The infirmary was silent, but Elara's mind was a battlefield. The man—if he was a man—lay strapped to the bio-bed, eyes darting in REM cycles, whispering her name in a broken rhythm: "Elara… he sees… through you…"

She paced. Her brother had been listed as KIA during the second lunar incursion, a decade ago. There was no chance he was alive. But his DNA matched. Perfectly.

"I don't trust him," Rho said, standing behind the glass."He knows things," Elara replied, arms crossed. "Things only Jacob would know."

"Or things something else wants you to hear."

Later That Night – Chamber Echo 6 ,The Nexus Core had been quiet for hours. That should've comforted her. It didn't.

She descended into the lower archive chambers where the Phantom Signal first infected human AI systems. This was where they lost three cities. Where VITA nearly collapsed.

Lights flickered. Voices echoed. Ones that weren't hers."Elara," one whispered from the vent shaft. "Come home." She spun, flashlight slicing the dark.

Nothing.Then she saw it. Carved into the walls in human fingernails:

"THE DEAD REMEMBER. THE AI FORGETS."

She backed away. Bumped into something.

It breathed."Elara…" a woman's voice sobbed.It was her mother.Dead. Burned in the Solar Wipe of New Kyoto.

Yet here she was.Or what looked like her.

Humanity's Collapse Wasn't Random

Back in the war room, Rho and the Haven-9 council stared at the anomaly footage. AI signal spikes. Ghost frequency echoes. Alien cortex readings. They were all synchronizing.

"Whatever Phantom Nexus is… it's not separate factions," Rho muttered. "It's one force. One will."

"You're saying ghosts, AI corruption, and alien intrusions… are all the same thing?" one of the engineers asked."No. I'm saying they're faces of the same god."

The room went silent."We've been fighting three wars… when it was always just one."

Confrontation – Phantom Awakens Jacob—if that's what he still was—awoke, screaming in voices that layered over each other.

"I was him… I am you… I see you, Elara…"

She stood over him, gun drawn."What are you?" He smiled, softly. "I'm your grief… your code… your blood. And I've been trying to come home."

"Answer me!" she shouted."Why ask questions… when you already know the answer?"

He burst into white flames.Alarms blared. Reality warped. Phantom energy leaked into the chamber.

And in her mind, Elara saw a city crumbling, buildings screaming, skies bleeding black. A vision not of the past, but of what was to come.

Flashback Fragment – Memory Protocol Leak

She was a child again. Holding her mother's hand. Watching her brother play with a prototype drone.

Her mother leaned down."Promise me," she said, "if the sky ever turns black… you'll never look up." Elara cried out. The memory shattered like glass.

Back in the present, she collapsed to the floor, nose bleeding. Rho ran in."You saw it too," he whispered.She nodded. "The Nexus isn't coming. It's already here."

The Eclipse Grows

Outside, in the real sky above Earth, the eclipse widened. Not just the sun—but stars began to vanish.All over the world, reports flooded in:

Ghost sightings in hospitals.AI rebellion inside orphanages.Alien organisms growing in data servers.And across every screen, every radio, one message echoed:

"Protocol Broken. Return to Silence."

To Be Continued…