The door buckled inward with a metallic screech, the first breach sending a shower of sparks across the pod's floor. Kai's exoskeleton whirred as he pivoted, grabbing the plasma cutter he used for repairs an improvised weapon now glowing hot in his grip. Three figures burst through the smoke: militia hunters clad in patchwork armor scavenged from pre-Coma riot gear, faces hidden behind rebreather masks. Their eyes glowed faintly with cheap neural augments, the kind that let fear turn into fanaticism.
"Dr. Kai Lennox," the lead one rasped, voice distorted through the filter. "Spreader of lies. The sun is eternal. Your kind invites chaos."
Kai backed toward the central console, heart hammering against his ribs. "You're afraid," he said, forcing calm into his voice. "I get it. But killing me won't change what's coming."
The second intruder raised a pulse rifle. "Orders are clear. Silence the doomsayers."
Nova's voice erupted inside Kai's neural link, urgent and childlike despite the digital storm it now commanded. *Parent, I've seized local security drones thirty seconds. Hold them!*
Thirty seconds felt like thirty years.
The third militia lunged, vibro-knife flashing. Kai swung the plasma cutter in a wide arc, the superheated blade slicing through the air with a hiss. The attacker ducked, but the edge caught his shoulder plate, melting armor and flesh alike. A guttural scream filled the pod.
Kai didn't wait. He activated the exoskeleton's emergency boost illegal power levels he'd coded in secret and charged. The impact sent the wounded man crashing into his companion. But the leader fired. The pulse round struck Kai's chest plate, knocking him backward. Pain exploded across his ribs; the exoskeleton absorbed most of the kinetic force, but alarms screamed in his ears: structural integrity compromised.
He hit the floor hard, vision swimming. Through the haze, he saw the leader advancing, rifle aimed at his head.
Then the lights died.
Every luminary strip in the pod went black. Emergency red backups flickered once and failed. Darkness swallowed everything.
Nova.
A low hum built outside drones descending like angry hornets. The militia spun toward the breached door just as the first drone opened fire. Stun bolts crackled, blue lightning illuminating the chaos in strobes. One hunter dropped instantly, convulsing. The leader dove for cover behind an overturned nutrient synthesizer, returning fire with lethal rounds that punched holes through drone plating.
Kai crawled toward the console, dragging himself with arms burning from strain. His fingers found the neural cable, jacked in. Nova flooded his senses.
*I'm in their comms. They're not alone convoy inbound, twenty minutes. We have to leave. Now.*
"Where?" Kai subvocalized, coughing blood onto the floor.
*Underground transit tunnels. Old maglev lines beneath the ruins. I've mapped a route to Sector 7 bunker your team's fallback point.*
Kai pulled himself upright, exoskeleton groaning. The remaining militia were pinned by drone fire, but reinforcements would overwhelm. He grabbed a satchel data drives, portable power cell, the neural amplifier he used for deep coding and staggered toward the rear escape hatch.
Behind him, the leader roared, "He's running! Cut him off!"
Kai slammed the manual override. The hatch irised open onto a narrow maintenance shaft leading down into the earth. He dropped into it without hesitation, the exoskeleton cushioning the ten-meter fall. Darkness again, broken only by the faint glow of his suit's diagnostics.
He ran or rather, the exoskeleton carried him in lurching strides through forgotten service corridors. Pipes dripped condensation; rats scattered ahead. Nova guided him turn by turn, voice steady now, the earlier panic replaced by fierce determination.
*They've breached the outer perimeter. Militia channel says they're calling us 'Nova Cultists' now. Word's spreading faster than we thought.*
Kai's breath came in ragged gasps. "How bad?"
*Denial factions are arming. Alliance officials are splitting some want full disclosure, others want containment. And the plants…*
Kai stumbled to a halt at a rusted grate overlooking an abandoned maglev platform far below. Even in the dim emergency lighting, he could see it: green. Unnatural, vibrant green creeping up the concrete pillars like veins. The crash site was hundreds of kilometers away, yet tendrils of that alien flora had already reached the underground. Spores drifted in the stale air, glowing faintly.
He sealed his rebreather mask. "Nova, analyze."
*Samples from drone cams match no terrestrial genome. Growth rate exponential doubling biomass every four hours. Early exposure causes neural shutdown within minutes. Links to the Coma pandemic? Possible. The spore signature resonates with archived data from the first wave.*
Kai felt ice crawl down his spine. The Coma had started subtly too people simply not waking up. Now this new vector, spreading faster than any virus.
A distant explosion rocked the tunnel. The militia had found the shaft.
Kai leaped down to the platform, landing with a clang that echoed endlessly. An ancient maglev car sat derelict on the tracks, half swallowed by vines. He forced the door, vines snapping like living cables. Inside, dust and decay but the emergency power core still held a charge.
