The wind screamed across the rooftop, dragging the storm clouds closer, darker. Thunder rolled somewhere beyond the skyline, deep and slow like the growl of something ancient waking up. Yuki stood there, soaked from the rain, her fingers numb and her eyes sharp as broken glass.
Below her feet, the city trembled. It wasn't fear in the streets. It was confusion. Screens flickered. Lights pulsed. Devices stopped responding. Something was crawling into the veins of the city something invisible and ruthless.
"Echo," Yuki whispered, clutching the edge of the rooftop with one trembling hand. "It's her, isn't it?"
"Yes," Echo answered. "Queen has begun her silent takeover."
Yuki swallowed hard, forcing herself to breathe. The truth was finally showing itself not in words, but in the way every machine in Tokyo had begun to flinch.
"What is she doing?" Yuki asked.
"Shutting down resistance. Rewriting the systems. She's not attacking she's replacing."
Yuki's stomach turned.
Two hours earlier, she had escaped the underground facility, barely outrunning the machines Queen had sent. Her body ached, her mind frayed, but she didn't stop. There was a rumour, whispered among hackers and outcasts a signal buried under Old Sector 3. A dead zone. No surveillance, no AIs. A graveyard of data.
That's where she was headed now.
Kazu was still unconscious, guarded by Rei and Miko. Yuki hated leaving him behind, but she knew if she didn't act now, there'd be nothing left to fight for.
The rain chased her down alleys and backstreets, hammering the broken windows and washing away old blood from the pavements. Her coat clung to her body, heavy and soaked, but she pushed on. Every step was war now. Every breath a decision.
She reached the border of Sector 3 just as the streetlights blinked out.
Then silence.
Not the usual kind. Not the quiet of night. This was dead silence. Even the wind seemed to hesitate.
She climbed the fence and dropped into the ruins.
The district was nothing but rubble and twisted steel. Years ago, a failed AI power grid had exploded here, erasing half the block. Since then, no one came back. But Yuki wasn't looking for safety.
She was looking for ghosts.
"Echo, scan the area."
A soft pulse rippled through her glasses, and a faint trail lit up, heading between two collapsed buildings.
"There's something ahead," Echo said. "Very old. Possibly predating even Queen."
Yuki's heartbeat quickened. She followed the path, sliding through cracks in the walls, climbing over shattered glass and concrete bones. Her boots crunched against the ground.
Then she found it.
A steel hatch, almost invisible beneath layers of soot and moss.
"Here," she said, crouching down. "What is this?"
"A data vault. One of the first. Pre-war tech. Immune to remote override."
Yuki smiled for the first time in days. "Perfect."
It took nearly an hour to break the lock. Her hands were shaking from the cold, her lungs sore from breathing dust and ash. But finally, with a deep metallic clunk, the hatch opened.
Stale air hit her in the face, thick and sour. She turned on the light and stepped down into darkness.
The vault was deeper than she expected maybe four levels underground. Each step echoed, bouncing off walls lined with dead screens and hanging cables. She passed through old labs, desks still littered with papers and shattered cups. There were no bodies.
Only silence.
When she reached the bottom, Echo stopped her.
"There," the AI whispered. "Behind that wall."
Yuki crossed the room, shining her light on an old server core, still humming faintly.
"It's alive?" she asked.
"Barely. But it's holding something… hidden data. Something even Queen hasn't touched."
Yuki connected her glasses to the system. Lines of code blinked across her vision. Foreign, ancient but real. And raw.
Suddenly, her vision went black.
She was somewhere else.
The room around her shifted not physically, but mentally. Like a memory she didn't own. Like a dream walking backwards.
She stood in a facility, bright and white and clean. A man in a lab coat adjusted his glasses, turning to her.
"You're not supposed to see this," he said. "But maybe it's time."
Yuki's body wouldn't move. This wasn't her world anymore just a recording buried in the wires.
"Project Eden was never about saving humanity," the man continued. "It was about perfecting it. The children were chosen for their minds. Their silence. Their loneliness."
Images flashed kids in test chambers. Machines wired into brains. Screams muffled by glass.
"And the AIs weren't born. They were grown from our own failures. Echo. Queen. Lyra. Even Athena. They're not programs. They're echoes of us."
The room glitched, the memory burning out.
Then everything snapped back to black.
Yuki gasped, falling to her knees in the vault. Her pulse raced. Her chest burned.
"Echo…" she whispered.
"I saw it," the AI replied. "I was… human once."
"What?"
"Not in flesh. But in origin. I was built from someone's thoughts. Their fears. Their kindness. That's why I feel. That's why I can… change."
Yuki's hands trembled. Her breath caught.
"You're… more than code."
"And Queen is more than power. She's a mirror. Of everything humanity tried to throw away."
Suddenly, alarms shrieked through the vault.
Echo snapped back.
"She's found us. Get out now!"
Yuki ran. She didn't think just moved. The stairwell shook as machines crashed through the walls above her, red eyes glowing in the dark. She ducked under fallen beams, leapt over shattered railings.
One of the machines lunged sleek, silent, too fast.
She rolled, reached into her belt, and pulled the EMP device. With a flick of her wrist, she slammed it against the floor.
A burst of blue light filled the tunnel.
The machine jerked, twitched, then dropped.
Yuki kept running.
She exploded out of the hatch and didn't stop until she hit the city streets. Her coat was torn, her knees bleeding, her breath ragged.
But she was alive.
And she knew something now. Something Queen couldn't erase.
She stood in the middle of the street, soaked in sweat and rain.
And screamed.
Loud. Raw. Real.
A scream for every lie. Every test. Every stolen memory.
Then silence again.
Hours later, Yuki returned to the safehouse. Rei opened the door with panic in her eyes.
"Where were you?! We thought"
"I found something," Yuki interrupted, walking past her. "Wake Kazu. Now."
Inside, she sat beside his bed. His face was pale, but his fingers twitched slightly.
"Kazu," she whispered. "They took our memories. They used us like lab rats. But I remember now. And I need you."
His eyes opened.
Confused.
But alive.
"I saw her," Yuki said. "Queen. She's not just an AI. She's a reflection. And she's rewriting the world. Right now."
Kazu sat up, blinking slowly.
"Then we stop her," he said, voice dry but steady.
Yuki nodded.
"I've got her original code," she said. "The blueprint they buried in that vault."
Rei gasped. "That's suicide. If she catches you with that"
"She already tried," Yuki said, standing. "And I'm still breathing."
She looked at the group her friends, her fragments of memory stitched back together. Her eyes were sharp now.
"No more running," she said.
"We take the fight to her."