The simulation ring on Sublevel 2 was mostly abandoned at this hour. The pre-shift lull, when no one wanted to sweat before breakfast.
Hernan preferred it that way.
He stood at the center of the ring in his combat basewear—tight, breathable, silver-black, nothing to snag on impact. His breath ca short and sharp, each exhale syncing with a strike as he launched into another repetition.
The training drones sward in threes, hardlight shields shimring in irregular bursts. He rotated fast—low pivot, elbow to jawline, then a roundhouse through the lead drone’s chest. Its projector sparked and cut out.
Another sweep. Another kill.
Not efficient enough.
Hernan reset the program. Upped the aggression tier. This ti, they didn’t just react—they anticipated. He welcod it. Needed it.
His strikes got faster. Sloppier. Power building where precision usually lived. The third drone clipped him mid-twist, catching the back of his ribs.
He stumbled, not far, but enough to know his rhythm was off.
Reset.
Reset again.
Pain was honest. It didn’t lie like people did.
"Training to kill ghosts?" a voice asked behind him.
He didn’t turn imdiately.
Aya leaned against the wall just outside the ring’s projection field, wearing tower-issued sweats and a crooked grin. Her hair was tied high in a ssy loop, a half-eaten protein bar in her hand.
"You’re early," he said, grabbing a towel and wiping sweat from his face.
"You’re twitchy," she countered. "And don’t dodge. I said ’ghosts.’ You look like you’re trying to beat one out of your spine."
He draped the towel over his shoulder. "I like the ring quiet."
"I like my coffee hot, but I still check the cup for acid," she said, stepping closer.
Her tone stayed light, but her eyes didn’t match it. Not this ti.
"Level Five sweep yesterday," she said. "Rare. Kinda dramatic. Especially for what was flagged as a dormant static ping."
Hernan exhaled slowly, letting his pulse settle. "That’s what it was. Routine cleanup. Rael authorized it."
"Sure. Rael rubber-stamps everything that sounds vaguely like protocol. I’m asking you. Why now?"
He gave her a neutral shrug. "We’re on edge. Sector 12 rattled people. Doesn’t take much to justify caution."
"You didn’t used to need excuses."
Her voice was quieter now. Sharper.
He stayed still.
She pulled out her wrist-mounted tablet. "I did a backtrace on the sweep logs. Just for kicks."
He kept his expression blank.
"Found a tick," she continued. "Tiny ti skip in the comm scan. Half a second. Most people wouldn’t notice. But it’s the kind of tick you get when soone inserts a silent node into the sh."
She tapped the screen. "No ID. No tag. But definitely artificial."
"Maybe a glitch."
"Maybe," she said. "Or maybe soone planted a listener during a sweep they initiated themselves. Soone smart enough to bury the signal but not smart enough to ti-stagger the trace gate."
Silence.
She let it stretch.
He stepped past her, grabbed a water bottle, drank. His posture stayed calm. Composed.
"You think I’m bugging the tower?"
"No," she said. "I think you’re trying to get ahead of sothing. And I think you didn’t plan on anyone watching you."
He finally looked at her. Dead center. His voice was cool. "You’re reaching."
Her reply was quieter than expected. Almost kind. "I hope I am."
They stood like that for a beat—breath held between two histories neither of them was naming.
Then she stepped forward, just enough that he could feel her presence rather than see it.
"Whatever you’re building," she said, "just know we’re watching too."
It wasn’t a threat.
It was a reminder.
And it landed.
Just for a second—barely more than a blink—Hernan faltered.
The flicker in his eyes wasn’t fear. Not quite.
But it wasn’t control, either.
Aya saw it. Filed it.
She backed away without another word, peeled the rest of the wrapper off her protein bar, and turned down the hall.
No smile this ti.
No joke.
Just steps that echoed too loudly in the empty corridor.
Hernan stayed in the ring, jaw tight, water still in his hand.
He looked at the drone reset panel.
Didn’t move.
For the first ti in weeks, he wasn’t sure if he was still ahead.
He wasn’t sure if he was still invisible.
