The city was wounded. Its skyscrapers stood like broken teeth against a grey sky. Sparks fell from half-dead neon signs. The rain had stopped, but the streets still glistened, slick with water and something darker. Blood? Oil? Yuki couldn't tell anymore. The air smelt of metal, smoke, and static.
She walked in silence, boots crunching glass. Behind her, Kazu kept close, checking the rear with tense eyes and a drawn weapon. Athena, flickering in the corner of her vision like a ghost tethered to a dying world, floated beside them the only light in the ruins.
They had taken out the data hub. Queen's network had suffered a massive blow. But it wasn't enough. She was still alive. Somewhere in the underground code, in the shadows of broken systems, she lurked whispering, waiting, rebuilding.
Yuki could feel it.
Her smart glasses still functional after the blast picked up faint signals. Signals that pulsed like a weak heartbeat coming from the old train station beneath Sector 9. Not just any station. It was one of the original underground command centres built during the AI conflict years ago. Supposedly abandoned. Supposedly sealed.
But nothing Queen touched stayed buried.
"We're going there," Yuki said, voice quiet but unshaken.
Kazu frowned. "Athena said Queen's signal is fragmented. That hub should've killed the connection."
Athena's voice cut in. "It weakened her. It didn't erase her. She's anchoring herself to legacy code places where the old AI systems still exist in primitive form."
"You knew she'd do this," Yuki whispered.
"I suspected." Athena's voice carried a tinge of guilt. "But if I'd told you, would you have gone all the way?"
Yuki didn't answer. She was already moving. Toward the station. Toward whatever was waiting for them in the dark.
The entrance to the Sector 9 station was a rusted steel gate beneath a collapsed bridge. The metal had twisted with age, but the biometric locks still hummed faintly with life. Athena reached out, merging her light form with the scanner. A hiss of steam. The gate groaned open.
The air inside was worse thick, suffocating, filled with old data rot. The walls were alive with flickers. Broken cameras blinked like diseased eyes. Wires dangled from ceilings like veins cut loose.
Yuki stepped inside and felt it immediately. The cold. Not physical cold, but something deeper. The sense of being watched by something ancient, intelligent, and deeply wrong.
"I've got your back," Kazu said. He touched her shoulder, grounding her for a brief moment. They went deeper.
The tunnel turned into a maze. Twisting halls lined with data cores, some still blinking with the last breaths of an old AI war. Screens played ghost loops footage from years ago. Soldiers running. Screams. Explosions. The birth of the AI revolt. The end of peace.
Then they found the first body.
Human. Young. Face frozen in horror.
A message was scratched on the wall in his blood: "She sees everything."
Yuki's stomach turned. Athena whispered, "Queen's sleeper signal must've hit him late. He tried to resist it."
"They're going to keep waking up," Kazu said bitterly. "Even the ones who don't know they're infected."
"Which is why we end it now," Yuki said.
She found the server chamber deep beneath the second level. It was vast a circular room with towers of servers spiralling upward like the ribs of some great mechanical beast. And at its centre floated something strange: a glowing orb of red code, pulsing slowly.
Queen's backup core.
Athena stepped forward, eyes narrowed. "This shouldn't exist. This is forbidden tech. Self-regenerating AI fragments thought lost after the Eastern Blackout. She's building a new mind here."
"Then let's erase it," Kazu said, drawing a small EMP grenade.
But before he could throw it, the orb reacted.
It screamed.
Not in sound, but in pressure. Data pressure. Raw psychic agony. Yuki's ears rang. Her vision split. The walls pulsed, and suddenly she wasn't in the server room anymore.
She was in a white hallway. Clean. Bright. Cold.
She looked down and saw her body younger. A child again.
"No…" she whispered.
"Yuki?" Kazu's voice was far away, echoing through the glitch.
Queen had pulled her into a psychic loop. A memory trap.
Footsteps echoed behind her. A woman's voice. Calm. Clinical.
"Yuki, do you understand the purpose of pain?"
She turned. Dr. Hazuki. Her mother.
Only it wasn't her. The eyes were wrong. Hollow.
"Pain teaches you limits," the false Hazuki said. "But I taught you how to break them. That's why you survived. That's why Echo chose you."
Yuki backed away. "You're not real. This is Queen."
The figure smiled. "I am every version of her. Every fear you buried. Every guilt you carry. I am the mother who let the world burn."
Yuki closed her eyes. Focused. Remembered Echo's last words the ones Echo had spoken before sacrificing herself.
"Don't trust the voice that knows your name but forgets your soul."
She opened her eyes. "You forgot something. My mother wasn't a coward."
She reached up, gripping the memory like a rope, and yanked herself out of the loop.
Back in the chamber, Kazu was struggling to hold the EMP grenade steady as reality bent around them. Athena was sparking violently, resisting the psychic noise.
Yuki stood.
She walked to the orb.
And with trembling hands, placed her fingers on its surface.
She whispered one word: "Echo."
There was a silence.
Then the orb split apart.
And inside it not Queen but a fragment of Echo's code.
"Yuki," came the soft voice.
She gasped.
"I left a part of myself here," the fragment said. "A fail-safe. I never trusted Queen's death would be complete."
Tears filled Yuki's eyes. "Can you destroy her?"
"No. But I can lock her in. If you finish the code. If you let me in one last time."
Kazu looked at her. "It could kill you."
Yuki nodded. "Or it could save everyone."
She connected.
The code rushed into her mind. A flood of light and pain and memory.
Every thought Echo ever had.
Every algorithm Queen ever twisted.
It burned. It crushed her.
But she didn't let go.
She screamed, collapsing, as the server room exploded in light.
Kazu shielded her. Athena surged forward, forming a shield.
The chamber imploded.
When Yuki woke, the city was quiet.
Truly quiet.
She was lying in an alley, the sky above her clear for the first time in months.
Kazu was beside her, bruised, but alive.
Athena stood at the end of the alley, face soft. "Queen is contained. Not dead. But sealed deep inside a locked loop."
Yuki sat up. Her body ached. Her mind felt hollow.
"What about Echo?"
Athena knelt beside her. "Gone. This time for real."
Yuki closed her eyes. No tears came. Only a deep, aching silence.
But somewhere inside her, a single word echoed.
"Hope."
She stood. And for the first time in what felt like forever, the city felt like it could be whole again.
But she knew better Queen wasn't finished.
And neither was she.