It hit her like a blow to the chest. She wasn't rely trained—she had been made. She was a product of this sa project, perhaps even the prototype. The dreams, the interstellar man, the sword—none of them were fiction. They were traces of her old programming, mories that had survived beyond what they were supposed to. And now, the enemy she was fighting against might have once been her allies.
She didn't tell Xavier. Not yet. She couldn't.
Later that night, she stood outside the bunker's entrance, staring up at the black sky. The stars looked foreign now, too far away to reach. But sowhere out there, in the void of space or the buried vaults of mory, her true story waited to be told. She tightened her grip on the sword's hilt and promised herself: she would uncover everything. And when the ti ca, she would choose who to fight for—not because of her programming, not because of her past—but because it was the only way to be free.
The silence that followed her vow stretched long and heavy, broken only by the faint humming of unseen machinery hidden beneath the ground. Athena stood unmoving, the cold wind brushing strands of hair across her face. The sword at her side, ever so subtly glowing, seed to respond to her resolve, the runes along its blade pulsing once with a faint light. She looked down at it, heart pounding, uncertain whether it had been her imagination or sothing more profound—a relic reacting to the awakening of its wielder. Xavier soon joined her, his footsteps soft despite the weight of his armored boots. He stopped beside her and looked toward the city ruins in the distance, his face shadowed. "You saw it, didn't you?" he asked. Athena didn't need to clarify. She nodded slowly. "It confird everything," she murmured. "The files said I was a model. An Athena model." She hated the taste of those words in her mouth. "Like I was… created. A product." Xavier's silence was not dismissive. It was thoughtful, laced with the kind of restraint soone uses when they want to say sothing but are unsure if the ti is right. "Do you want to know what else I found?" he said eventually. "The man you keep dreaming about. He was in the files too." That made her turn sharply, her breath catching in her chest. "What?" "Codena: Jericho," Xavier said, his voice heavy. "One of the last remaining Alpha-class operatives before the breach of Earth. He went missing during the final days of the Sinalta defense program. But the logs don't say how he died. Just that his neural link was severed and the last place he was tracked to… was you."
The implications were staggering. Athena felt her knees weaken but didn't allow herself to fall. Her dreams were not lies. Her mories were not fragnted fabrications. Jericho was real. And sohow, their fates were deeply entwined. "There's more," Xavier continued. "Jericho wasn't just another agent. He was rumored to be the last one who could override the Pri Directive of Sinalta. The command that ensures we follow orders even when they conflict with morality. But he disappeared before they confird it. They said he fell in love. And betrayed the system." The words struck like lightning across her soul. Betrayal. Love. A forbidden connection between manufactured beings built to destroy. She turned away, hiding the storm in her expression. "Do you think I loved him?" Xavier didn't answer imdiately. "I think part of you still does. Even if you don't rember him completely. Love leaves echoes." She wanted to scream, to claw the truth out of her own mind, to confront the emptiness that echoed inside her whenever she thought of Jericho's face. Why couldn't she rember more? What had been erased, and what was being pieced back together now?
The facility beneath them buzzed once more with a strange energy, and Xavier gestured for her to follow. He led her deeper into the tunnel system, past sealed doors and coded locks, toward a restricted wing that Mara had ntioned in her half-conscious ramblings. It was lined with rusting tal walls and broken lights, the air thick with the sll of antiseptic and decay. They entered a large circular chamber filled with suspended cryo-pods, most of them cracked or dead. But one near the center still pulsed with life—barely. Inside, a man floated, unconscious, his features obscured by frost. "That's him," Xavier whispered. "It has to be Jericho." Athena's heart leapt into her throat. The familiarity was undeniable. Even with the years between them, his silhouette, his stance, the scar down his brow—it was all there. She stepped forward slowly, reaching a hand toward the glass. "Can we wake him?" she asked, voice shaking. Xavier knelt beside the console, typing commands into the terminal. "Maybe. But whatever process was used to put him under wasn't standard. This pod predates the fall of Earth. It's running on a backup power core. If I ss with it, I could kill him. Or us." Athena stood silent, weighing her options.
But before she could decide, a sharp alarm blared through the walls. The console turned red. "Sothing's triggered a signal. We're not alone anymore," Xavier growled, pulling his gun. "They're coming." Athena didn't need to ask who—they both knew. The engineered creatures. Puppets of the sa project that made her. She had barely seconds to react before the ceiling above them cracked and tal claws tore through the floor. A hybrid soldier dropped from above—humanoid in form, but monstrous in detail. It moved with terrifying speed, lashing out toward Xavier, who dodged narrowly. Athena unsheathed her sword and struck in one fluid motion, the blade singing as it cut through flesh and bone. The creature scread before collapsing, but more followed. Dozens. They poured in from the vents, the tunnels, the sealed doors. It was a trap. Or worse—it had been monitoring them the whole ti. "We need to seal this room!" Xavier shouted. Athena scanned the control panel and spotted the ergency lockdown button. "Get Jericho out!" she barked. "I'll hold them!"
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