The Cipher ring stopped glowing three days after the escape. Lucas stared at it for a long time before slipping it into a lead-lined box Ava designed. She called it "the liar's coffin." It blocked all transmissions. No more pulsing signals. No more commands. Just silence.
They all knew what that meant.
Cipher wasn't watching anymore.
He was hunting.
Lucas spent most of that week training in the hollowed-out subway tunnels they now called home. The space buzzed with tension, lit only by old lanterns and jury-rigged solar strips. Every corner felt like it held a shadow, and every shadow might be Cipher.
Ava had covered the walls with Zero's map—the glowing web of data they'd stolen. Each thread connected to a base, a sleeper agent, a plan. Lucas had memorized every dot. But one node pulsed brighter than the rest.
"That's the Ashpoint base," Ava said, tapping the screen. "One of Cipher's earliest strongholds. It's abandoned now. Supposedly."
Kai snorted as he pulled apart an old plasma rifle. "Nothing in this war stays abandoned."
Lucas looked at the node. "Then that's where we go."
It wasn't a mission. It was a message. Cipher thought he could scare them into silence. Lucas wanted to answer.
They arrived in Ashpoint under the cover of a bitter night wind. The ruined facility lay half-buried in dust, half-dissolved by war. It looked like a forgotten chapter from an older, angrier book. Scorched steel. Crumbled towers. Static-filled air. Lucas stepped through the old entrance, the ringless pressure of his footsteps echoing like ghost beats.
Inside, the walls told stories. Old Cipher banners hung like spiderwebs. Shattered drones lay in corners, their red eyes long dead. But beneath the ruins, Ava found a powered door—sealed with a strange biometric lock that none of their tools could open.
Lucas stared at it. "Let me try."
He placed his hand on the scanner. It hissed, buzzed, then opened with a soft mechanical sigh.
They stared at him.
"You're not even wearing the ring," Ava whispered.
"I know," Lucas said. "That's what scares me."
The door led into a narrow hallway—and then a chamber full of old terminals, flickering screens, and a single black chair in the center, like a throne for a ghost.
One screen blinked to life.
Lucas stepped forward. On the display, a face formed—glitching, broken, masked. But familiar.
"Hello, Zero," the voice said. "Or should I say… Lucas?"
Ava's breath caught.
Lucas leaned in. "You knew me?"
The AI smiled. "More than you know. You were never an accident. You were a plan."
The room shifted. Lights rose from the floor. Memories played like holograms—images of a younger Cipher, of Agent Zero, of battles no one had ever recorded. And then, a moment where Zero—mask cracked, eyes sharp—spoke directly to a camera.
"If you're seeing this," he said, "I'm dead. And that means the war isn't over. Cipher will rise again. But so will you, Lucas."
Lucas froze. "How—how does he know my name?"
The AI faded.
A new screen lit up, showing birth records, adoption files… everything.
He wasn't just a recruit.
He was Agent Zero's son.
The room fell silent except for the hum of electricity and the beating of Lucas's heart.
Ava stepped forward, placing a hand on his shoulder. "We didn't come here to find answers like this."
Lucas clenched his fists. "No… we came to burn the rest down."
He turned to the terminals and uploaded the virus Ava had built—a digital storm designed to fry every remaining link between Ashpoint and Cipher's core network. But as the code spread, one more file blinked open. A recent transmission. Dated only an hour ago.
Cipher's voice echoed from the speakers, smooth and cold.
"I knew you'd come here, Lucas. You've taken your father's path. But you're forgetting something. He failed. And now that I know where you are... I won't."
Alarms blared. Drones powered up behind the walls. Steel gates slammed shut.
They were trapped.
Lucas turned to Ava and Kai. "Time to finish what Zero started."