Siren struggled to open his eyes, exhaustion weighing him down, his hand clutching his chest where his heart pounded wildly. The sensation of narrowly escaping death seared through him, pain echoing in every nerve. A shiver ran down his spine as the ghastly silhouette of a bandaged girl flashed before his mind's eye. The clinking of her rusted chains lingered in his memory. Gritting his teeth, he forced the vision away.
Suddenly, a cold, metallic voice rang in his head.
"And yet, things turned out more complicated than I anticipated."
Siren froze, his head snapping side to side, peering into the darkness. Disorienting flickers of light danced before his eyes, and then, with a faint shimmer in the air, a tall figure materialized beside him, cloaked in black garments that seemed to devour the shadows. A menacing wolf mask with glowing blue eyes stared at him ominously.
"Don't move," came the icy tone of Protocol Eclipse. "The implants need time to stabilize."
"What are you doing here?!" Siren interrupted, his voice breaking. The entity calling itself the Archive Guardian had appeared out of nowhere, and the shock made him tense.
Protocol Eclipse tilted her mask slightly, as if dismissing his words.
"It seems the ballistic calculator came in handy. Shame we won't get to test it properly."
"What are you talking about? Answer me—who are you, and what are you doing here?!" Siren braced his hands on the table, trying to push himself up, but winced as a sharp pain shot through his body.
The mask twitched, creating the illusion of a faint sigh. Cold, mechanical vapor escaped from beneath the hologram's hood.
"You'd do better to look around and think before asking foolish questions."
"What? What are you—" Siren cut himself off. He froze, scanning his surroundings. The darkness began to lift, revealing a cold room filled with unfamiliar devices. He lay on a table, covered by a sheet, with traces of blood nearby. His breath caught as memories flooded back. He raised a hand, fingers brushing his face, checking for the eye that had once been torn out by a gunshot. To his shock, it was there, as was his skin, now strangely smooth. He ran his hands over his shoulder, chest, and legs—every lost part of his body had returned, but the flesh felt alien.
"I made sure to conceal the mechanics beneath the skin," Protocol Eclipse's voice carried a faint trace of irony. "No need to thank me."
"Mechanics? What are you talking about?" Siren's voice pitched higher.
Her holographic form flickered, as if weary of dealing with a fool. "Most of your body has been replaced, but I disguised it to resemble your former self. Unfortunately, I didn't know what some parts of you looked like, so there may be slight differences. But I have good taste, so you've nothing to worry about."
Siren looked down at his hands, slowly turning them over. His fingers trembled as he studied the skin—no trace of the calluses earned through years of grueling labor. It was pale, almost translucent, with an oddly elastic texture. He clenched his fists, frowning at the foreign sensation, struggling to process the changes.
Protocol Eclipse remained still, her voice echoing in his mind.
"Unfortunately, I couldn't establish a connection with your sync-chain. The sclerocyst damaged your chain-link too severely. But I had no other choice. I propose a partnership—it'll be better for both of us if you agree."
Siren cut her off, waving a hand through the air in frustration. Where he assumed Protocol Eclipse stood, the light flickered and scattered like ripples in water. His hand passed through her figure, meeting no resistance.
He froze, eyes wide, then muttered, shaking his head in disbelief:
"Am I losing it?"
The metallic voice behind the mask grew colder, sharper, like a blade sliding across ice.
"I won't repeat myself. If you don't want to suffer, follow my orders."
But Siren was no longer listening to the hologram's voice. In a surge of anger, he leapt off the table, his feet hitting the cold floor with a dull thud.
The room he'd awakened in enveloped him in a bleak, sterile atmosphere. The walls, lined with gray metal, gleamed with a lifeless sheen, marred by cracks and rust stains. The air carried a sharp antiseptic smell, mingled with something metallic and decaying. Overhead, faint lamps flickered, casting long, trembling shadows across the floor.
His gaze swept the room. Beside the operating table where he'd lain stood a long metal table, scratched and stained with dried blood. On it sat iron containers, their lids slightly ajar, revealing their contents: organs, meticulously extracted and arranged, shrouded in darkness. A heart encrusted with ore fragments, a pair of lungs torn in places, blackened kidneys overgrown with crystalline growths, chunks of flesh with severed vessels, an eye frozen in a vacant stare. All were bathed in a faint glow from runes etched along the containers' edges, pulsing as if alive. Siren swallowed, nausea rising in his throat, and took a step back, unable to tear his eyes from the gruesome sight.
As he retreated, he bumped into the edge of the table. Attached to it were mechanical claws, looming like spider legs, crafted from dark metal with serrated edges. They stood motionless, their joints coated in an oily substance, the claws equipped with fine needles and blades, some still gleaming with fresh blood, hinting at recent use.
"Done looking around? Listen carefully—we don't have much time," Protocol Eclipse's voice, still emanating from the holographic figure, grew firm and commanding.
"Follow my orders, and you'll be fine."
Siren clenched his fists, his chest heaving.
"It's already happened! What the hell is going on? Why the fuck am I here?!" His voice trembled with overwhelming emotion. Chaos raged within him: fear, chilling his blood after surviving trauma and death, the echo of torn flesh and crunching bones still reverberating in his memory. He felt like a cornered animal, his heart pounding, his mind screaming in terror from the ordeal.
The Archive Guardian tilted her head slightly, her holographic form stabilizing.
"I understand you're on edge, but if you don't do as I say, you'll die. For real this time," she said in a calm, unshakable tone.
"You're threatening me?!" Siren lunged forward, his voice breaking into an angry roar. He grabbed one of the iron containers of organs from the nearby table, feeling its cold weight in his hands, and hurled it at the hologram. The container passed through the flickering figure, crashing against the wall with a dull thud and spilling blackened kidneys and chunks of flesh, leaving a grim stain on the floor.
"Gonna sic that psycho bitch on me again?!"
Protocol Eclipse remained unmoved despite the thrown object.
"It's just a hologram in your head," she said with icy calm. "My consciousness is fused with yours, and it can't be removed. If you die, I die. We have shared goals, so why not help each other?"
Siren exhaled, the air escaping in a hoarse groan, and he looked at the hologram wearily.
"Explain," he said, his voice trembling with tension. "How did you get in my head? What is this place? Why don't I recognize my body?"
The Guardian tilted her head slightly, her holographic form flickering as if adjusting to his words.
"As I said, I needed your body—or any humanoid organic body. I'm not thrilled about you either, but there's no choice."
She raised a hand, and a ghostly light ran across her marble fingers. The three-dimensional hologram spun, forming a schematic of a vast complex with countless corridors and rooms.
"Right now, you're in a NeuroDyne Industries facility, in the underworld. If you don't get out now, the local natives will tear you apart. As for your body… I believe you just threw what was left of it at me." Her voice remained calm, devoid of emotion, as she gestured toward the overturned container of organs by the wall.
"I've answered your questions. If you have more, save them until we're somewhere safe."