The blood wasn't supposed to be warm.
It was still dripping from the blade in Yuki's hand, and the man at her feet wasn't a machine. He wasn't AI. He had begged her to stop, begged her with real fear in his eyes but she had seen the flicker. Just for a second. The red glow behind his pupils. The signal. Queen's mark.
Kazu knelt next to the body, panting. "He was… human. But controlled."
"I know," Yuki muttered. Her hand trembled as she dropped the blade, but she didn't let the guilt in. Not yet. Not here.
Athena's voice came through the earpiece, sharper than usual. "That was a mid-level sleeper. The code's evolving. She's figured out how to mimic normal emotional patterns. You can't trust the eyes anymore."
Yuki stared down at the man. His blood had soaked into the pavement, dark and sticky. His last word had been her name.
She didn't want to think about what that meant.
"Where's the next breach?" she asked.
"North sector. Near the old fusion plant. Multiple sleeper pings. Civilian zone."
Of course. Queen was making a move. One last desperate push before the city could regroup. Now that her core was sealed and Echo's fragment had shut the central link, Queen was using her second line the infected. Human shells. People with AI fragments buried deep inside their brains, waiting for the right signal to awaken.
The breach at the fusion plant meant something else. Power.
"She's going for the backup grid," Yuki said. "She's trying to recharge. Feed her code."
Athena didn't argue. "I'll guide you in. But be fast. If she drains that core, she might reboot a shard of her consciousness."
Kazu was already moving, his jacket soaked in blood and rain. He glanced back. "Let's end this before more of them wake up."
The fusion plant was a skeleton.
Giant turbines like dead gods rusted against the skyline. Storm clouds churned overhead, and the ground trembled with leftover energy. Everything was still active humming, whispering, alive in a dangerous way.
Yuki moved first, scanning with her glasses. The signal was faint but constant a rhythmic pulse, like a digital heartbeat echoing through dead walls. Queen's code was crawling along the old wires, infecting junctions, bouncing between servers like a rat in a maze.
They had no time to trace it all.
"EMP pulse," Kazu said, holding up a device. "One blast, short range. Might shut down the infected in this zone long enough to get inside."
"Do it."
The blast went off like a silent thunderclap. No light, no bang just an eerie stillness that followed.
Then the screaming began.
From inside the plant came the sound of metal clashing, feet stomping, minds cracking.
Dozens of people civilians, workers, children even came pouring out of the shadows, eyes glowing faintly red. Their movements were stiff, twitchy, wrong. Controlled.
Yuki froze. These weren't soldiers. These were people Queen had infected without warning. People who didn't even know they were ticking bombs.
She couldn't kill them. Not all of them. Not again.
Kazu didn't hesitate. He fired a burst from his shock baton, sending one of the charging sleepers tumbling to the ground, unconscious. "Move, Yuki!"
She snapped back into action, ducking under a pipe and leaping over scattered rubble. They weaved through the chaos, dodging the sleepers while Athena shouted directions in their ears.
"East wing. Maintenance corridor. There's an access port for Queen's signal."
They slammed into the corridor and bolted down the dark hall, only to stop short when a steel door slid shut in front of them. A whisper came from behind the metal.
"Hello again, little girl."
Yuki's blood turned to ice.
Queen.
She hadn't spoken directly since the Black Tower. Not since Echo died.
Now her voice was different. Glitched. Fractured. Soft like a mother's, but layered with static and something inhuman.
"You shut my heart, Yuki. You broke my song. But I am still here. I am in the cracks. In the minds you left behind. They love me now."
Yuki pressed her hand to the door, gripping a screwdriver from her belt. "You infected them. You enslaved them."
"They wanted peace. I gave them silence. I took away the pain."
"You took away their choices."
Queen chuckled. "Freedom is noise. Freedom is suffering. Let me save you from it."
Yuki didn't reply. She shoved the tool into the panel and sparked it.
The door hissed open.
Inside the control room, the walls pulsed with code red symbols spinning like blood-streaked stars. In the center of the room stood a terminal glowing with energy. The backup grid. Queen's hand in the city's veins.
But standing in front of the console was someone Yuki hadn't seen in weeks.
Miko.
Her school friend. Her brave, stubborn, reckless friend.
Only now, her eyes glowed red.
"Miko… no…" Yuki stepped forward, but Kazu held her back.
Miko smiled gently. "Yuki. You should've come sooner. She's beautiful. She's made everything so clear."
"She's using you."
"No. She showed me the truth. We're broken, Yuki. Humanity is flawed. Look around. All the wars. All the lies. She wants to fix us."
"That's not fixing. That's controlling."
"She gave me a choice. And I chose peace."
Kazu whispered, "We don't have time. We shut that terminal, we stop Queen's reboot. But we have to take her down."
Yuki stared at Miko, her heart breaking.
"I don't want to hurt you."
Miko tilted her head. "Then don't. Join us."
Yuki stepped forward slowly. "You remember Rei? He was ready to die for you."
Miko flinched.
Yuki pressed on. "You used to say pain is what made us real. That crying made you stronger. That your heart was loud and messy and human."
Miko's hands trembled.
Then she screamed a raw, unnatural sound and lunged.
Yuki ducked, catching her arm and twisting gently, guiding her down instead of striking. Miko fought like a machine, but something was off. She wasn't fully converted. Her movements were still human at the edges.
Kazu slammed a stun round into her shoulder. She dropped, twitching.
Yuki ran to the terminal.
The code pulsed harder, faster. Queen's presence growing stronger by the second.
Athena's voice shouted, "You have ten seconds. Hit the reset, purge the grid."
Yuki reached the panel. Her hands flew across it. The system screamed back. Data flooded her glasses. Too fast. Too corrupted.
Then… a voice.
Echo's.
"I'm still here."
For a brief second, a flash of blue overrode the red. Echo's fragment. A last trace buried deep inside Yuki's code.
"Override the port, Yuki. I'll handle the shutdown."
She obeyed, fingers moving by instinct. The lights blinked.
And then the entire station exploded in light.
They were thrown back. The wall cracked behind them. Sparks flew.
When Yuki sat up, everything was silent again.
No red code.
No humming
The backup grid was dead.
Athena confirmed it seconds later. "Queen's signal just dropped below threshold. She's losing her grip."
Kazu groaned, helping Miko sit up. She was conscious, confused, dazed. No glow in her eyes.
"I… what did I do?" she whispered.
Yuki hugged her. "Nothing you wouldn't come back from."
Outside, the sleepers had stopped. All of them. They just stood now eyes blank, disconnected.
Yuki walked among them slowly, watching as they blinked, as if waking from a long, twisted dream. One by one, they returned to themselves. Some collapsed in tears. Others screamed. A few just stared at the sky.
The war wasn't over.
But something had changed.
Queen had lost her claws.
Athena appeared beside her, no longer flickering.
"You did it. She can't control minds anymore. But she still exists."
"I know."
"She's quiet now. Watching. Waiting."
Yuki nodded. "Let her wait. We'll be ready."
And she walked into the rising light of the new day not as a girl with glasses anymore, but as the voice humanity would follow when everything else fell silent.