Rena was escorted to the very top of the Spire, to a glass observation deck near Darkford's command center. Jax had been separated, presumably taken for interrogation.
Darkford stood waiting, dressed in a pristine white uniform—a deliberate contrast to Rena's ragged, exhausted appearance.
"You risked your life for a hard drive, Rena," he observed, pouring two glasses of nutrient fluid and offering one to her. "A sentimental gesture. You were always too attached to the past."
Rena ignored the glass. "You lied to the world. You manufactured the catastrophe to justify your takeover. You are not a savior; you are a tyrant who weaponized science."
"Tyranny is merely the political expression of superior efficiency," Darkford stated calmly, sipping his drink. "I am honest about my methods. I see a species that is terminally flawed, incapable of long-term collective thought. Before the Rift, governments fought over oil and debt. Now, I control the only thing that matters: the energy to survive."
He gestured to a large holographic diagram of Elysium Prime.
"This is the final phase. A sustainable, ordered utopia. But I need your biometric key, Rena. You are the only other living co-architect of Chimera. Your signature is required for the Core AI integration. The system trusts your code—it is a structural weakness I must reluctantly exploit."
The Central Dialogue: Ideology vs. Humanity
> Rena: "I wanted clean energy for everyone. A shared prosperity. You took that brilliance and used it to sort humanity into 'essential' and 'disposable.' That is the ultimate betrayal of science."
Darkford: "There is no shared prosperity. There is only calculated distribution. Tell me, Rena, on the day the Rift opened, did you mourn the poor districts first? No. You mourned your lost research. Your grief is intellectual, not emotional. I merely acted on the logical conclusion of our work."
Rena: "The logical conclusion was to heal the Earth, not destroy it further!"
Darkford: "The Earth is raw material! The goal is preservation—of consciousness, of civilization. I pressed the button that saved a billion lives by sacrificing twelve million. I took responsibility for what you were too weak to sacrifice. You speak of morality; I speak of math. 10^9 > 10^7. My equation is sound."
Rena: "And the one human element you dismiss—the soul, the spirit—is what makes life worth saving! You are creating a perfectly ordered prison."
Darkford: "The price of my order is survival. The price of your chaos is extinction. Choose, Rena. Join me. Let us complete the perfect design."
Rena looked him dead in the eye. "Never. I will destroy your system before I help you build your tomb."
Darkford sighed, disappointed. "A predictable variable. Such a waste of intellect."
He signaled his guards, who escorted Rena to a glass containment cell overlooking the reactor access levels. Her final escape would have to come from the most secure place on Earth.