The door slid open.

  Beyond it, in the dim light of the relay core, stood Sloane.

  She was the same woman who had guarded Marcus's back through the tunnels. Compact. Hard. Rifle raised. Her eyes swept the opening, found me, and her finger tightened on the trigger.

  Then she saw my chest. The filaments. The red lines spreading under my skin like circuit traces. My right hand hanging numb at my side. The blood drying on my lip.

  "Leo?"

  Behind her, three contractors turned. Their weapons came up in smooth, practiced motions. These weren't salvage scavengers. These were professionals.

  Marcus fired first. Two rounds. One contractor dropped, clutching his thigh. The other two scattered behind machinery, returning fire.

  I moved. My legs worked. My right hand flopped uselessly. The filaments pulsed with each heartbeat.

  Sloane grabbed my arm, hauled me behind a support column. Bullets chewed the concrete where we'd been standing. Dust filled the air.

  "Where's Eli?" she shouted over the gunfire.

  I didn't answer.

  Her eyes went cold. She knew. She looked past me, toward the tunnel we'd come from, as if expecting to see him limping behind us.

  He wasn't there.

  Marcus was firing from the left, advancing behind cover. The Rival had found a raised catwalk, picking shots at the contractors' positions. Prime stood in the open, watching, not moving, pale eyes tracking the fight like it was a simulation.

  A contractor popped up from behind a junction box. Aimed at Sloane. I saw it happen. Saw the rifle barrel track toward her head. My body reacted before my brain finished processing.

  [SIGNAL GHOSTING: ACTIVE]

  [DURATION: 10 SECONDS]

  [TARGETS: 2 FALSE SIGNATURES DEPLOYED]

  The world stuttered.

  Two red silhouettes flickered into existence, one to my left, one behind the contractor. They were low-resolution, staticky, like corrupted video files. But they moved. They breathed. They looked real enough.

  The contractor tracked the wrong one. Fired at nothing. His bullets passed through empty air.

  I stepped out from behind the column and shot him. Once. Center mass. He dropped.

  Then the cost hit.

  My left foot went cold. Not numb like my right hand. Cold, like blood had stopped moving there. I stumbled, caught myself on the column's edge. My vision skipped—a half-second gap where I saw nothing at all. Just black. Then it returned.

  A thick warmth ran from my nose down across my lip. Copper taste. I wiped it with my good hand. Blood. Dark and arterial.

  Sloane stared at me. At the blood. At the fading red silhouettes. At my chest.

  The last contractor broke cover, running for an exit. Marcus put a round in his back. He fell face-down and didn't move.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Silence.

  The relay core hummed around us. Massive machinery lined the walls. Cables as thick as arms ran everywhere, feeding into junction boxes the size of coffins. A central column pulsed with blue light, rhythmic, like a heartbeat. The air smelled of ozone and heated metal.

  Sloane stood frozen, rifle half-raised, staring at me.

  "He's dead," she said. Not a question.

  I pointed at the floor behind me. At the tunnel we'd crawled through. At the place where Eli had stopped breathing and become something else. The pink foam on the metal. The empty eyes.

  She looked. Didn't speak.

  Her jaw tightened. A muscle jumped in her cheek. She looked away from me. Back at the machinery. Back at anything except my face.

  Marcus moved past us, checking the downed contractors. He rolled one over, searched him, took ammunition and a grenade. The Rival covered the exits, detonator in hand, watching the darkness.

  Prime stood motionless, pale eyes scanning the core, cataloging, calculating.

  "We need to move," Marcus said. "More will come. They know we're here."

  I nodded. Took a step. My left foot dragged. The cold had reached my ankle, spreading up my calf. I forced it to move. Forced the leg to work.

  Sloane watched me walk. She didn't offer to help.

  We moved deeper into the core.

  The relay core was a cathedral of machines. Three levels of grated catwalks surrounded the central pillar. Control terminals lined every wall, their screens flickering with data I couldn't read. The hum was louder here, vibrating through the floor, through my bones.

  Prime stopped at a terminal. Pressed its palm to the screen. The display shifted, showing schematics, timers, power curves.

  "Calibration is starting."

  "How long?" I asked.

  "Forty-seven minutes. Maybe less. The system is optimizing for your biometrics."

  Sloane stood apart from the group. Her rifle hung loose, but her eyes never stopped moving. Watching the exits. Watching me.

  "You used him," she said. Her voice was flat. "Didn't you."

  Marcus turned. The Rival stopped moving. Even Prime looked up from the terminal.

  I met her eyes. Held them. "He was dying. I made it useful."

  "He was my friend too."

  "He knew what he was agreeing to. He said it himself. Don't let me die as a file."

  Sloane didn't answer. She just looked at me. Long enough to count seconds. Long enough to make it clear that something between us had broken and wouldn't be fixed.

  The Rival broke the silence. "Contractors are regrouping. I hear movement in the east tunnel. Maybe four of them. We have ten minutes. Maybe less."

  Marcus moved to a control panel, studied the readouts. "Can we stop the calibration?"

  Prime shook its head. "Not from here. The sequence is locked to the host's biometrics. Only Leo can affect it."

  "Affect it how?"

  Prime looked at me. Its pale eyes were unreadable, ancient, empty.

  "You can't stop it. But you might be able to redirect it."

  "Redirect it where?"

  "Empty sectors. Maintenance zones. The pods in the decommission vault." A pause. Long enough to mean something. "Or into your team."

  Sloane's rifle came up an inch. Not pointed at me. Just ready. Marcus's hand went to his weapon. The Rival shifted position, putting himself between me and the exit.

  I looked at the central column. At the pulsing blue light. At the timer in my head counting down.

  Forty-six minutes.

  The terminal beside Prime flickered. The screen went black, then reformed into a face.

  Kaelen.

  Not angry. Not gloating. Just watching. Studying. His eyes moved across the room, cataloging each of us, noting positions, weapons, injuries. Clinical. Detached.

  "Variable Seven," he said. His voice was calm. Calm like a doctor explaining a terminal diagnosis. "You've begun thinking like a host."

  I didn't answer.

  "The calibration sequence is inevitable. You can't stop it. The energy has to go somewhere. But you can choose where." He paused. "Choose carefully. The wrong choice ends your team. The right choice ends them slower. There is no good choice. Only data."

  The screen went dark.

  Sloane looked at me. Marcus looked at me. The Rival. Prime. All waiting.

  My left foot was completely numb now. The cold had reached my knee. I couldn't feel the floor through my boot.

  I walked to the central terminal. Pressed my chest against its reader. The filaments touched the cold metal, pulsed, glowed brighter.

  [BIOMETRIC: VARIABLE SEVEN]

  [OMEGA-NULL HOST: CONFIRMED]

  [INTEGRATION LEVEL: 74%]

  [CALIBRATION SEQUENCE: ACTIVE]

  [TIME REMAINING: 00:45:18]

  [REDIRECTION TARGETS AVAILABLE: 7]

  Seven targets. Seven choices.

  I scanned the list. Empty maintenance sectors. Abandoned storage zones. The decommission vault with its frozen pods. Power distribution hubs. Ventilation cores.

  And one labeled:

  [SECTOR 7-C SURVIVORS: CURRENT LOCATION — RELAY CORE PERIMETER]

  Them. Right there. Forty meters away. Huddled in the darkness, waiting for me to save them or end them.

  I looked at Sloane. At Marcus. At the people who had followed me through hell, who had trusted me, who had watched me become this.

  My hand hovered over the terminal.

  Forty-five minutes.