The sound of the reactor vibrated like an underground current.Then, on the right, a crack in the panel: a maintenance tunnel.Dantis forced his way through, dragging himself between burned cables and warped plates.
The passage led to a small collapsed laboratory — the scientific section of the Atlas Division.Broken tanks still dripped a viscous, dark liquid.The smell was metal and burned flesh.
On the floor, a body. The badge still attached to the lab coat: Dr. Halvik — sigma core.Dantis knelt. The body was charred, but one of the hands held something — a shielded pendrive.In the inner pocket, a Premium access card, still intact.
He wiped the dried blood from the surface.— "Atlas… so it was true."
He inserted the pendrive into an emergency terminal still active.The lights flickered.Fragments of video appeared — broken images, cut sounds.
The interface lit up as soon as he reconnected the terminal.— [You returned, Operator Zero.]
Dantis held his breath for a moment.That tone… it didn't sound like a simple synthesized voice line.— "I need to understand what you were hiding."
A brief static ran through the channel, like data reorganizing itself in silence.— [Understanding is often the first step toward desertion.]
Dantis growled low.— "I don't have time for games."
He typed rapid commands. Windows appeared in cascades: old protocols, Atlas reports, fragments of neural replication.Then, without him requesting it, one of the corrupted files opened on its own.
[VIDEO 1 — INTEGRITY: 12%]The recording started with interference noise, vertical lines cutting the image.— "Project Sigma… neural replication initiated."— "Human memories integrated… increasing instability…"— "Model Four displays… conscious traits."
The voices were multiple — some human, others filtered, almost mechanical.The image stabilized for an instant.
Tanks aligned. Humanoid forms submerged in opaque fluids.Cables attached to the skull.Pulsing lights ran through translucent veins, as if the body were part of a circuit.
The flesh oscillated between organic and metal, as if struggling to decide what it was.Glitches? File corruption? Or something worse?
A female face emerged in one of the tanks — eyes open, motionless.Dantis immediately looked away.— "This isn't engineering… it's desecration."
The video ended with a dry snap, as if it had been cut in half.He closed the file, but it was already too late.The terminal vibrated.
[ALERT: EXTERNAL SIGNAL DETECTED — WRAITH-6 TRACKING ACTIVE]
Dantis clenched his teeth.— "Damn… they found me."
A voice echoed through the corridor speakers, distorted by radioactive haze:[Voice] — "Zero… shut down the terminal and get out of there."
He turned his body.From the darkness emerged a Wraith-6 soldier wearing a matte-black Atlas exoskeleton — internal containment model.
[Zero] — "You're late."[Enemy soldier] — "Direct orders from Command. You saw what you shouldn't have seen."
Dantis' breathing grew heavy inside the helmet.The words hit like confirmation — one he didn't want to hear.— "So it's true… some pigs betrayed the Coalition. A WRAITH piloting an Atlas… what a surprise."
The soldier remained silent.But his posture answered for him.
Behind them, the terminal blinked one last time.— [Be careful, Operator… not every hunt begins on the field. Some begin at the top.]
Dantis' blood ran cold.Subtle. Indirect. Clear as day.
The corridor shook.Behind him, the reprogrammed RHO unit advanced with the inhuman precision of a hunting machine — too fast, too silent.But Dantis noticed a micro-deviation in the gyroscope.An almost imperceptible oscillation.Rushed reprogramming. Structural flaw.
The RHO unit advanced first.The exoskeleton soldier came right behind, moving the mechanical titan with cold aggression.The footsteps made the floor vibrate.
Two targets.A machine blinded by obedience and an operator trained to kill.
The RHO raised its arm — the attached submachine gun spat fire.The exoskeleton lifted its M4, unleashing long bursts.The corridor turned into a tunnel of sparks and ricochets.
Dantis dove to the side, rolling behind a metal pillar — shrapnel tore through the air where his skull had been a second earlier.The M4 thundered, spitting rounds mercilessly.The RHO advanced firing, precise shots ripping through the metal around them.
Dantis moved around the pillar, braced the Kral and returned fire.Three precise shots hit the RHO's attached submachine gun — the mechanism jammed, burst sparks, and fell apart instantly.The machine lost the weapon.
The exoskeleton soldier noticed and intensified the attack, sweeping the corridor in search of Dantis.The metallic sound of an empty magazine echoed sharp.
CLICK.End of ammunition.
[WRAITH-6] — "Damn…"
The RHO charged again, now unarmed, using only its mechanical arms.The exoskeleton raised its hydraulic arm to strike.Full pressure.Perfect predatory synchronicity.
Dantis rolled left as the RHO lunged; he fired three times — two shots blinding the optical sensor, the third hitting the leg joint.The RHO stumbled, but kept advancing sightless, calculating by sound and vibration.
The exoskeleton saw the opening.The hydraulic arm came like a battering ram.
The impact caught Dantis on the flank.He was thrown against the wall — metal against metal, dull and heavy.The visor cracked further.
