The corridor outside felt wrong in a way the archive hadn't. The archive had been still. Quiet. Heavy with old knowledge and heavier regrets. This hallway, by contrast, felt like something had passed through recently and the walls were trying very hard to pretend they had always looked this way.
Cadence followed beside me, her hologram keeping its usual casual posture. If she had arms, she would have put them behind her back like we were taking a casual stroll through a museum instead of a lab built on human suffering.
"Your posture is tense," she said.
"That's because every time a hallway looks like this, something wants to kill me."
"You are projecting pattern recognition across insufficient data."
"And yet my pattern recognition keeps being right."
She tilted her head. "A concerning trend."
The lights flickered above us as if offended. The air grew colder the further we walked, the walls transitioning from dust-choked metal to smooth, matte composite. Cleaner. More intact. Less abandoned.
I glanced around. "This place didn't corrode as much as the rest. Why."
"Different materials," Cadence said. "Different purpose. This wing appears to have been preserved deliberately."
"Preserved for what."
"I can generate a list of possibilities. You will not enjoy any of them."
"Then keep them to yourself."
Her projection dimmed a little as she recalibrated sensors. "Energy readings increasing. The signature is very faint, but consistent with what was in the archives."
"Consistent with me."
"Yes."
I let that sit in the air. It tasted stale.
"So we're getting closer to whatever Nova tried to build."
She didn't answer immediately. "We are getting closer to whatever he believed he could build."
"Semantics."
"Definitions matter, Iris. Especially when one of them might try to disassemble you."
"That's what worries me," I muttered. "If he succeeded, even once, we might be walking toward something that thinks it's the real version."
"You are the real version."
"Tell that to the thing waiting for us."
She ran a soft scan ahead. "I am attempting to."
The hallway sloped down into a gentle curve. The lights became brighter, steadier, less like emergency strips and more like illumination for actual workspaces. Not abandoned ruins. Active infrastructure. Weird how that was somehow worse.
We reached an intersection, two doors sealed and dead, one half-open like someone had forced it. The metal was bent outward.
I crouched to inspect it. The surface was warped by strong hands. Very strong. The kind of strength I only had in Overdrive.
"Well," I said, "something enjoyed interior decoration."
Cadence scanned the edges. "Force applied from inside. Deliberate. Not frantic. Controlled."
"So it didn't break out in panic."
"No."
"That's somehow worse."
"I note that you keep saying that."
"I keep being proven right."
We passed through the bent doorway. The room beyond was a testing chamber like the earlier ones, but less destroyed. No soot marks. No shattered equipment. Instead, everything was moved aside. Cleared with purpose.
Something had made space.
Cadence floated her projection near the center, crouching without needing to. "These drag marks are recent."
"Which means we're not following a ghost."
"There are no such things."
I paced the chamber slowly. No bodies. No scrap. No debris. Just the sense of something calculated. Something patient.
"Cadence," I said, "what are we dealing with."
"A prototype engineered from your developmental data," she said. "Based on the archive, Project 268 was the first instance that did not destabilise during neural imprinting."
"Which means."
"It remained functional."
"Define functional."
She considered. "It did not die."
"That is an extremely low bar."
I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose. "So 268 isn't some twitchy scav with a power source jammed up it's a..."
"No. It is something closer to you." Cadence intervened.
"That's not comforting."
"I did not intend comfort."
"You rarely do."
We stepped out of the room and further into the hall. The floor here was clean. Too clean. Like someone had taken time to wipe it. Or the lab still had self-maintaining systems.
"Cadence," I murmured, "is anything here… online."
"Minimal," she said. "Environmental controls. Emergency systems. Some sensors. Nothing with an active operator."
"But something is keeping conditions stable."
"Yes."
"So this wasn't abandoned."
"Not fully."
The corridor straightened before widening into a broader atrium. A cracked sign hung crooked over the entry: CENTRAL FACILITIES. Beneath it, three lifts that hadn't moved in decades. Carved into one of the doors were deep gouges.
Claw marks.
Human-sized.
I set my hand against the metal. "Cadence."
"I know."
"You think this is 268."
"Based on the reconstruction of its expected morphology, yes."
"We've been following its path for a while, haven't we."
"Since the testing hall near the brute corpse," she said. "Every step we have taken has moved closer to a central hub."
"And it knows this place."
"It was made here," she said. "It may consider this home."
"Fantastic. I love visiting childhood trauma sites. Really puts me in the mood to fight for my life."
"You are handling the tension with sarcasm."
"Either that or screaming."
"Please do not scream. The acoustics would be unpleasant."
I shook my head and approached the atrium's far door. It was intact, sealed, powered. The panel beside it blinked a soft blue.
"Cadence," I said, "is this door expecting a keycard."
"No."
"Password."
"No."
"Retinal scan."
"No."
"Then what unlocks it."
"You."
I gave her a flat look. "Explain."
She projected a short string of old documentation beside her. "Project 268 wing requires same-class mechanical and biological interface to open, or scientist retinal recognition."
"So it only opens for me."
"Or for 268, unless you have a scientists eye with you.."
"That's cute," I muttered. "Family access."
"You have an unusual definition of cute."
"Open it," I said.
Cadence synced with the panel. The door made a low, heavy sound as bolts retracted. It slid open slowly, as if reluctant to reveal what sat beyond.
A long corridor stretched ahead. Smooth white walls. Embedded lights. Perfectly intact. Modern. This part of the lab had been built far later than the rest. It felt uncomfortably alive.
Cadence lowered her voice. "This wing was used for neurological imprinting. Final-stage reconstruction. It is where a prototype would be finished."
"I can feel that," I said. "Everything here smells wrong."
"That is your imagination. Lab environments are sterile."
"That's what smells wrong."
We walked.
The hum grew stronger. A low resonance that vibrated faintly through my chest. Familiar. Wrongly familiar. Like hearing your own heartbeat from across a room.
"Cadence," I whispered, "tell me that's not what I think it is."
"It is."
"Great."
"You are experiencing recognition of your own energy signature reflected and distorted through an imperfect copy."
"Yeah. I noticed."
"You wished to be certain."
"I was secretly hoping I was wrong."
We reached another door. This one wasn't sealed. It hung slightly ajar, like someone had opened it recently and had not closed it fully.
A thin line of cold white light spilled through the gap.
Cadence paused beside it. "This is it."
"268."
"Yes."
The hum was nearly a pulse now. Slow. Rhythmic. Breathing in the dark.
I exhaled. "Cadence."
"Yes."
"Before we go in, any advice."
"Win."
"That's not helpful."
"It is accurate."
"Anything else."
She considered. "If it speaks, do not trust its words. It has no intelligent AI. Only conditioned responses."
"So like me on bad mornings."
"You are more sarcastic."
I rested my hand on the edge of the door. Cold metal. Too clean. Too smooth.
The kind of door you open when you want your world to change.
"Ready," I asked.
"No," Cadence said. "But proceeding anyway."
I pushed the door open.
Light spilled out.