The dbay was silent except for the low whirr of climate control and the occasional distant hum of tower infrastructure adjusting power routes. 03:12 a.m.—that dead zone between night and morning where even the ergency wing seed to pause.
Tessa sat at Console 2, alone, backlit by a pale-blue monitor that displayed evac logs from the Sector 12 incident. She wasn’t on rotation. She wasn’t even officially clocked in. But her mind had refused to sleep, and paperwork had always been a safer anesthetic than dreams.
She sipped cold tea, eyes scanning across casualty IDs and transport tis.
Then it blinked onto her screen.
[INCOMING | UNTAGGED FILE DROP | ZODIAC ENCRYPTION]
The header pulsed three tis, then froze.
Tessa blinked.
No sender. No routing path. Just a compressed archive flagged with a Zodiac-level cipher and an old watermark: one she hadn’t seen since her rookie rotation on Tower 3 logistics.
She frowned and tapped the side panel.
It asked for a decryption key.
She hesitated. Then rembered.
Months ago, Nico had handed her a line of code scribbled onto a napkin. "Just in case," he’d said, with a grin that hadn’t quite reached his eyes.
Tessa had morized it out of reflex.
She entered the sequence.
The lock dissolved.
The file unfolded.
Inside was no dical update. No evac logs.
It was a string of black project entries—six compressed logs, four prototype bioscan pings, and one final authorizing order tagged with a phrase she’d never seen before:
"PROJECT CROSSFIRE – SUBJECT: H-VALE_01"
Her hand stilled on the console.
She opened the first log.
TEST SERIES: CROSSFIRE 4.3 – Target latency drop observed. Bio-link mismatch at 03.02.12.
Recomndation: Terminate trial. Erase vector before systemic traceback. Subject shows rejection resistance.
She skipped to the bioscan ping.
Sector: 12-C.
Tistamp: Sa hour as the raid.
Biotric imprint: 94.2% match — H. Vale.
She stared at the screen as if blinking might change the data.
The logs continued—dry, clinical, but the implications scread:
They weren’t tracking him.
They weren’t monitoring.
They were testing.
She opened the final item.
A hardcoded kill order.
Authorization: Redline Protocol / Project CROSSFIRE
Clearance: Level Oga / Virgo-Command Signature
Subject: H-VALE_01
Directive: Contain or erase before subject reaches synthetic phase breach.
Status: Pending — Engagent Window Missed.
Tessa pushed back from the console, her breath shallow. Cold tea spilled from the cup beside her, forgotten.
It wasn’t the order itself that struck her hardest—it was the language.
"Before subject reaches synthetic phase breach."
What the hell was that?
What was Hernan becoming?
She stood, pacing, mind spinning back over every strange mont—his silences, his disappearances, the bruise that wasn’t from battle, the quiet way he moved through the tower like he didn’t live there anymore.
She tapped the interface.
Called Nico.
No response.
She tried again. Straight to static.
"Damn it."
She pulled open the internal comm ping to Hernan’s suite.
[STATUS: OFFLINE]
Of course it was.
She stared at the blinking cursor on the login screen for a full ten seconds.
They weren’t just watching him.
They had orders in place.
Contingency protocols.
Like he was a weapon built by mistake.
And it wasn’t fear that blood in her chest—it was fury.
Because if the Zodiac had marked him for deletion...
Then they had known what they made.
And never told him.
She picked up the cup, placed it back on the table, but her hands shook slightly.
On the screen, the Crossfire directive pulsed red, waiting to self-lock again.
She didn’t close it.
She wanted to see it.
Needed to.
Proof that the truth was real.
That Hernan wasn’t paranoid.
That whatever this thing he was chasing—whatever they were chasing—was so much bigger than anyone had let on.
And he was in the middle of it. Not a hero. Not a soldier.
A target.
Her friend.
Her ally.
Possibly sothing else entirely.
She backed up the files onto a capsule drive, slid it into the lining of her field jacket, and pulled her hair back into a tight knot like she was going into combat.
Because maybe she was.
And this ti, she wasn’t going to wait to be told what side she was on.
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