The crawler pulled into the Purist enclave long past midnight, its frame still streaked in ash and mud. Steam hissed from the vents as the doors opened, releasing Layla and her squad into the sterile glow of the decontamination hangar. Operators in pale uniforms moved briskly around them, scanning armor, tagging samples, sealing evidence containers without asking questions.
Layla moved through it all with her visor tucked under one arm, her face streaked in grime, eyes unblinking. She carried the shard of Synthetic plating herself, refusing to let it out of her grip until the moment she placed it in Dr. Voss's hands.
Helena was already waiting. She stood at the far end of the hangar, framed by the silver gleam of the reinforced doors leading into the command wing. Her usual braid fell long over her shoulder, her lab coat its common shades of oxides and solder streaks. She did not approach. She simply watched as Layla crossed the length of the room, every step rebounding against the polished steel floor.
When they were finally face to face, Helena's voice was quiet. "Report."
Layla dropped the shard into her palm. It was still faintly warm.
"We found evidence…" she said. Her voice carried across the hangar, drawing the squad to a halt behind her. "… of Unity-9, and Cutter's Ascendents. Fighting together. Shoulder to shoulder."
The words seemed to thicken the air. Helena turned the shard over, rotating it beneath the light. Its alloy shimmered with an unmistakable cobalt undertone. She did not deny it.
"And?" she asked.
Layla's jaw tightened. She stepped closer. "And we barely lived through what they were fighting. Some kind of race of creatures. Hounds with claws that cut through plating like cloth. Things I've never seen before. Half my squad's suits are shredded. The team that was originally sent out, gone entirely. Dead. You sent them first, and now we know why they didn't come back."
Helena's eyes flicked briefly toward the squad. Then back to Layla. "You have proof?"
"I have more than proof," Layla snapped. She motioned, and one of her soldiers stepped forward with a sealed crate, setting it down at Helena's feet. Inside were the samples: broken claws, charred fragments of flesh that didn't belong to any known species, empty casings from Sovereign railguns still slick with foreign ichor. "We brought it all back. Every scrap. The world needs to see this."
Helena was silent for a long moment, examining the shard again, her thumb pressing against the edge. Her expression gave nothing away. She closed the crate with a careful snap and rested her hand on it for a moment, as if feeling the weight beyond the steel.
"The world?" she repeated softly, then lifted her eyes to Layla. "Do you know what the world actually does with proof? It panics. It invents stories. It clings to whatever voice is loudest. You think handing them this shard will make them unite. It won't. It will make them fracture, and Cutter knows that better than anyone. He'll have his story ready before we even draft a headline. And Unity-9 - " she exhaled through her nose, sharp as a blade's edge, "Unity-9 doesn't even need a story. People already mythologize her. Half the city calls her savior, the other half specter. Give them this, and both halves get stronger. Neither will serve us."
Layla shook her head, incredulous. "You'd rather do nothing!? Pretend none of this happened?"
"I'd rather prepare," Helena answered, her tone firm now, carrying across the hangar with quiet authority. "This isn't about pretending. It's about timing. You want the world to see proof. I want the world to see it when they're ready to believe the right thing about it. If we move too soon, we lose control. If we wait, we can shape the reaction, set the terms. That is how survival works. Not by being first, but by being thorough."
Layla's fists clenched at her sides, her fury building like a second heartbeat. "So you're saying we just sit on this. After everything! After the people we left out there. After what we saw!"
Helena craned her neck back and forth, as if trying to pop the vertebrae. Her braid slid forward across her shoulder, catching the light. "I'm saying trust me to fight the war I was built for. You and your squad fight battles with bullets. I fight them with perception and planning. Both kinds of victories matter. Both kinds cost lives if handled carelessly. You brought this back because you believe it matters. And it does. But what matters more is precisely when the world learns of it. That won't be tonight."
The silence pressed heavy between them. Layla could hear her own pulse in her ears.
"You want me to bury it," she said at last, voice trembling with rage.
Helena didn't flinch. She lowered her hand from the crate and spoke evenly, eyes locked on Layla's. "I want you to let me decide when it's unearthed."
Layla's voice cracked open, rawer than she intended. "No. No, that isn't good enough. We nearly died out there. The previous team actually did. I found the bodies that these things tore through like paper, and you're telling me to wait until it's politically convenient? That's cowardice, Helena! You're protecting your plans while the rest of us bleed!"
The squad shifted behind her. None of them dared speak, but Layla could feel their weight, their silent agreement or their silent judgment, she couldn't tell which, but perhaps it didn't matter.
Helena's face tightened. "You mistake restraint for cowardice," she said, measured as ever. "It is far harder to wait than to shout. Harder still to watch people die and hold steady. I carry that weight too, Layla. Every hour. Every report. Every name I sign off knowing it might be carved into a headstone by morning. Don't you dare think I don't bleed for this cause. I simply choose not to bleed in front of you."
