The master server room didn't feel like a room anymore; it felt like the inside of a dying god's brain. The air was thick with the scent of scorched silicon and the metallic tang of ozone. Above them, the massive "Catalyst" core pulsed with a rhythmic, sickly green light that matched the veins standing out on Director Thorne's neck.
"Adrien, look at the terminal!" Lily's voice was barely a whisper, stripped of its usual playful bounce.
Adrien scrambled to the primary console. His fingers, usually so precise, stumbled over the keys. The screen wasn't showing code anymore—it was showing memories. Clips of his own childhood, blurred faces of his parents, and the first time he'd met Leon in a rain-drenched alleyway.
"He's using our neural imprints as a firewall," Adrien gasped, his eyes wide. "To delete the program, I have to delete... us."
"Then do it," Ashley's voice rang out, steady and cold. She was standing twenty feet away, her red hair wild, her tactical vest shredded. She was reloading her last magazine with a mechanical click. "If Thorne completes the upload, those memories won't belong to us anyway. They'll just be data points in his new world."
Thorne let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-static. He stepped out of the cooling mist, his armored form glowing. "You speak of memories as if they are sacred. They are just faulty storage, Ashley. I am offering you a hard drive that never fails."
"I like my faulty storage just fine," Leon growled. He stepped forward, his boots crunching on shattered glass. He looked at Ashley, a silent communication passing between them. On three.