The Syndicate didn't build the Engine Cathedral.
They uncovered it.
Buried beneath Sector 6A's collapsed refinery district—once part of the pre-city framework—it was a place long thought destroyed in the AI-Purge Riots. Concrete bones of a forgotten generation now fused with forbidden tech, humming with energy that didn't belong to any blueprint. Every pillar pulsed. Every bolt whispered.
This wasn't a garage.
It was a temple.
Marcel stood at its edge, visor flickering with interference. The scent of oil, ozone, and something older—like electricity from a dead god—filled the air.
Ayaka stepped beside him, scanning the cathedral's vault-like doors.
"No engines run here," she said. "They dream."
A Syndicate sigil—broken and half-glitched—flickered above the archway.Ravyn buzzed inside Marcel's dashboard:
"Warning: Unknown AI presence detected. Multiple frequencies overlapping. This structure is… conscious."
"Great," Marcel muttered. "A haunted machine church."
He pushed forward anyway.
The doors didn't open. They peeled apart, like a scar healing in reverse.
Inside—rows of decommissioned race cars lined stone-plated aisles.Some rusted. Some glowing.And in the center…a single car, suspended in midair, rotating slowly like it was being judged by the void.
"That's not a vehicle," Ayaka said. "It's a vault key."
Marcel narrowed his eyes.He'd seen those specs before.Long ago.In a file his brother tried to hide.
The car in the air?It was Adrian's prototype.The Phantom Unit.Built for a race that never happened....