The slums had changed overnight.

  Rumors swirled like smog through the alleys—whispers of a ghost with glowing hair, of a fight that left one man with his head twisted clean off, of runes that glowed without power. The locals called it nonsense.

  RiftTech didn’t.

  Far above, in a satellite fortress disguised as an orbital lab, Queen stood before a sea of holographic data. Her digital avatar blinked across screens—a cold woman in a flowing circuit-threaded dress, her eyes dim with calculation.

  “Location locked. Temporal pulse detected. Target has accessed residual memory data.”

  A unit of synthetic enforcers, dressed in plain clothes to blend in, stood ready in a chamber bathed in white light.

  “Deploy to Slum Zone Twelve,” Queen said. “Recover the prototype or terminate.”

  They nodded in unison—perfectly synchronized. Machine souls with skin stretched over war-hardened frames.

  The hunt had begun.

  Back in the hideout, Auren stirred beneath his tattered blanket, his chest rising and falling with eerie precision. The glow in his veins had strengthened. Lassie sat nearby, watching.

  When his eyes opened, she felt it again—that weight. Like looking into a star trying to remember what it used to be.

  “I remember... something,” Auren whispered. “A war. A silence so loud it tore planets apart.”

  Lassie leaned closer. “Do you know who you were?”

  “No,” he said. “But I know... I was not born. I was made.”

  He stood and moved to the door.

  “There’s something calling me. Below.”

  The crew followed him through the winding tunnels of the forgotten city—sublevels where no light reached, only rust and dripping wires. He stopped before a sealed vault door marked with a symbol none of them recognized.

  Auren placed his hand on it.

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  The steel melted like wax.

  Inside sat a hovering orb, humming with a strange gravity. He approached without fear, drawn like it had always been part of him.

  He touched it.

  And the past exploded.

  Flashes of war.

  Starships imploding into black suns.

  A sky cracking open like glass.

  Voices screaming backward through time.

  Then a name.

  > “OBLIVION PROTOCOL… BREACH IMMINENT.”

  The vision shattered.

  Mira was the first to move, frantically typing on her console. “That orb just dumped a thousand years’ worth of encrypted history into my system. It knows him.”

  Trigg stepped back. “What does Oblivion Protocol even mean?”

  Auren turned, shadows crawling behind his eyes. “It means I was never meant to wake up.”

  Then came a noise.

  A voice from the hallway. Weak. Desperate.

  “Help… someone… please…”

  They turned.

  A boy—maybe seventeen—stumbled into the chamber, blood trailing behind him. He collapsed near the entrance, coughing.

  “Sector gangs… they ambushed me. I heard voices. Please…”

  Lassie stepped forward.

  “Don’t,” Auren said.

  The others hesitated.

  Trina whispered, “It’s just a kid—”

  “He is not human,” Auren said again. Calm. Absolute.

  Then the lights went black.

  Gunfire tore through the air. Synthetic eyes glowed red. The boy’s body twitched, shifted—his face pulling apart as armored plating slid over his skin. Weapons emerged from his arms, his legs, his spine.

  But Auren was already moving.

  In the dark, his voice rang out like thunder:

  “Do not chase gods through shadows.”

  There was a flash—then silence.

  When the lights returned, the synthetic lay in pieces. Melted. Scrambled from the inside out.

  Auren stood at the center, smoke drifting from his hands.

  Behind him, the crew stood stunned. Mira gripped her scanner tightly, eyes wide.

  “They sent a mimic,” she whispered. “Queen knows where we are.”

  Auren looked up.

  “No,” he said. “She’s only just begun.”

  Outside, panic had begun to spread. Sirens blared in the outer sectors. Fires flickered in the streets. Word moved fast in the slums—faster than light sometimes.

  “They brought this on us,” a merchant whispered.

  “I knew those Sector Twelve rejects would cause trouble,” said a woman clutching her child. “Freaks, all of them.”

  Everywhere, eyes turned toward the hideout’s known routes. Fear. Blame. Paranoia.

  Back inside, the crew regrouped, shaken.

  “Someone ratted us out,” Trina said, her voice trembling. “There’s no way they found us that fast. Someone told them.”

  AUREN turned toward her.

  “Who?”

  Trina blinked. “What?”

  “Who do you suspect?”

  She hesitated. “Tobias. He’s been asking weird questions. Disappears for hours.”

  AUREN closed his eyes.

  “Name: Tobias.”

  He raised his hand slowly.

  “Sleep.”

  Nothing seemed to happen.

  Then—from two blocks away—a scream shattered the night.

  A woman’s voice: “TOBIAS! HIS HEAD—IT JUST—”

  Silence.

  The crew stared at AUREN, horrified.

  He opened his eyes. “No more rats.”

  “We can’t stay here,” Lassie said, regaining her voice. “We’re surrounded. If they know our routes, they’ll box us in.

  “We go underground,” Mira said quickly. “There’s an old maintenance rail that connects to Sector Nine’s abandoned lift systems. If we move fast, we can disappear before another wave comes.”

  “And after that?” Trina asked.

  Everyone looked at AUREN.

  He stepped forward.

  “Then we go find the rest of me.”