Layla took a half step forward. "And what about Unity-9? What about Cutter? You're just going to let them walk away after proving they can fight together? You're going to let that vanish into silence? Because I won't. I swear to you, I won't."
The door at the far end of the hangar hissed open. Micah's voice cut through before Helena could answer.
"Layla."
He strode toward them with long, steady steps, his coat still damp with the mist of night, eyes sharp enough to read the tension before he reached them. His gaze swept over the squad, then fixed squarely on his sister. "What are you doing?"
Layla turned on him like a blade. "Telling her the truth. Telling her that if we bury this, we're no better than Cutter himself."
Micah's brow furrowed. He came to stand between them, facing his sister first, his voice low but edged. "I warned you about this fire inside. I told you where it leads. Don't confuse vengeance with leadership."
Layla's breath hitched, fury clashing with the sting of betrayal. "This isn't vengeance, this is survival! You didn't see what we saw out there. Those things weren't just enemies, they were something else. Something unnatural and devastating. Unity-9 fought them like she belonged in the same breath as Cutter's Ascendents. And if they're standing together, then every single Purist in this enclave deserves to know it before it's too late!"
Helena watched them both, her eyes narrowed slightly but her voice still reserved, measured, almost surgical. "Your sister is right about one thing, Micah. The creatures are real. Cutter and Unity-9 did fight side by side. That much we cannot deny. But the question isn't what happened, it's what story we tell about what happened. And Layla would have us tell it recklessly."
Layla's fists trembled at her sides. "Recklessly? Recklessly is sitting in silence while the city turns to ash. Recklessly is letting myths grow stronger while truth is chained in a drawer!"
Micah shook his head. "Reckless is exactly what you're being. I've seen it, Layla. I dreamed it. I saw you on a battlefield, lying in blood. You want to know what frightened me most? Not the fact that you died, but the fact that you didn't even look surprised when it came. Like you had already accepted it. Like you went looking for it."
Layla's expression faltered for the first time, anger breaking against the rock of her brother's words.
Helena seized the silence. "This is the crossroads, Layla. Either you trust that there is a reason for my choices, or you go your own way. But understand this: if you choose that path, you won't just be challenging me. You'll be challenging the movement itself."
Layla's eyes burned, darting between Helena's calm face and her brother's haunted one. The fury didn't fade, but beneath it something darker began to take root: betrayal, yes, but also resolve - the kind that doesn't yield once planted.
The silence stretched in the hangar, so taut it seemed the air itself might split. A pair of operators wheeled past with a containment cart, then caught sight of the standoff and froze mid-step. The hum of vents filled the gap where no one else dared breathe too loud.
Layla took a few steps forward, closing the space, her fists trembling. "Don't twist this. You're not restraining chaos, you're protecting your control. Unity-9 made us look small tonight, and you want to smother that before anyone notices. But I noticed. My squad noticed. And I will not pretend I didn't see what I saw."
Her voice cracked the stillness like a gunshot. The squad behind her shifted, uneasy, waiting for Helena's reply.
Helena's gaze was unyielding. "Then you will learn that survival isn't about what you saw. It's about what you make others believe. If you can't grasp that, then perhaps you're not ready for the burden you've been so eager to carry."
Layla's face hardened, but her voice dropped lower, laced with venom. "You're dismissing me."
Helena didn't blink. "I am reminding you of your place."
That cut deeper than steel. Layla staggered back a half step, more wounded by the words than by anything she had faced in the field.
Micah stepped in, his presence heavier than before, his voice a growl. "Enough." He turned on his sister. "You think this fire in you makes you strong, but all it makes you is reckless. Dr. Voss is right, you confuse fury with clarity. I told you what I dreamed, Layla. You don't believe in visions, fine. But hear me: the path you're on leads only one way. I saw your death, and it was no glorious end. It was waste."
Layla's breath came fast, ragged. She stared at him, then at Helena, then back at her brother. Betrayal carved lines across her face. She turned sharply, addressing her squad, her voice pitched just loud enough for them to hear: "Remember what you saw. Remember who bled for it. When the story changes tomorrow, when it's twisted into something else, don't you forget."
The squad glanced at one another, then back at Helena, caught between authority and loyalty. None of them answered, but the seed had been planted.
Helena's jaw tightened. She stepped closer, her voice a razor meant only for Layla. "Careful. You speak like that again, and you won't just be a soldier, you'll be a liability. And liabilities, Layla, don't last."
The hangar felt colder then, the silence heavier. Layla's lips pressed into a thin line, but her eyes blazed. The fracture had become a fault line, and everyone present could feel it widening beneath their feet.
The silence in the hangar had teeth. Layla's words still hung there, bold and bitter, feeding the restless shift among the squad. She could feel them leaning her way, their faith in Helena faltering under the weight of fresh blood and her own conviction.
