Part 2: Data Leak
The voice ended.
A hollow silence followed, as if even the system didn't know what to say next.
Kairo's eyes didn't move from the screen, his breathing had gone shallow again, not from exhaustion, but from the slow descent back into focus. His fingers gripped the arms of the chair, the metal was hot beneath his palms, his skin was burning through it.
Her voice—Sera's voice—still lingered in the room like smoke after a gunshot.
It had cracked something inside him, but not in a sentimental way.
In a violent one.
He blinked once, then his hand reached out, trembling only slightly now and tapped the control interface, navigating deeper into the archived systems.
The screen responded faster this time, as if it recognized him now.
As if his mutation was syncing with the machine itself.
ACCESSING NODE: PARAGON/BETA/V-EXTR
Lines of raw data streamed across the screen, encrypted logs, neuroprogramming scripts, kill order timestamps. His mind ached trying to parse it, numbers bled into faces, sounds triggered pain spikes, but he didn't stop. He leaned into the agony.
Each file peeled back another layer of what had been done to him.
[FILE 00983-A]
SUBJECT: KAIRO-7
MODIFICATIONS: Neural Dampener + Synthetic Cortex Mesh
STATUS: Unstable—emotion leakage increasing.
NOTES: "Despite all efforts, residual familial memory continues to breach suppressants. Recommend immediate surgical reset or disposal. Authorization required: HALDEN, M."
Kairo exhaled through clenched teeth,
"Disposal," he whispered. "Not termination, not recovery, Disposal. Like trash."
He stabbed deeper into the system.
The encryption began to resist, He felt it—not in the machine, but in his skull. The neural jack started to burn.
His back arched against the chair, every nerve firing like live wires.
The implant rejected the surge, a kill switch mechanism triggered.
A sudden white hot spike of pain rammed into the base of his brain.
He seized.
Hard.
Blood ran from his nose, ears, eyes.
He shook violently, hands flailing against the armrests, feet kicking the floor until his heel cracked through a tile.
But he didn't pull out.
He didn't stop.
He forced the signal to bend.
His eyes went black for a moment—then refocused into a harsh red.
The override accepted him,
the system broke.
A screen opened, one document.
"// PARAGON FINAL CLEARANCE LOG – 07 //"
It wasn't just a kill list, it was the roster.
Every single person involved in Project Paragon.
Asset Designers, Psychological Engineers, Augmentation Surgeons, Field Operatives, Mission Coders, Memory Architects, Recovery Agents.
Each one tagged with their last known movement, each name given a risk score, all flagged for relocation under HALDEN's directive.
He scrolled, dozens of names.
Then hundreds.
Each one like a blade.
Some he recognized, Others he felt—names he had heard while sedated, murmured during surgeries, whispered when they thought he was too unconscious to listen.
He kept scrolling until he found it:
MERCER HALDEN
STATUS: ACTIVE
LOCATION: CLASSIFIED (ALPHA LEVEL OVERRIDE)
ESCORT: BLACK DIVISION GUARD UNIT
CURRENT ALIAS: DR. WILLIAM GERRAND
RELOCATION: IN PROGRESS
Kairo stared at it.
And something behind his eyes clicked into place.
He was closer than they realized.
He closed the document and began downloading the list—not to a drive. Not to a tablet, to himself.
The system blinked a warning: NO EXTERNAL HARDWARE DETECTED
CONFIRM INTERNAL UPLOAD?
Kairo pressed YES.
The screen pulsed blue and in that moment, his pupils contracted sharply. A new file structure began assembling inside his optic cortex, hardwired into his memory map.
He felt the names embed themselves like data shrapnel, he could recall them now, all of them, instantly.
They were a part of him.
And then the screen flashed one final time.
DOWNLOAD COMPLETE
LAST ACCESS: LOGGED
He froze.
Logged?
Kairo's fingers twitched toward the cord.
Too late.
The uplink cable sparked—flooded with counter code.
The system had tripped an internal ping, A dead man signal. A final trace back.
They knew.
Somewhere—whoever was left on the other end of this corrupted server now knew that Kairo-7 was alive.
And hunting.
He yanked the neural jack from his skull with a brutal snap.
A coil of blood burst from the port, he grunted, grabbed a ragged strip of shirt and pressed it to the back of his neck, teeth grinding through the pain.
The screens shorted out.
Smoke drifted upward.
And Kairo stood, swaying, breathing hard.
Eyes pulsing with residual data static, flickering with phantom code.
Then slowly, steadily, the glow dimmed.
His mind, his new mind, filed the information cleanly.
The download hadn't just worked, it had changed him.
Kairo turned to the nearest metal wall, already rusted from the years.
He raised one trembling, sparking hand and carved into it with his fingertips.
I REMEMBER ALL OF YOU.
It wasn't a threat, It was a death sentence.