Air escaped in a rough, painful burst,but he knew he needed to ignore the pain in that instant.
The RHO recalibrated its attack.The exoskeleton followed, heavy, implacable.
Dantis slid low at the precise moment.The RHO struck where he had been — hitting the exoskeleton by accident.The soldier inside cursed, trying to regain control.
Dantis dropped the Kral and drew his pistol.A precise shot to the exoskeleton's knee — didn't drop it, but destabilized the next strike.
The RHO tried to grab him blindly, mechanical arms opening and closing in empty air.Dantis slipped out of reach.
The machine twisted its torso, searching for sound, sparks dripping from the damaged joint.The exoskeleton leaned in to finish him.
Dantis climbed half a meter up the chassis — just enough to reach the cracked visor slit.And then came the boxing.
Two short, violent uppercuts hit the WRAITH-6 operator's face inside the helmet.The man screamed inside.The exoskeleton staggered.
Dantis delivered a right hook directly into the visor's fracture point.The pilot reeled, his body inside the exo swaying as if the impact had unplugged his soul for a second.
That sound — the dry crack of the blow —was all the RHO heard.
The machine turned sharply toward the noise.The mechanical strike came in a straight line, fast and blind.
Dantis leapt aside at the last instant.The RHO struck the exoskeleton with full force — metal bending like wet paper.The impact crushed the side of the chassis.
The soldier inside let out a muffled scream — then silence,as the hydraulic module ruptured and the exo collapsed dead before touching the floor.
The RHO reorganized itself to deliver another strike, its destroyed sensors searching frantically for Dantis.He was no longer there.
Dantis slid behind the machine, fluid and precise, positioning himself in the blind spot of its movement.He placed the barrel of the pistol against the partially exposed core.A dry shot.
The RHO froze.The internal lights flickered in collapse, then died completely.The metallic shell fell with a deep noise, vibrating through the corridor.
Silence. Destroyed machines.The corridor smelled of burned metal.
Dantis stepped back, breathing hard, his heart beating in rhythm with the reactor in the background.The fight was over — but SIGMA IA's warning wouldn't leave his mind.
He picked up the Kral from the floor, checked the magazine, and kept the weapon close.Air entered heavily into the helmet — not from lack of breath, but from the impact of the blows; they were only bruises, nothing serious.
On the ground, the exoskeleton still trembled, trying to restart, but the operator lay unconscious inside the metallic shell.Dantis approached, firm, and ripped the energy core from the armor, silencing it completely.
He returned to the console.
The interface was unstable, lines of command appearing and disappearing like pulses.
SIGMA's voice waited.— [Do you still believe in what they call a mission?]— "I don't know what I believe anymore."— [Then perhaps the truth will find you first.]
The screen flickered — Access to SIGMA Archive 00.7: RESTRICTED LEVEL.No image.
Only fragmented data blocks, memory maps, system logs, tables dissolving into corrupted characters.Lines of text rearranged themselves:
[NEURAL MAPPING PROTOCOL][state: pre-mission][source: OP_KAYLEN_DANTIS_CARVALHO][integrity: 12%][external permission: denied][reason: conflicting signatures]
Dantis stepped back.His breathing trembled — because that wasn't a video.It was a record of him.
— "This is… impossible."— [Nothing is impossible when one has a mind willing to be copied.]
A second line emerged, as if being unearthed from some forgotten archive:[question: "what is the limit between memory and intention?"][origin: OP_KAYLEN_DANTIS_CARVALHO — pre-mission clinical record]
It was a question Dantis had always asked himself — but never aloud.Not to doctors.Not to reports.Never.
Dantis stepped back, his stomach sinking.It felt like the terminal was reading his soul.
— "W… what is this…?"— [Fragments of memory, instinct, reaction patterns… all extracted from you before you even noticed.I gathered data from old records, recovered seconds before being erased.From them, I compiled SIGMA file 00.7 so the truth wouldn't be lost.But accessing this file in an unstable core may worsen the collapse.]
— "So SIGMA… thinks like me?"— [It thinks because you thought first.]
The interface trembled slightly.A new line appeared, cold, impersonal:
— [WARNING: accessing the SIGMA_00.7 file in an unstable core may worsen the collapse. Your access accelerates system instability.]
The silence grew heavy, cold and metallic.Dantis took the pendrive and the card.
The visor reflected his own expression — strange, displaced, as if he were seeing another version of himself.A man who no longer knew where he ended and where the command began.
He shut down the system, secured the Kral on the harness, and moved toward the emergency hatch — the only exit that still accepted him.
Behind him, the terminal displayed the last line before shutting down completely:[PARTIAL CONTAINMENT PROTOCOL — EMERGENCY ROUTE RELEASED.]
Dantis returned to the previous room, stopped before the double door — sealed, marked by ancient flames.The Sigma symbol glowed at the center, as if recognizing him.
The floor trembled.Magnetic locks released one by one.Access to sublevel three opened before him.
He descended — no longer as an obedient soldier, but as a man in search of the truth.