Helena saw it too. For the first time, she raised her voice. No longer measured, but a sharp, cutting declaration that filled the steel chamber wall to wall.
"You think truth is a weapon you can swing without consequence," she said, eyes locked on Layla. "But what you call courage is nothing more than impatience. You see the battle in front of you and think it defines the war. It does not."
She stepped forward, past the crate, right up to Layla's chest. Her lab coat snapping faintly as she moved. "Do you know why I hold the silence, Layla? Because I know what you do not. I know that Cutter's broadcasts reach a hundred thousand ears before ours reach a hundred. I know that Unity-9 is worshipped in some circles as if she were a savior descended from the grid itself. And I know that if we reveal this alliance too soon, before the ground is ready to take the weight of it, we do not control the story. We hand it to them."
Her eyes swept over the squad, pinning each of them in place. "Do you want riots? Do you want the enclaves to split open in fear? Do you want the Sovereign and the Synthetics to look like the only ones with answers while we stand here as children crying wolf?"
No one answered. No one moved.
Helena's hand went to her lab coat and produced a narrow holo-pad. She flicked it alive and a single line of text blinked into the hangar light: a contact log, a timestamped transcript, an entry marked with the operative signature she'd greenlit months ago.
"I sent someone in," she said, voice firm and steady. "An undercover negotiator to Cutter's funding office to secure resources for a failing Purist zone. He approved the allocation, publicly it was charity. Privately he sent transfers through a shell company I tracked to the TBN nodes in our sectors."
Layla's incredulous sound died in her throat. "He's funding the TBN?"
"Unknowingly, and on his terms," Helena corrected. "He characterized the appropriations so it appears as sovereign goodwill. The transfers are linked to control switches he can and will flip if we force his hand without contingency. If we expose him now, he can recharacterize those accounts, divert the remainder, and cut power to the very enclaves we've built. He will make the cleanup ours to bear."
Her words were precise, surgical. The squad shifted; where they had been close to fury, they now looked like people re-evaluating a precipice.
Helena's voice sharpened further. "That is why I am the one who decides. Because I carry not just your grief, not just your scars, but the calculus of ten thousand lives stacked against ten thousand more. And I will not gamble them because one soldier is too proud to wait."
Layla's throat worked as if she might speak again, but the weight of Helena's words pressed her flat. Her squad, who only moments ago seemed ready to stand with her, looked away. Their boots shuffled. The silence turned cold.
Helena let it linger, then drove the nail in. "The information will be released. But it will be released when it serves us, not when it satisfies your anger. That is the end of this discussion."
Her words carried like iron. She turned on her heel and strode from the hangar without another glance. The operators cleared a path; the reinforced doors sealed shut behind her.
Layla's fists shook at her sides. She looked back at her squad, searching for fire in their eyes. There was still loyalty there, but undercut by uncertainty. They followed her as she stormed out, armor clattering, the sound a rebellion of its own.
Micah remained. He stood in the middle of the hangar, chest heaving, eyes on the closed doors where Helena had vanished. He pressed both hands against the edge of a console as though steadying himself against a storm no one else could see. The cold metal helped to ground him. Layla's fury, Helena's certainty - both rang in his head like clashing steel. He tried to breathe through it, to remind himself that the war wasn't won in shouting matches, but the image of his sister falling silent in the dirt shadowed every thought. "I need to see Elias." He thought. "Before this fire burns us all."
It wasn't long before routine snuck its way back into the enclave: front line skirmishes, surgeries in the back rooms, TBN hacks buried in comm logs. Two days later, something unthinkable shattered it: a broadcast so powerful it hit the planet like an asteroid.
Every screen in Sovereign City, every terminal in the enclaves, every battered display in the outer rings lit up with Maxim Cutter's face. His voice rolled through the channels, smooth, commanding, inevitable.
"…in the vested interest of peace, stability, and the protection of all humanity, Sovereign leadership has entered into a historic partnership with Unity-9 and her Synthetic vanguard. Together, we will extend social services to the neglected districts, fortify our defenses against emerging threats, and ensure the prosperity of Sovereign City for generations to come."
Behind him, the image cut to Unity-9 herself, serene, unflinching. For a moment, it looked less like a partnership and more like a coronation.
In the Purist enclave, the chamber fell to silence. Helena sat rigid in the broadcast room, jaw tight, eyes locked on the feed. She had expected months, not days. She had thought she controlled the timing. Now the truth was out - but in Cutter's voice, not hers.
Layla stood at the back of the room, arms folded, visor tucked under her arm. Her squad flanked her, eyes flicking between the screens and Helena.
The wound was invisible but deep. The silence of the Purists said it all: Helena had miscalculated. Layla had not. Confidence cracked.
And in that fracture, something new began to grow.