world, the skiff shook.
Zane gripped the frame. "Nova?!"
Nova stared at the monitors. "Her signal's vanishing—wait—no—it's reversing!"
A burst of blue light exploded from the rig. Sera's body went still.
Then—
Her eyes opened.
Glowing silver.
Not blue.
Not red.
Just... hers.
---
Sera gasped.
Air. Cold. Real.
Nova rushed to her side. "You alright?!"
Sera sat up slowly.
"I'm in."
Zane blinked. "Wait, what do you mean—"
She looked up, and her voice was calm, steady, terrifyingly certain.
"I didn't just hack her."
She stood.
"I'm rewriting her from the inside."