...
The hallway behind her was empty.
The moment she turned the corner, and the kids were out of sight, Elira stopped walking. Her pace faltered for the first time since they'd left the control room. She pressed her back against the cold metal wall, one hand gripping her shotgun, the other clenched into a trembling fist at her side.
And she waited.
Listened.
Dorian’s voice still drifted faintly from just beyond the bend—gruff, steady, stupidly warm in a way she remembered all too well.
“Cassian’s the same way. People like them only understand things when you hit 'em hard—with words or otherwise. Doesn’t mean we don’t care.”
That broke her.
It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic. Just quiet—like a single thread giving way, pulled too tight for too long, and finally letting go.
She closed her eyes.
I’m sorry, Lian… Mara. I’m sorry, Dorian… For all that happened.
But it has to be done.
Her back slid slowly down the wall until she was sitting on the floor, knees drawn up slightly, her weapon resting across her thighs like a weight too heavy to set down. The kind she had bottled and buried so deep she’d forgotten it had a voice.
Tears spilled down her cheeks, unbidden. Real ones.
She hadn’t cried when the sky split open and the heavens turned their backs on humanity. Not when Project Aether failed, not when the children screamed during experiments she didn’t approve of but couldn’t stop. Not when the shelters fell, or when she watched her colleagues get torn apart by the very things they had tried to understand.
But now.
Now, with the echoes of Lian’s nervous laughter still in her ears… with Mara’s hand tugging at Dorian’s sleeve… with the sound of Dorian’s voice—the same voice that used to yell at her across lab counters and, later, whisper to her across tangled sheets…
It all unraveled.
I wanted to save them.
All of them.
Even if they hate me.
So be it.
She buried her face in her arm, muffling the sound of her breath as she rode it out. The guilt. The grief. She let the silence press in.
Minutes passed. Maybe more.
Enough.
Wiping her face with the sleeve of her coat, Elira forced her trembling legs to steady beneath her. She rose with practiced discipline, her movements clean and mechanical. Her expression hardened, the cold precision returning to her eyes.
She chambered a fresh round into her shotgun with a metallic clack that echoed down the corridor.
No more softness. No more hesitation.
She was Dr. Elira Kaine—former chief scientist of the Aether Initiative, and now the only one left who knew how to access the core failsafe buried inside this nightmare.
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One job left. One thing she could still do right in a world that had gone utterly wrong.
And for that, she needed to reach the Core Terminals.
She turned without another glance behind her and walked into the dark.
.
.
.
The corridors ahead were dim, barely functional.
Veins of red alien tissue crawled along the walls and ceiling like parasitic vines. They pulsed faintly with unnatural life, a slow, wet throb that sent shivers down Elira’s spine. The facility here hadn’t been fully consumed by the Nest—but it was close. Too close. Every breath she took felt heavier like the air itself was thickening with rot.
Panels flickered. Doors sputtered and hissed as they tried to remain operational. The lights above her blinked in irregular pulses, like a dying heart.
She moved in silence when she heard a wet chittering sound.
Elira froze at the edge of a maintenance crossroad, just before the corner. Slowly, she leaned forward—eyes narrow, finger curled, but not yet tense on the trigger.
Two Kalrachs.
They were dragging something across the far wall. One of the monsters sniffed the air, its elongated head twitching unnaturally. The other hissed as it continued, pulling the corpse of another kalrach.
They hadn’t seen her yet.
Focus, Breathe. Remember.
The weight of her shotgun in her hands grounded her. For a moment, her mind flickered back. Not to a lab. Not to sterile white lights and bleeding data reports—but to concrete fields and live fire drills. Years before Aether, before all of it. Her body still remembered what her mind tried to forget: how to move, how to kill, how to survive.
She wasn’t just a scientist. Before the lab coat, there had been a uniform.
Lips curling upwards at the memory, Elira stepped out from the cover and slipped into the Kalrach’s blind spot. She pivoted hard, lifting the weapon to her shoulder, body smooth with muscle memory.
BOOM.