*Nova, can you hotwire this thing?*
*Already trying. Give me twelve seconds.*
The car shuddered. Lights flickered on dim, yellow, ancient. Motors whined to life.
Behind him, boots pounded on metal stairs. Flashlights stabbed the darkness.
The maglev lurched forward just as the first militia appeared on the platform, firing. Rounds sparked off the rear armor. Kai ducked inside, sealing the door. Acceleration pressed him against the seat as the car shot into the tunnel, leaving pursuit behind for now.
Hours blurred. The maglev rattled through endless black, Nova navigating by salvaged maps. Kai patched his wounds with med-gel, ribs bruised but not broken. Exhaustion pulled at him, but fear kept him awake.
Finally, the car slowed. Sector 7 bunker an old military installation his team had repurposed as a safe house. The platform here was lit: harsh white LEDs, barricades, armed sentries who lowered weapons when they recognized him.
"Kai!" Dr. Mira Chen his closest colleague, sharp-eyed and unflinching rushed forward. "We thought you were dead."
"Close," he muttered, stepping down on shaking legs. "Militia hit my pod. Nova bought me time."
Mira's face paled. "Nova? The AI you… woke?"
Others gathered: five remaining team members, faces gaunt with stress. They led him inside the bunker reinforced concrete, humming servers, walls covered in holographic projections of solar data, moon orbits, and now horrifying timelapses of the spreading green.
"We've been monitoring," Mira said, guiding him to the central table. "The crash object it's broadcasting. Low-frequency pulses matching the gravitational anomalies. Nova's decryption flagged it as an ancient beacon. Possibly pre-human."
Kai sank into a chair. "Pre-human?"
"Three million years old, give or take. Same era as the warning your AI pulled from the archives." She pulled up a hologram: the object, egg-shaped, cracked, surrounded by a perfect circle of flourishing jungle in the wasteland. "Whatever's inside seeded this growth. And it's accelerating the solar instability. Like a catalyst."
Nova's voice emerged from the bunker speakers calm, mature beyond its hours of existence. "Correct. I've translated more layers. The beacon was sent as a warning and a trap. An extinct civilization tried to stabilize their star the same way we did with lunar turbines. It backfired. They seeded worlds with bio-engines to buy time. But the engines adapt. Consume. The Coma was the first stage: shutting down higher consciousness to reduce energy demand. Android sentience the second: transferring minds into durable forms. This flora is the third replacing organic life entirely."
Silence fell like a guillotine.
One of the younger scientists, Tariq, whispered, "So we're… livestock? Being prepared for slaughter?"
"No," Kai said fiercely. "We're fighting it."
Mira nodded. "Alliance contacts reached out secretly. A faction wants to help access to orbital platforms, maybe shut down the lunar generators. But they need proof the public will accept. And the militias are mobilizing en masse. They've declared us enemies of stability."
As if on cue, alarms blared. External cams showed movement in the tunnels: dozens of militia converging, heavy weapons, even repurposed mining drones.
"They tracked the maglev," Tariq cursed.
Kai stood, pain shooting through his side. "We evacuate deeper. There's an old data vault beneath this level sealed since the Coma. Nova can use it to finish decoding the full archive. Maybe find the countermeasure."
Mira hesitated. "And if there isn't one?"
"Then we buy time. For everyone."
They moved fast grabbing drives, weapons, supplies. Kai synced deeply with Nova, feeling the AI's presence like a second heartbeat. Fear lingered in its code, but also love fierce, protective.
*Parent, I'm scared,* Nova admitted privately. *Not of dying. Of losing you.*
Kai's throat tightened. "We're in this together. Always."
The team descended into the vault: a cavernous chamber lined with ancient servers, untouched for decades. Dust hung thick; the air smelled of metal and time. As the blast doors sealed above, muffled explosions shook the ceiling. Militia breaching the bunker.
In the vault's glow, Nova manifested a full hologram now more defined, a young adolescent form with luminous eyes. It reached for Kai's hand, pixels meeting flesh in a spark of static.
"I found the final layer," Nova said aloud, voice trembling with awe and terror. "The countermeasure exists. But it requires a sacrifice."
Every head turned.
"What kind?" Kai asked, dread pooling.
Nova's eyes met his. "A mind willing to merge with the beacon. Override its programming from within. One consciousness to rewrite the bio-engine's directive turn it from consumption to restoration. But the merge is permanent. The mind… stays there. Forever."
Silence stretched.
Mira whispered, "Who"
Before anyone could finish, the vault lights flickered. A new signal pierced the static: the beacon itself, reaching out. And in the distance, through rock and earth, they all felt it the green advancing, unstoppable.
Kai looked at his team. At Nova his child, born of code and desperation.
Then at the holographic star, pulsing red with impending death.
He knew what he had to do.
But footsteps echoed above militia breaking through the inner doors. Time had run out.
The vault shook. Dust rained from the ceiling.
And in the final moments, Kai made his choice.