The chaos in the Eden Containment Facility spread like fire through dry leaves.
Red lights stuttered. Sirens screamed. Guards barked orders into comms that fizzled with static. In the nerve-center control room, half the monitors were flickering between static and distorted camera feeds.
"What the hell is happening?" barked Captain Halveth, slamming his fist on the console.
"No idea, sir," stammered the technician. "We've got a virus crawling through the mainframe—adaptive, recursive, like it's learning from every countermeasure we throw at it!"
From the far end of the control room, a monitor hissed to life. It showed a figure walking calmly through the halls of the facility—a hooded silhouette, black coat trailing, face hidden in shadow.
It wasn't Carter.
It wasn't any prisoner on record.
The figure paused mid-stride. Turned.
Looked directly into the camera.
And smiled.
Then the feed cut to black.
Captain Halveth's voice cracked as he shouted: "Who the hell is that?!"
---
Outside the facility, under cover of the violent rain, the Resistance team's hovercraft surged across broken asphalt toward the facility's rear access tunnel.
Inside, Kairo tapped furiously on his wrist interface. Holograms blinked in and out over his eyes, casting sharp blue light across his serious face.
"I've got visual on the prison block. Half of it's offline," he said. "But Carter's signal is moving. Fast."
Emory leaned forward. "Alive?"
Kairo snorted. "He's not just alive—he's unlocking doors from the inside."
Damian raised a brow. "That mean what I think it means?"
"It means," Kairo replied, "he's not escaping—he's executing a plan."
They reached the tunnel. The team dismounted, rifles raised, nerves electric.
As they crept forward, Rae whispered, "You sure your info is solid?"
Kairo nodded. "It better be. Because if I'm wrong, we're walking into a slaughterhouse."
---
Inside the shattered containment zone, Sera moved cautiously, pulse pistol drawn, navigating through darkness lit only by sparking wires and strobing red lights.
Bodies lay unconscious or worse in the halls—guards and inmates alike. The magnetic locks had been fried.
She stepped into Block C… and stopped.
Carter was standing in the center, staring at an open cell door. Inside was an old man, hair white, eyes sharp with knowledge and pain. He wore an Eden prisoner's uniform—ripped, scorched.
Carter knelt before him.
"I found you," Carter said.
The old man smiled faintly. "You remembered."
Behind them, Sera's breath caught. "Who is that?"
Carter stood, not turning. "My father. The one they said died fifteen years ago."
---
Back in the command room, Captain Halveth stared at a new alert blinking in the upper-right of the main monitor.
A single name.
"The Watcher".
His voice was barely a whisper. "Not again…"
A junior officer leaned closer. "Sir?"
Halveth backed away from the screen. "He's back."
The monitor switched once more—this time to a rooftop surveillance drone. In the grainy night footage, the hooded figure stood atop the facility, arms spread wide, as lightning split the sky behind him.
He looked like a prophet calling down the end of the world.