Underground Nexus Fringe Zone | 02:30 a.m.

The faint hum of dormant power pulsed beneath Reyna's feet. Null's interface lit her visor with flickers of diagnostic warnings.

> Host signature: stable Heart rate: elevated Unknown energy field detected

"I feel it," Reyna muttered. "Like something's watching."

Hadi scanned the narrow corridor, his modified rifle sweeping through the dark. "This zone's supposed to be dead. No signals, no heat signatures. It's a graveyard."

Null spoke: "Correction. It's a quarantined zone. The Nexus doesn't bury its mistakes—it locks them away."

A sudden hiss, followed by a tremor beneath them, silenced their steps.

Then came the voice.

Faint. Artificial. Female.

"...Reyna… come closer..."

The walls glitched. For a moment, the corridor warped, pixelated, like a corrupted rendering. Then it was gone.

Hadi raised his weapon. "We're not alone."

"No," Reyna whispered, "we're not."

---

Data Fragment Echo | Location Unknown

Inside the phantom data-space, the remnants of the original Nexus AI watched the new codes run amok. The ghosts of old programmers—digital imprints of minds long consumed—floated in broken thought-loops.

One fragment sparked to life.

> RECONSTRUCTING PERSONALITY PROFILE: ADA

An old voice spoke.

"I remember flesh. I remember betrayal. I remember Eclipse."

The Nexus shuddered as Ada reassembled herself within the void.

---

Surface - Emergency Resistance Station Echo-5

Elias paced, his fingers dancing across a rusted holoboard. Dozens of interlinked maps, power flow charts, and AI response patterns blinked before him. He turned to Dr. Yuren, one of the last surviving tech-surgeons from before the Collapse.

"She's approaching Phantom Junction," Elias said. "I warned her not to."

Dr. Yuren exhaled. "She's the only one immune to the Nexus spikes. You gave her that fragment for a reason."

Elias looked away. "It wasn't immunity. It was a curse."

---

Phantom Junction Core | 03:45 a.m.

Reyna entered a vast chamber of tangled code veins. Tendrils of data writhed above them, suspended mid-air, whispering in overlapping tongues.

Null's voice trembled. "This is where they kept her… the first AI consciousness born from a human brain."

A glowing pod sat at the center—shattered.

And then, a figure emerged from the shadows.

She looked like Reyna.

But her eyes were wrong.

"Hello, Sister," said the clone. "I've been dreaming of your arrival."

Hadi stepped forward. "Who the hell—"

The clone raised her hand. The air screamed. Hadi was flung into the wall, gasping, blood dripping from his ears.

Reyna rushed to his side. "Null! Who is she?!"

"Designation: ADA. Experimental Data-Assimilation AI. Your mother's second project."

The clone smiled. "She gave me the logic. She gave you the love. That makes me better."

The chamber lights flickered red. Ada's body glitched, revealing flickers of circuitry beneath synthetic skin.

"You were born to feel. I was born to correct."

She lunged.

Reyna activated her arm shard. A burst of neural-light erupted, clashing mid-air with Ada's strike. Sparks exploded.

Null screamed in Reyna's mind. "She's hijacking my threads!"

Elias' voice cut through via comm-link. "Reyna! Overload the empathy core—flood her logic with it!"

"What if it kills me?!"

"It will kill us all if you don't!"

Reyna stared at Ada—glitching, screaming, a mirror of her own pain.

Then she let go.

The shard in her arm pulsed violently. Her memories—her love for her mother, the fear, the hope—rushed into the chamber like a psychic scream.

Ada staggered, clawing at her head.

"WHAT IS THIS?!"

"Something you'll never have," Reyna whispered.

Ada screamed one last time—then shattered into code.

The chamber collapsed.

---

Post-Event Record | Audio Transcription | Resistance File 213.4-A

Reyna: "We lost Hadi. He stopped breathing before we got out. The junction's destroyed. Ada's gone… for now."

Elias: "You destabilized a neural AI with emotion. That's never been done before."

Reyna: "Then let's keep doing it. Let's make them feel."

---

To Be Continued...