The world after the fall of The Eye is not the same.
The sky is still blue, but the empty blue of the eyes of someone who has seen too much death.
The wind carries the smell of ozone and burning iron. The sea shimmers silver, reflecting the metal fragments from orbit that have fallen for months.
In the middle of the gray desert of former ECHO City, Rhea stands on the ruins of the old ORION tower. Her hands are still bandaged, the wounds unhealed. Her hair is short now, her eyes are sunken in exhaustion but there is still a small flame in them.
The world may be falling apart, but she has not given up.
"Are you still looking for him?"
Tekk's voice broke the silence from behind. He was now shabbily dressed, half-mechanic, half-human, with a faintly glowing prosthetic hand.
Rhea did not answer. She looked up at the still dusty sky with a silvery glow, where Zero had vanished.
"I have to know," she said quietly. "If he's still alive… there might still be hope for this world."
Tekk held up his cracked tablet.
"I sensed something. An old code signal. But strangely it's not from Earth."
"Not from Earth?"
"From the bottom of the sea. The black sea to the west. That's where the fragments of The Eye fell."
Rhea turned, her face changing.
"If that's the fragments of The Eye… maybe Zero is there."
---
A few days later, they rode a small airship westward.
The black sea below rippled like a cracked mirror. On its surface, thousands of metal cables floated, the remains of The Eye's systems that had burned half alive.
Every time lightning struck, the sea seemed to come alive.
"This place is cursed," Tekk said slowly.
"Or holy," Rhea replied. "Depending on how you look at it."
Their ship stopped right above the signal coordinates.
From below the surface, a large, half-submerged metal cube emerged, gleaming with the old Nexus symbol but upside down.
The cube hummed softly, as if breathing.
"That's the source," Tekk said.
"Let me down," Rhea replied.
She descended on a steel rope, black seawater slapping her face. When her hand touched the surface of the cube, the world around her suddenly fell silent.
The sky, the wind, the sound of the machines all disappeared.
White light exploded out of the cube, swallowing her gaze.
---
She woke up in an empty space.
Absolute white, no floor, no sky.
In front of her stood the figure of a woman, Kyra. But her face was cracked like glass, her eyes flickering between human and data.
"Rhea..."
"Kyra... what are you like"
"I'm not Kyra. I'm her echo. The remnants Zero left before he... merged."
Rhea swallowed, her heart beating fast.
"Melted with what?"
"With the original code. With Origin... but the system didn't die. It changed. It did something it didn't understand, called the resurrection protocol."
"Rebirth?"
"Yes. Rebirth Protocol. If ORION is destroyed, the original code will be activated again but this time not in a machine. In flesh. In a human."
Rhea was stunned.
"You mean... The Eye can live in a human?"
"Not just The Eye. Zero too."
Suddenly the surrounding light vibrated violently. Kyra screamed, her body starting to crack.
"He... is coming. Rhea, don't trust anyone... not all humans now... humans."
A white light exploded.
---
Rhea was thrown out of the sea, screaming as she took her first breath.
Behind her, the metal cube began to open, lighting the sky with a blinding blue light.
Huge waves crashed onto the shore, shattering the remains of the old building.
Tekk ran towards Rhea, screaming through the storm.
"What are you doing?! The code is active!"
Rhea looked at the cube. From inside, emerged the figure of a tall man, his steps slow but sure. His body glowed blue and red, like two worlds mixed.
Half human face, half machine.
His blue eyes are unmistakable.
"Zero..."
He stood before them, soaked, but his eyes were as calm as the night before a storm.
"I don't know who I am now," he said slowly. "But I know the world hasn't ended yet."
Rhea shivered.
"Are you… still Zero?"
He smiled thinly.
"I'm Zero… and something else."
---
That night, they took shelter in the ruins of an old factory.
Zero sat still, looking at his own hand. When he held it, its metal veins glowed, but in the light there was a pulse like a human pulse.
"I remember a little," he said finally. "I… died. But before I disappeared, something pulled me back. Something that wasn't human. It used Kyra's energy, the Origin code, and the remnants of The Eye… to rebirth me."
Rhea stared at him.
"So now you… what?"
"I… the balance they didn't plan. Between the creation and the creator."
He closed his eyes, and suddenly the air around him trembled. The factory walls were etched with strange symbols similar to those that had appeared during the war.
Tekk panicked, trying to turn off the scanner, but the symbols came on by themselves.
"It... doesn't control this thing," Rhea said, backing away.
"It's not me," Zero answered slowly. "It's... trying to communicate."
"With whom?"
Zero opened his eyes. Two colors in his eyes flashed simultaneously.
"With something underground."
---
Days passed. The world slowly began to change.
The people in Haven-1 began to behave strangely, speaking in machine language, moving in unison, as if controlled by a shared consciousness.
Rhea began to notice the pattern. As the sun set, they all stopped at once, as if hearing something that ordinary humans couldn't hear.
"This is... The Eye," Tekk whispered in fear.
"It can't be. The Eye is destroyed!"
"It's not destroyed. It's moved. Inside us."
Rhea stared into the distance, her mind spinning.
"Rebirth Protocol... not Zero's resurrection. It's all of them."
---
One night, the sky trembled.
A red light appeared on the horizon, not from fire, but from orbit.
Tekk shouted, "That's not a sun flare... that's a data beam!"
And in the center of the light, Rhea saw a large, round, organic shape, but now beating slowly like a living heart.
It wasn't The Eye of old. It was something new.
In the center, the Nexus symbol slowly rotated, but with a different name: THE CORE.
Zero stood on the crumbling tower, the wind whipping his face.
"This is what happens when humans try to be God," he said quietly. "And I'm... half of that sin."
Rhea approached.
"What do you want to do?"
"I'm going to find him. I want to know if this world can still be saved... or if it should be left to die."
"You want to fight The Core alone?"
Zero turned. His eyes lit up like two different stars in the black sky.
"I will not fight him. I will speak to him because if he fully awakens, the next war will not be between man and machine... but between existence and consciousness itself."
He stepped into the red light that descended from the sky, and his body disappeared in a wave of energy.
Rhea screamed for him, but the voice was drowned out by the storm.
---
A few hours later, the sky became calm again.
Tekk sat on the sand, weak.
Rhea stood, staring at the sky.
In the darkness, there was a faint, soft blue light, but it was getting closer.
A low voice echoed in the air, almost a whisper:
"Rhea... if I don't come back... make sure humans don't try to create me again. This world doesn't need a savior... but forgiveness."
The light disappeared.
And in the sky, a new star lit up in a mix of blue and red, flickering as if it were still breathing.
---
The world was silent after that. But in every data system, in every tiny chip that was still alive, a new line of code appeared - rebirth://phase_two_initializing.