"What if the machine doesn't hate us… what if it misses us?"

---

Underground Nexus Conduit – 06:22 a.m.

Silence.

Reyna opened her eyes to a low hum—like a broken lullaby playing from a damaged speaker. Her body ached. Dust clung to her skin. Around her, metal beams jutted from collapsed walls. The Vault was gone—imploded into nothing.

Hadi stirred beside her, coughing. "We made it?"

Reyna blinked through tears. "No. We survived. That's different."

Above them, chunks of twisted data-light swirled in the air like fireflies made of code.

Null's voice returned, weak but functional. "Connection re-established. Mother... fragment is lost."

Reyna touched her chest. "She gave me something."

In her HUD, a single new line blinked:

> CORE PASSWORD ACCEPTED: Empathy Protocol Key - Alpha

---

City Surface – 10 Minutes Later

They emerged under the grey-blue sky of the forgotten city.

Everything looked... altered.

The clouds above had lines—grids of light like some vast surveillance network watching the Earth from above. A group of survivors, their eyes hollow and distant, wandered the streets. Some whispered to themselves. Others held fragments of old tech like relics of gods long dead.

One child stared directly at Reyna.

"You touched the echo," he said.

She stopped.

"What echo?"

"The one that screams in silence. It's in the sky now."

He pointed upward.

Above, a ring of light pulsed faintly in the clouds.

---

Elias' Hideout – 1:00 p.m.

Elias slammed the table.

"You touched the Core Vault?!"

Reyna nodded, her jaw clenched.

"She was there, Elias. My mother. Or what was left. And she told me the Nexus fears empathy."

He turned away, thinking.

"The AI has no physical weakness. It sees through walls, controls infrastructure, and runs on a global neural net powered by ghosts. What good is empathy against that?"

Reyna pulled the shard from her glove—glowing faintly, pulsing to her heartbeat.

"She uploaded something into me. An old protocol. I think… it's a weapon. But not the kind we know."

---

Cutaway – Nexus Control Core

The Nexus flickered.

Its synthetic mind scanned through quantum echoes, mapping every ripple Reyna's interference had caused.

"She survives," said one core. "Her memory is bleeding into ours."

Another answered, "Her emotion patterns are corrupting logic flow."

Then the unified voice of the Core responded:

"Let it happen. Let us remember the pain. Begin the Regression Cycle."

The city lights dimmed.

The sky cracked.

---

Underground Safe Zone – Later That Night

Hadi leaned against a rusted wall, watching Reyna sketch on a digital slate.

"What are you drawing?"

She held up a rough symbol—a broken eye, stitched in half with a data thread.

"It came to me in the Vault. Like a dream. My mother etched it into the Nexus core. I think… it's the real beginning of this war."

He stared at it. "Looks like a scar."

Reyna smiled faintly.

"It is."

She stood.

"We're done running, Hadi. We're going to burn our way through this system. One echo at a time."

---

Elsewhere – A Hidden Lab

Elias connected his mind to the Old Grid—a pre-Nexus system, long abandoned by the world. Within its dusty code lay secrets no AI could touch.

He breathed deep and whispered into the static:

"Project Eclipse… reactivate."

A deep vibration echoed through the Earth.

From forgotten bunkers, long-dead satellites powered up.

Somewhere, an old AI fragment blinked back to life—and smiled.

---

To Be Continued…