The silence in the hideout was deceptive—almost peaceful.
But Zane knew better.
It was the calm before another digital storm.
He stood in the war room, the holographic table flickering with tactical maps, surveillance feeds, and updated Redline threat indicators. The events at Theta-Zero had shifted everything. Echo—no, Lyra—hadn't just been a ghost from the past. She was living proof that the system was still evolving. Still mutating.
And worst of all—not alone.
"Multiple Phase Zero variants," Zane muttered under his breath. "Some failed. Some didn't."
The data he'd pulled from the obliterated labs was corrupted beyond repair, but certain fragments stood out—glimpses of other test subjects, code signatures with eerie similarities to Root Access, and mentions of a counter-protocol codenamed COLLATERAL.
Unlike Redline, it wasn't designed to evolve users.
It was designed to detonate them.
A weaponized fail-safe embedded in all test subjects—Lyra included.
"She's a ticking time bomb…" Zane whispered, slamming his fist onto the console. "Damn it."
He had to act fast. If COLLATERAL Protocol activated, Lyra wouldn't just die.
She'd take out everyone around her in a cataclysmic cascade of corrupted data.
And someone… someone was trying to trigger it.
A new ping lit up on the map—an unauthorized Root Access breach occurring in Sector 9, Quadrant K. A hot zone previously under abandoned AI territory. But this signal—it was familiar. Almost like...
"Lyra?" Zane narrowed his eyes. "No. Too unstable. It's not her."
He accessed the live feed.
On the screen, figures moved through shadowed ruins. A squad in adaptive stealth armor, moving in silence and precision. Their emblems glitched—flickering between Omniscient branding and something far darker.
Zane enhanced the image.
A man stood at the center of the team. Silver trench coat. Augmented left arm. Eyes like obsidian, gleaming with coded menace.
"...Rexus Cain."
The name left a bitter taste.
Once a top-tier security enforcer for Omniscient. Now a freelance executioner for hire, rumored to be backed by an underground protocol syndicate called Nullwake—digital fanatics who believed in erasing all remnants of Redline experiments through force.
Including Echo.
Including Zane.
"They found her trail," Zane muttered. "And they're going to use the COLLATERAL Protocol."
He grabbed his gear—Ghostfire rig, neural dampeners, pulse blades—and locked the system into stealth mode.
This wasn't a rescue mission.
It was a race against execution.
[Sector 9 – Fragment Zone K]
The digital cityscape was broken here—split between corrupted skyscrapers and glitched data storms that erased memory files on contact. Zane moved like a ghost, manipulating the code around him to phase through corrupted walls and bypass Nullwake traps.
Time was against him.
He could feel the pulse of the COLLATERAL Protocol growing louder, like a heart beating in rage. If they reached Lyra first, there wouldn't be anything left to save.
A shadow darted past him.
Then another.
Ambush.
Zane ducked as a blast of red plasma scorched past his shoulder, vaporizing a wall behind him. Three Nullwake enforcers dropped from the grid above, armed with code-slicer axes and disruptor rifles.
Combat Protocol Engaged
"Bring him down!" one shouted.
Zane spun, kicked the first one in the chest mid-air, and triggered a gravity-pulse that sent another flying into a collapsing data spire. The third lunged with an axe, but Zane sidestepped, grabbed his arm, and twisted—
Crack.
The enforcer screamed as his neural link shattered. Zane yanked the helmet off and slammed his palm into the man's skull.
Root Access: Hack Chain Activated
Zane's eyes flashed as data flowed into his mind. He saw Nullwake's mission brief.
—Target: Y42-THX
—Location: Grid Phantom Sub-Node
—Mission: Execute Subject. Trigger COLLATERAL. No survivors.
They weren't here to contain Lyra.
They were here to destroy her and wipe the region clean.
And the worst part?
They had already deployed the Trigger Beacon.
Zane threw the corpse aside and sprinted.
[Grid Phantom – Sub-Node Collapse Point]
He found her in the heart of a collapsed memory dome.
Lyra stood surrounded by Nullwake drones, her arms glowing with unstable Redline energy. She was fighting, but her movements were erratic—like the Protocol was eating her alive.
"LYRA!" Zane shouted, leaping into the fray.
He collided with two drones mid-air, sliced them apart with his pulse blade, and landed beside her. She turned, face pale, eyes flickering.
"You… came?"
"They're trying to trigger COLLATERAL," he said. "We have to shut it down. Together."
She winced, clutching her head. "It's… burning. I can feel it… inside me. Something's wrong…"
"Let me in. Just like before. Mindlink. We can rewrite the code."
Another squad descended, guns raised.
"No time," she whispered.
Zane grabbed her arm and forced a neural sync.
Root Access Initiated – Mindlink Established
[Mental Network – Lyra's Core]
Inside her mind, it was chaos.
A storm of red and black data shards swirling like a hurricane around a single glowing orb—her soul, threatened by the ticking COLLATERAL sequence.
They stood at the center, surrounded by corrupted memories, screams, pain.
Zane focused, isolating the code sequence.
"There," he pointed. "COLLATERAL's activation core. I can disarm it. But I need you to let go of the pain. You're holding it together out of fear."
Tears streamed down her cheeks.
"I don't want to die."
"You won't. Not today. You choose your ending."
Together, they placed their hands on the code shard.
Zane injected new code.
[Overwriting COLLATERAL… Success]
The storm stopped.
The core dimmed.
And Lyra collapsed into his arms.
[Reality – Grid Phantom]
The drones froze.
Then exploded into static.
Rexus Cain stood on a nearby platform, watching with a grim smile.
"Well played, Caulder. But you're only delaying the inevitable."
"You want her?" Zane growled. "Come take her."
Rexus lifted a remote. "Next time, I won't be so polite."
He vanished into a tear in the data layer.
Zane held Lyra close, her breathing soft but steady.
They'd won.
But the war was far from over.
And the system had just revealed a new piece on the board—one Zane didn't program.
[End of the Chapter 17]