The moment we stepped into the archive, the air felt colder than the corridor behind us. Not the refreshing kind. More like opening a fridge full of expired meat kind.
Rows of towering shelves stretched into the distance, each packed with folders and paperwork, broken monitors and half-dismantled prototypes arranged with all the care of a bored intern who never returned for his next shift.
I took three steps inside and listened.
Nothing...
Cadence joined me, hologram flickering softly. "Sensors read no active hostiles within the vicinity."
"You've said similar before."
"I refine my internal predictions after each encounter."
"Refine," I echoed. "That's a nice word for being repeatedly wrong."
She gave a micro-glare. "It is statistically unlikely for your sarcasm to improve our survival odds."
"Let me have fun in the dark haunted library."
"You may have exactly one fun."
"I'll ration it."
We moved deeper between the shelves. Dust swirled lazily in the cold air, shifting like it was trying to spell warnings in bad calligraphy.
Halfway down the second aisle, something flickered at the edge of my vision.
A shadow. Quick.
Cadence froze. "Movement ahead. Humanoid silhouette."
"Great," I whispered. "Something did come to the library."
She magnified a tiny blue square of holographic feed. The silhouette slipped behind a rack of equipment, limping slightly, trailing debris.
I recognised the movement instantly.
"That's him," I said. "The running vulture from earlier."
"The one who fled during earlier confrontation," Cadence confirmed. "The final member of the four."
"Fantastic. He came home."
"Likely he retreated to familiar environment."
"Great. He retreats to read books, the kind of opponent I like."
We followed the tracks. Small metal shards led the way like breadcrumbs dropped by someone with terrible manners and hygiene.
At the end of the aisle, the shelves opened into a wide circular alcove. A central table dominated the space, littered with faded blueprints and broken data slates. Old cables snaked across the surface.
Cadence drifted ahead. Her hologram brightened. "Iris. Look at this."
I stepped beside her and saw the schematic.
Humanoid frame. Reinforced limbs. Stabilised muscle weave. Neural channel architecture sketched in perfect clinical lines.
Across the top of the document was stamped:
PROJECT 268
"Well that's friendly," I muttered. "What is it. A number. A threat. A prediction."
"Designation for an advanced prototype," Cadence said. "Sequence suggests it came after patient 267, that is a lot of refining."
"Or mistakes."
"More likely the closest attempt at mirroring your design."
I stared hard at the sketch. It resembled me in the same way a mannequin resembled a person. Enough shape to identify, not enough detail to admire.
"What does it mean," I asked quietly.
"That Nova finally stabilised several integration processes," she replied. "Though it is unclear if he succeeded entirely."
"So his almost-Iris."
"His incorrect-Iris," Cadence corrected. "The blueprint shows limitations. Structural inconsistencies. Still dangerous but not… you."
I was about to ask another question when metal scraped across stone behind us.
We turned to face the sound.
The Vulture straggler stood half in shadow, hunched and trembling. His right leg dragged, the joint blown out. Half his chest plating was missing. But his eyes still glowed with that desperate, defective intelligence.
He hissed at us. The sound was wet and mechanical, like a broken vent screaming for help.
Cadence spoke quietly. "He is in critical condition. His systems are failing. Yet hostility remains."
"That's the fairest assessment to date," I said.
He lunged.
He moved fast considering the state of his body, but not nearly fast enough. His claw arced toward my throat. I sidestepped, grabbed his arm mid-swing and twisted. The limb bent backward with a crunch that made even me wince.
He shrieked and lashed out with the other arm. I blocked with my forearm, shoved him off balance, and swept his weakened leg. He hit the floor hard.
Still he crawled.
He clawed toward me with the desperation of a cornered animal.
Cadence's voice remained calm. "Left optic is still active. Remove it to reduce targeting capacity."
"On it."
I slammed my heel gently but decisively onto his head. The optic cracked. He spasmed, then lay still except for occasional glitchy twitches.
I waited several seconds.
He did not rise again.
Cadence stepped beside me. "He was minimal threat. He must have fled after witnessing the brute's death."
"Probably thought he was next on my to-do list," I said.
"He was."
"Good thing he wasn't mine."
I nudged his corpse away from the table and turned back to the blueprint. Cadence examined it again with narrowed eyes.
"Project 268," she murmured. "This is the closest he came to duplicating your integration baseline. Reinforced skeletal lattice. Designed neural conduction. Balanced power distribution."
"So a brat with potential."
"The troubled child," she said. "Better than the Vultures. Less… grotesque."
"And not a brute."
"No. it is more refined."
I tilted my head. "You think he finished it."
"Unknown. However." She paused. "The energy readings from lower levels earlier matched this blueprint's specifications."
My stomach dropped.
"So it's awake."
"Possibly."
"And nearby."
"Highly likely."
I took a deep breath. The cold air bit my lungs. "Cadence."
"Yes."
"When we meet 268… what am I looking at."
She didn't answer immediately.
Finally, she said, "You are looking at what he thought you should have been."
"Well," I said, "he has bad taste."
"Agreed."
We gathered the blueprints. Cadence scanned them for additional notes, her hologram brightening with each data thread she integrated.
"268 has a modern power housing," Cadence noted. "More efficient. Higher capacity. Possibly what you sensed earlier."
"Meaning if I rip it out, I get an upgrade."
She blinked with shock and at the same time excitement. "That is the most concerning way to phrase that, yet accurate."
"Good. I'm in the right mood then."
We turned toward the exit at the far side of the alcove. Ahead, the corridor sloped downward into colder darkness.
Behind us, the archive returned to silence.
Except now it was missing a resident.