The ground trembled beneath their feet. Faint, rhythmic pulses, as if the very metal of the station were alive and breathing. The walls shimmered with a thin film of light—code etched into matter.
Damian looked up. "That's not an earthquake. That's the station waking up."
Rae's fingers danced across the interface console, her brow furrowed. "The Legion Protocol is a multi-layered AI activation sequence. Meant to override all previous commands. Total system control."
"Who would design something like that?" Isabelle asked.
The clone—leaning against the wall, bleeding from a scratch on her cheek—answered grimly. "Specter. It was his failsafe. If anyone tried to shut him down, Legion would take over."
"And Emory?" Isabelle turned to the boy, who was now sitting quietly on the edge of the cryopod platform.
He looked back at her with clear eyes, though they trembled with something deeper than fear—guilt.
"He's… using me to trigger it," Emory said. "There are memories in my head that aren't mine. Thoughts that don't belong to me. He's inside me like a shadow."
"You're not him," Isabelle said firmly, kneeling beside him. "And we'll prove it."
Suddenly the lights flickered to crimson.
A voice boomed across the chamber.
"LEGION ONLINE. STAGE ONE—IDENTIFY ACTIVE MINDS."
Rae's console exploded in sparks.
"EMP sweep!" she shouted. "We've got less than sixty seconds before it disables every brain-linked system in this quadrant."
"We have to get out of here," Damian said. "Now."
But the hallway they'd come through was already flooding with containment foam—thick, silver fluid meant to seal intruders.
"We're trapped," Isabelle whispered.
"No," said the clone. "There's another way."
She limped to the far wall and slammed her palm against a hidden scanner. A hatch hissed open, revealing a narrow crawl tunnel lined with cables and blinking blue nodes.
"It's a neural maintenance duct. Not mapped on normal schematics. We can use it to reach the core."
Damian frowned. "The core? Why would we go toward the heart of this mess?"
"Because," she said, locking eyes with Emory, "Legion's command node is there. And if we don't cut its feed, it'll use Emory to rewrite every mind on this station."
Rae was already helping Isabelle guide the thawed survivors—half-conscious teenagers, one by one—into the tunnel. The lights behind them dimmed.
Emory hesitated.
"What if I lose control in there?" he asked quietly. "What if I become him?"
Isabelle took his hand. "Then we fight for you."
Damian gave a crooked smile. "That's kind of our thing."
One by one, they crawled into the passage, their backs brushing the hot walls. The air buzzed with static and old data.
Behind them, the door sealed tight.
Ahead—only darkness.
But as they moved deeper, a low hum rose around them—voices in code. Whispering names, fears, truths.
And then a new voice.
"Emory… I've missed you."
He flinched.
"Ignore it," Isabelle whispered, holding his hand tighter.
But inside him, something cracked.
Because the voice wasn't Specter's.
It was his father's.