Adrian didn't sleep that night.Even when the lights were out, he could still see the red pulse behind his eyelids — the heartbeat of Nadir. It throbbed faintly, like something alive inside him.
He sat on the edge of the bed in the safehouse, hands clasped tight. The city outside was silent except for the hum of the neon signs.
Every few seconds, he'd hear it again.
"Synchronization at 43%."
A voice. Calm. Female. Mechanical. From somewhere deep within his consciousness.
He gritted his teeth and slammed his fist against the table. "Get out of my head."
The voice didn't stop.
"Host neural resistance detected. Adjusting frequency."
He gasped, clutching his temples. A flash — his father's voice overlapped with the mechanical tone.
"Adrian… if you're hearing this… it means the experiment survived."
Images flooded his mind: the laboratory, the blinding white lights, his father working beside Charles Ward, arguments, shouting — then a blinding explosion of light.
And pain.The pain of death.
Then, silence.
He opened his eyes again. He was back in the safehouse — but sweat soaked his shirt, his pulse racing.
Elena entered quietly, holding a cup of coffee. "You're awake."She looked at him for a moment — the dark circles under his eyes, the tremor in his hand — and set the cup down.
"Did it happen again?" she asked softly.
Adrian didn't answer immediately. "It's talking to me."
"Nadir?"
He nodded. "It's inside me, Elena. It's trying to synchronize."
She sat down across from him. "Then it's worse than I thought. The system must have used you as its biological anchor. That means—"
"It means my father built me as part of it," he finished for her, his voice bitter. "His final project wasn't resurrection. It was possession."
Elena looked down. "He believed he could save humanity from extinction by merging us with machine logic. But what he created was something that could rewrite consciousness itself."
Adrian leaned forward. "Then why didn't you tell me this sooner?"
"Because you weren't ready to believe it," she said, her tone sharp. "And because part of me hoped you'd never have to know."
Silence settled between them again.
Then she said quietly, "Charles knows more. He was the one who designed the containment architecture. If we find him, we can stop the link before it completes."
Adrian's eyes narrowed. "Your father won't just hand us that information."
She gave a humorless smile. "He doesn't have to. He wrote it into the prototype servers. And I have the access key."
Adrian stood, pulling on his coat. "Then we go tonight."
Elena hesitated. "There's something else."
He turned. "What?"
"The Board has issued a retrieval order for you. They're calling it 'Phase 5.' They want you alive—until synchronization completes."
Adrian's expression hardened. "Then they'll have to fight me for it."
[Meanwhile – Ward Mansion, Private Study]
Charles Ward stared at the flickering feed from his surveillance screen. The image showed Adrian's face — pale, tense, determined.
He turned to the man standing in the shadows. "You saw it too, didn't you?"
The man nodded. His voice was low, mechanical. "The merge has begun."
Charles exhaled, the weight of guilt deep in his eyes. "Then there's no turning back."
The shadowed man stepped into the light.
His face — half machine, half flesh — bore the faint resemblance of Raymond Vance.
"He was always meant to finish what we started," Raymond said softly."Even if it kills him."