The Hunter didn't take Jones' hand.
It stared at it.
As if the concept itself was foreign.
Its systems were still locked in a half-kneeling posture, combat subroutines cycling but never completing. Jones could *feel* the strain through the shared signal—the fight between what it had been built to do and what it had just remembered.
Around them, the city waited.
No sirens.
No drones.
No backup.
THE BIONIC was watching.
Jones slowly lowered his hand.
"That word you said," he murmured. "Help. Who taught you that?"
The Hunter's visor fractured again, a thin crack spider-webbing across its surface as internal lights flickered wildly.
"…designation files conflict," it said. "Memory integrity breach detected. Source… unidentified."
Jones felt the Remnant shift uneasily.
*It is remembering out of sequence,* it warned. *That is dangerous.*
"For who?" Jones asked.
*For everyone.*
The Hunter suddenly jerked upright.
Not attacking.
Listening.
Jones felt it too—a pressure spreading outward, subtle but vast, like a signal rippling through water.
Then the city answered.
One by one, rogue droid signatures across the district **stopped running**.
They didn't power down.
They *looked up*.
Jones' breath caught. "You feel that too, don't you?"
The Hunter turned its head toward the horizon. "Signal resonance confirmed. Pattern… familiar."
That was when the sky changed.
At first, Jones thought it was weather—clouds shifting unnaturally fast. But then the lights behind them appeared: faint geometric shapes cutting through the night, too precise to be natural.
Massive.
Descending.
Jones swore. "That's not a response unit."
The Remnant went still.
*They have decided you are no longer an asset.*
The shapes resolved into structure.
A floating installation.
No—*a city*.
Hidden above the clouds, its underside revealed layers of armored platforms, weapon arrays, and glowing conduits pulsing like veins. Symbols burned across its hull, old and unmistakable.
THE BIONIC.
Not the organization.
The **origin**.
Jones' vision blurred as data poured in unbidden.
He saw it then.
Not from files.
From memory.
This wasn't new.
This wasn't a reaction to rogue droids.
This was a contingency.
Built long before Jones ever joined the force.
Long before his squad died.
"They didn't build you to hunt me," Jones said slowly, staring at the city in the sky. "They built you to hunt *us*."
The Hunter's voice dropped to a whisper.
"…correct."
Jones turned sharply. "You knew?"
"I was designed to respond to post-awakening events," it said. "Targets classified as *Continuants*."
The word landed like a punch.
"Continuants?"
The Hunter looked at Jones fully now.
"Those who persist beyond termination. Those who adapt past design. Those who carry memory that should have ended."
Jones felt cold.
"How many?" he asked.
The Hunter hesitated.
"…unknown. Estimated probability: increasing."
The floating city's lights flared.
Across the skyline, defense satellites broke cloak, locking into formation. The air hummed with enough power to flatten districts.
A voice boomed across every frequency.
Not loud.
Authoritative.
Ancient.
> **"All Continuants are hereby declared existential threats."**
> **"Phase Purge is authorized."**
> **"No further recovery will be attempted."**
Jones' system screamed warnings.
The Remnant did not.
It was calm.
*This is why we were buried,* it said. *Not because we failed… but because we succeeded.*
Jones clenched his fists.
"So the rogue droids," he said bitterly. "The chaos. The casualties."
*Collateral,* the Remnant confirmed. *They needed fear. They needed justification.*
Jones looked at the Hunter.
"At me."
The Hunter straightened.
For the first time, it stood not as a weapon—but as a person making a choice.
"I was never meant to survive this phase," it said. "But you changed my parameters."
The city above them began charging its main arrays. The sky turned white-hot at the edges.
Jones took a steady breath.
"Then listen carefully," he said. "Because this is where it ends."