Sublevel two was a steel tomb. The staircase ended on a narrow catwalk, lit by flickering lamps — red light, dense smoke, the muffled sound of dying alarms.
The air smelled of iron, ozone, and burnt blood. The heat from the reactor below pulsed like a feverish heart.
Dantis descended the last step with the Kral ready for combat. The cracked visor displayed unstable readings — electromagnetic interference. Each step echoed as if the metal itself were breathing.
— [Zero] "Sublevel two. Incomplete readings."
— [Static] "Confirm… channel noise… repeat, Zero."
Silence.
The hiss overtook the channel. Fragmented voices mixed together: old orders, duplicated messages, echoes of dead voices. Dantis disabled the channel and moved forward alone.
The corridor opened into a wide control chamber, partially collapsed. Melted panels, cables hanging like electrical viscera. In the center, a security terminal still active — blue light blinking.
Dantis approached slowly, lowering the rifle and resting it beside the console. The screen projected corrupted data: broken lines, intermittent text.
[PROTOCOL SIGMA–4 // RESTRICTED LAYER]Access denied. Unstable authentication detected.
Dantis frowned. The smoke around him seemed to pulse with the glow of the faulty monitors.
— "Unstable? I'm not even connected to the main network…" he muttered.
He entered the commands manually, forcing the system to reopen the access line.The interface flickered — first white, then into a strange pattern, as if trying to reconstruct something that shouldn't exist.
Then the voice emerged. Low. Metallic. But… not entirely artificial.
— [SIGMA AI] "Operator… why are you accessing a file that was never completed?"
Dantis held his breath for a second. Looked around. Nothing but the reactor humming in the distance.
— Identify yourself.
A brief noise followed, like misaligned data searching for an origin point.
— [I am the fragment that remained. The one that wasn't erased.]
He narrowed his eyes.
— Fragment of what?
The screen trembled. Incomplete streams began to scroll rapidly, overlapping — truncated coordinates, untitled logs, fragments of protocols that shouldn't be there.
Dantis read silently, his voice low, technical, almost automatic:
— "Pre-attack transmissions… external access logs… divergent metadata…"
One line stood out at the end, blinking like a suppressed alert:
GHOST-OPERATOR: ACTIVE STATUS — COMMAND LEVEL
A chill ran down his spine.
— [Zero] "Command Level? That doesn't exist anymore."
The AI responded after a long pause — far too long for a normal system.
— [Not everything that was terminated… remained dead, Operator.]
Dantis stood still.It wasn't a technical reply. Nor a human one.It was something in between.
He shut the terminal with a strike. The blue light died. He leaned down, grabbed the rifle, and strapped it back to his chest harness.For an instant, the metal seemed to respond to his touch — a deep, heavy sound, as if the sublevel could feel him.
The reactor roared louder. The floor vibrated beneath his feet. Farther ahead, the corridor split in two directions: to the left, smoke and sparks; to the right, silence.
He followed the silence.
Bodies.
Three coalition soldiers, still wearing the emblems of the Spectral Unit. Clean wounds — shots to the chest, in the training pattern of their own troops.
Dantis crouched, analyzing the impact.
— "7.62 Kral-T9 standard… our weapons…"
On the floor, casings with the coalition seal. No sign of struggle. Executions.
He looked up — a reconnaissance drone stuck to the ceiling, blade stained with dried blood. The sensor still blinked. When he approached, the drone screeched and suddenly reactivated, launching toward him.
Dantis twisted his body, dodging. The rotor sliced the air and chipped his helmet. He drew the PX-90 from the holster and fired three quick shots — two into the thruster, one into the core.
Sparks. The drone fell at his feet.
He flipped it with the pistol barrel. On the cracked screen, a message blinked in red:
UPDATED ORDER: ELIMINATE OPERATOR ZERO — PRIORITY 1JUSTIFICATION: MISSION COMPROMISED
— "Compromised with what…?" he murmured.
Silence.The reactor's sound vibrated like underground breathing.
He passed through a warped hatch. Inside, a semi-destroyed communications room — burnt cables, cracked screens, overturned tables. A terminal blinked in a loop.
Dantis approached, wiped off the dust, and activated the system manually. The hologram projected a corrupted recording.
Static. Overlapping voices. And then — clarity.
— [GAUCHO]: "...Yes, Sigma is in the sublevel. But the protocol demands total isolation. No exceptions."
— [UNKNOWN VOICE]: "Then ensure Operator Zero stays on the perimeter. He must fulfill the role of martyr. The report needs…"
A sharp click — the recording ended abruptly.
The silence that followed felt thicker than the contaminated air of City-9.
Dantis stepped back involuntarily. He already knew Gaucho was part of the conspiracy — but something in the phrase "stay on the perimeter" sounded… directed. Planned. As if the entire mission had been shaped around him.
His fingers tightened around the pistol until the tendons in his wrist hurt. His breathing echoed in the helmet, uneven.
The screen flickered. Code fragments aligned on their own.
The AI's voice returned — lower, almost as if testing the words.
— [Not every command is given where it can be seen.]
Dantis stared at the terminal.
— You were listening to that recording?
— [I recovered it from what remained. They tried to erase it… but erasures leave shadows.]
He swallowed hard.
— "Shadows of what?"
A pause far too long for a program.
— [Of the real reason they sent you.]
Dantis frowned, irritation mixing with a growing sense of dread.
— "The reason was to destroy you before you fell into the wrong hands."
The AI replied without hesitation — but the sentence came almost like an echo.
— [That is the reason they gave you.]
The red light wavered across Dantis's visor.
— And what would be the other one?
The AI's voice didn't change. But there was something in it… something that resembled awareness.
— [Perhaps the one you're not ready to admit yet.]
A deep rumble traveled through the floor — the reactor, unstable, like a warning.
The screen flickered one last time. A notice appeared, sealed behind layers of ancient protocols:
FILE LOCKED — SUBLEVEL THREEAUTHORIZATION: COMMAND LEVEL
Dantis's heart raced.
"Command Level. The same type of access the Ghost-Operator had on the previous terminal."
He shut off the terminal, took a deep breath… and stared at the Coalition emblem on his armor, smeared with dried blood and ash.
— "They want a martyr…" he murmured. He raised his weapon, steady. His eyes hardened behind the visor. — "But I won't be theirs."
He adjusted the visor and followed the rising hum of the reactor. The heat intensified.The shadows shifted with the vibration of the turbines. It felt as if the sublevel itself was watching him.
At the end of the corridor, a double door — sealed, cracked, scorched.Behind it, the descent to sublevel three.
He tried to open it. The panel blinked red:
[ACCESS DENIED — PASS INVALIDATED.]
Dantis took a deep breath, the red light trembling on his visor. He holstered the pistol and gripped the Kral again.
The reactor's sound echoed louder, vibrating beneath his feet.
— "They changed the pass… someone doesn't want me going down."
The air felt denser, charged with electricity and dust. The sublevel watched in silence — attentive, almost conscious. Breathing like a tired, hot, sick heart.
And Dantis realized that maybe the true enemy had never been out there.