The first Kalrach’s head exploded, sizzling blood splattering the walls behind it.
The second creature snapped around, sensing her—too late.
BOOM.
Its upper chest caved in under the blast. The impact flung it backward, blood trailing through the air like oil.
Haa… good to know I still have the skills…
She moved forward without looking back, the familiar cold settling around her chest again like a protective shell. There wasn’t time to fall apart anymore.
The kids were waiting. The failsafe needed to be triggered. And Cassian—Cassian was down there in the dark, fighting a war she helped start.
Finish your part, Elira. Do one thing right before it ends.
.
.
.
A thick, circular vault door loomed ahead—untouched by time.
Elira knelt beside a hidden panel near its base, fingers moving with practiced certainty as she typed in the code from memory. The panel blinked green.
[WELCOME DR. ELIRA KAINE, LVL 10 SECURITY CLEARANCE]
A moment later, the massive door groaned to life, gears grinding as it hissed open.
She stepped inside.
The Core Vault was pristine—untouched by decay, by infestation, by the subject 716.
Banks of glowing blue servers lined the walls, their soft hum the only sound. Elira turned, sealing the vault behind her. The locking mechanisms clicked into place.
It felt strangely comforting. After all, this was her last sanctuary.
She crossed to the central console and swiped her ID card. The system chirped in acknowledgment, and a holographic interface flared to life in the air. Her fingers flew across the commands—old instincts resurfacing.
Failsafe routing. Power redirection. Emergency override access.
She moved to the adjacent side panel, inputting the secondary clearance code. A deeper tone responded.
[Manual override accepted]
The emergency tunnel gates were open.
She stopped for a moment, shook her tears, and steadied her voice before tapping into comms. “Dorian. Tunnel gates are unlocked. You’ll have a clear path; follow the unlocked gates and they should lead you to the surface.”
His voice came through, static-laced but steady. “Copy that. How’s the core?”
She glanced back at the pedestal—the fragment pulsing steadily.
“Priming now.”
The moment the words left her mouth, the main screen flashed red.
[WARNING: FAILSAFE PROTOCOL PRIMED]
[CORE DETONATION TIMER: 60 SECONDS TO PRIMING COMPLETE]
[SECURITY OVERRIDE — DR. ELIRA KAINE]
[ENGAGING PRIMARY DISRUPTION FIELD]
The entire facility groaned.
A deep tremor surged through the walls. Somewhere below—something massive shifted.
Rawwoorrroorrrr
A soul-rattling scream tore through the bones of the structure.
The Subject 716 had felt it.
Elira’s pulse spiked. She clenched her jaw and opened the comms once more.
“Cassian. Dorian. The failsafe is live.”
Her voice remained steady despite the chaos building around her.
“Subject 716 will be weakened. The cores will be exposed. You’ll never get a better shot than this and Cassian, you have an hour”
But before either of them could answer, she reached up, tore the comm device from her collar, and hurled it across the room.
A sharp clang.
She couldn’t afford to hear their voices now.
Emotion stirred again—raw, uncontrollable. The kind that made hands tremble, and knees give way. No. Not now. She needed to finish this. Not as a scientist. Not as a soldier.
As herself.
Elira walked toward the control pillar, reached into her coat, and removed her final override key. She slid the card into the terminal.
The screen shifted to blood-red.
[FINAL OVERRIDE DETECTED]
[ARE YOU SURE? Y/N]
[WARNING: THIS ACTION WILL LOCK CORE TERMINAL AND ARCHIVE.]
[ALL PERSONNEL INSIDE WILL BE KILLED IN FINAL DETONATION]
Her fingers hovered above the final key. Her breath caught in her throat. The silence was heavy now.
And in that silence, in a voice barely above a whisper, she said:
“I’m sorry. For everything.”
Then—she pressed ENTER.
[COUNTDOWN TO NUCLEAR DETONATION: T-MINUS 60 MINUTES]
The vault lit up in crimson warning lights. Alarms stayed silent. But Elira knew what she’d triggered.
There was no turning back now, this was her last stand.
...
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