INTRUSION DETECTED.
REVENANT UNITS INBOUND.
The warning kept flashing across the screens in pulsing red. The pods hissed. Steel limbs twitched. Cold breath stirred in the shadows.
Miura raised her rifle, stepping between Aiko and the pods. "They're waking up."
Aiko's eyes locked onto the nearest figure—the face beneath the visor… looked like hers. No, was hers.
"They cloned me," she whispered.
"No," Miura said, tense. "They copied you. Big difference. Copies break."
The Revenant's eyes glowed—white-hot and unblinking.
THUMP.
One pod slammed open.
A monstrous form stepped out—her shape, her build, but twisted by cybernetics and trauma. It looked at her like a mirror that hated what it saw.
Above – Service Tunnel Exit
Ryoji dove through the emergency slide, his comm flaring with static.
"Hold the line," his voice echoed. "I'm coming."
Crash!
The first Revenant leapt. Miura fired—direct hit to the chest, but it kept coming. Aiko dodged, grabbing a loose pipe and jamming it into the exposed wiring on its arm.
Sparks. Screams.
More pods opened.
Miura shouted, "We're outnumbered!"
"Not outmatched," Aiko said through clenched teeth.
She slammed her palm onto the console. Her voice activated something deeper in the system.
USER VERIFIED: SUBJECT-09
GENETIC LOCK OVERRIDE INITIATED
A surge of code raced through the screens. The other Revenants paused mid-charge.
Ryoji burst through the lower hatch, knives drawn, and froze as he saw the display.
"She's syncing with them…" he muttered.
Aiko's eyes rolled back for a moment—then focused. "They know me. I can make them see."
Two Revenants hesitated. Twitched.
One turned its weapon away.
Miura blinked. "She's… commanding them?"
"Only for a second," Aiko gasped. "Before the control fails."
BOOM—BOOM!
A new breach. Reinforcements dropped in—mechanical, fast, armed. Not clones. Kill units.
Too many.
Ryoji shouted, "Fallback route, now!"
Miura flanked, covering Aiko as she disengaged. "What did you just do?"
"I made them remember," Aiko said. "But they don't want to remember. That's why they kill."
As they ran through the maintenance corridor, the Revenants gave chase—some confused, some enraged.
Behind them, the terminal flashed one final message:
Subject-09 consciousness sync incomplete. Memory lock breached. Revenants now unstable.
Outcome: Unknown.
To be continued in Chapter 30...