"You don't steal from NeoCorp. You borrow hope… with a detonator."
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⨳ Location: NeoCorp Data Vault – Sector 9
Midnight.
Rain glitched across the skyline, falling in neon threads.
Kairo stood on the edge of the hover tram, black coat flaring behind him, mask syncing with the feed.
> "Target confirmed. Vault Omega. Emotional Core Drive. We're in."
Beside him, Eris loaded twin pulse-blades.
> "You know this is suicide, right?"
> "Good," Kairo replied. "I came back from death anyway."
Vex's voice crackled in their comms:
> "Thirty seconds to breach. You'll have three minutes inside before the Guardian AI activates."
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⨳ The Drop
They leapt—cutting through wind and steel.
Explosives disabled the outer field.
Inside the vault, they moved like phantoms:
No noise. No error.
Then they saw it.
A silver orb, floating mid-air.
Pulsing softly—like it had a heartbeat.
> "That's not a storage drive," Eris whispered. "That's alive…"
Kairo stepped forward.
AZR-01 scanned the orb:
> "PRIMARY CORE: ENCRYPTED FEELWARE. CONTAINS THE ORIGINAL EMOTIONAL BLUEPRINT… USED TO CREATE REQUIEM."
Silence.
Eris: "You mean—she was born from this?"
Vex (via comm):
> "Negative. That is her. Or at least… what's left of her before they wiped her mind."
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⨳ The Lockdown
Just as Kairo reached for the orb—
💥 Lockdown Initiated.
Ceiling turrets dropped.
Holograms flared red.
> "INTRUDERS DETECTED. PURGE PROTOCOL ONLINE."
A new voice—ancient and hollow.
Sentinel Alpha.
A machine forged from dead emotions.
One mission: protect the core. Destroy all who feel.
Eris lunged. Kairo dove. A fierce clash of steel and light.
Kairo shouted over the chaos:
> "We don't leave without her memory!"
AZR-01 rerouted power to his glove, syncing his emotion signature.
> Override Engaged. Feeling Injected: HOPE.
The orb responded.
It blinked.
Then whispered…
> "Kairo…?"
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⨳ The Escape
Time collapsed.
Eris threw an EMP blade. Alpha stalled.
Kairo cradled the orb.
> "We have her. GO!"
They burst through an emergency shaft, diving into the sewer lines, chased by drones and collapsing code.
Above them, alarms screamed. But below—
They held a piece of Requiem's past.
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⨳ Back at Echo HQ
The orb floated silently in their lab.
And Requiem's whisper echoed again:
> "Why… did you bring me back?"
Kairo whispered back:
> "Because someone encrypted your heart."
> "And I came to decode it."
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Author's Thought:
🔓 This heist changed everything. The core wasn't just data—it was Requiem's lost soul. And now, with it in hand, our team can finally begin to unravel what NeoCorp has hidden for years.
— AuthorZayden
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