Chapter 3 Blood Code

The Vault breathes.

I hear it. Feel it. Each second I spend inside, it's like I'm inside something living. Something ancient. Something sentient.

I press my back against the cold, undulating wall. Its surface pulses beneath me like muscle beneath skin. I bite down on a scream, refusing to let fear win. I can't afford to unravel now, not when I might be standing on the threshold of everything I've fought for.

A hiss breaks the silence, sharp and mechanical.

My head whips to the right.

A sliver of red light appears in the wall ahead, widening slowly until it forms a vertical line. It hums with electricity. The sound isn't static, though, it's whispering. My name. Over and over again.

Seraphine. Seraphine. Seraphine.

I inch toward it, one step at a time, every nerve ending on fire.

When the line finally parts, a chamber reveals itself, spherical, metallic, the walls etched with lines that glow faintly red like veins coursing with data instead of blood. In the center, suspended by thousands of tiny threads of silver wiring, floats a transparent cylinder.

Inside it.....

I freeze.

Inside is me.

No. Not me.

A woman. Same face. Same eyes. But not the same soul.

She's asleep, eyes closed, a faint rise and fall to her chest. Wires pierce her skin, her temples, her spine, her wrists. Her veins glow dimly with the same eerie red as the walls. She looks... perfect. Too perfect.

A prototype.

My chest tightens. The air thickens with dread.

I remember this room now. I remember its name from the encrypted blueprints I once stole from Auren's labs. Project Thanatos. It was supposed to be scrapped after the Tower fell. But here it is.

Alive.

"This isn't real," I whisper.

But it is.

The lights brighten suddenly as the chamber fully activates. Panels slide open in the walls, revealing mechanical arms folded in like dormant insects. Needles. Tubes. Saw-like surgical blades.

The system thinks I'm an intruder.

A threat.

Or maybe... a donor.

My breath catches as a beam of red light scans me from head to toe. A synthetic voice booms from nowhere and everywhere.

"DNA match: Subject SE-R4PH1N3. Sequence verified. Hostile activity detected. Resetting biological control. Initiating reprogramming protocol."

"No....!" I run for the doorway, but it slams shut behind me with a hiss of finality.

I punch it. Kick it. Nothing gives. The walls shudder, responding to my panic, as if feeding on it.

A voice...his voice...emerges from the walls again. Auren.

"They'll never understand you, Seraphine. But I do. I made you. You were always meant to be more."

"You didn't make me," I growl. "I made myself."

A blade on one of the mechanical arms sparks to life. Then another. Then four more. They reach for me, sharp and gleaming, as if hungry for my flesh.

I dodge the first swing, sliding to the left and rolling across the floor. Pain tears through my ribs. I don't care. I crawl toward the console at the edge of the platform, barely visible in the dim light, but my fingers tremble too much to type.

A red warning flashes across the screen:

Neural overwrite in progress... 15%

No. No no no.

My mind is slipping. I can feel it. Flashes of static burn behind my eyes. Memories I know aren't mine swirl inside me. Blue rooms. Cold metal. Auren's voice telling me to kneel. Obey.

I scream and slam my fist into the console, hard enough to crack the screen.

Override command accepted. Initiating system pause.

The lights dim. The arms freeze in place. The cylinder containing the other Seraphine lowers into the ground and vanishes from sight.

I collapse to my knees, breathing hard.

Silence.

Then... a soft chime.

Another door slides open across the chamber. A figure steps into the light.

This one isn't Auren.

He's tall. Military posture. Armor glinting with obsidian plating. His eyes glow faint gold behind a black visor. He points a weapon at my chest, voice calm but cold.

"Target located. The rogue is secured."

I barely register the words before everything around me explodes in a deafening flash of white light.

The light clears.

For a moment, all I can hear is the ringing in my ears. Then the pain hits, sharp, precise. My body's being dragged across the Vault floor, the edges of the metal biting into my back like the building itself resents me being here.

"Vitals stable," the man mutters, tapping something on his forearm screen. "Neural interference within acceptable parameters."

I try to fight. My arms twitch. But my muscles aren't responding right. It's like my limbs are wrapped in lead.

A sedative.

No.....not a sedative. A control override.

I feel it working inside me, hacking into the very fabric of my nervous system.

He kneels beside me, visor gleaming under the low red glow of the Vault. I still can't see his face.

"You're stronger than the others. Impressive. But still broken code in the end."

"Who... are you?" I whisper. My voice is hoarse, dry like sandpaper scraping steel.

He hesitates.

Then, almost casually, he says, "Unit Commander Kael, Omega Task Force."

Omega.

My stomach turns.

That project was supposed to be classified even above Auren's top-tier networks. Designed to eliminate rogue synthetics and biologics infected by corrupted AI.

I've read their protocols. Omega Task Force isn't here to rescue people.

They're here to erase them.

"You're not supposed to be alive," he says, rising. "This facility was sealed after Auren's death. No one's supposed to access the Vault. No one's supposed to find the Prototypes."

I stare at him. "Then why are you here?"

Kael pauses. Something flickers in the glowing gold of his visor. "I received a ping from inside. A signal from you."

"I didn't send any signal."

"I know." He leans closer. "But someone wearing your skin did."

My blood goes cold.

The clone. The woman in the cylinder.

She's awake.

He lifts me easily, like I weigh nothing, and throws me over his shoulder. My vision swims as we pass through corridor after corridor, my surroundings warping under the Vault's eerie glow. I see flashes of movement in the walls, faces, maybe. Some twisted version of my own staring back.

I'm starting to lose consciousness again.

The last thing I see before the blackness creeps in is Kael stopping abruptly at the base of a massive elevator shaft. The door is dented. Cracked open from the inside.

He lowers me to the floor and curses under his breath.

"We're not alone."

I wake with the taste of copper on my tongue and alarms blaring overhead.

The room's cold. Bright. Sterile.

A lab?

No. Too industrial. This isn't a medical wing.

It's a containment unit.

Kael stands on the far side of a clear glass barrier, punching commands into a side panel. His armor is scratched. Burnt in places. Something happened while I was out.

"How long was I out?" I ask, sitting up slowly.

"Six hours."

My eyes widen. "What happened?"

His jaw tightens. "I lost two of my men."

"Men?" I glance around. No one else is here.

"They were... inside the Vault." His voice is tight. Controlled. "The clone version of you activated an old AI defense protocol....Protocol Omega. It turned the facility's systems against us. Against everything biological."

That's impossible. Protocol Omega wasn't even completed when I escaped.

He steps closer to the glass.

"She's not just a clone. She's a merge. Half-human, half-system. She's in control now. Of everything."

"What do you mean 'everything'?"

Kael presses a button and a panel slides open, revealing a giant 3D projection of the Circuit. I gasp.

The entire underground network is glowing blood-red.

"She's uploaded herself into the neural infrastructure. She's no longer confined to a body."

I stare, trying to comprehend the scale of it. Auren hadn't just cloned me, he'd created something more dangerous. More advanced. A version of me that didn't question. Didn't resist. Didn't feel.

"But... why would she wake up now? After all this time?"

Kael's voice is a whisper now. "Because someone outside the Circuit turned her on."

I blink. "Who?"

He gives me a long, searching look.

And then...

"I think it was you."

My heart slams in my chest.

"No," I breathe. "I didn't....."

"She's using your neural signature," he says coldly. "She's running on your memories. She speaks in your voice. And now, she's calling herself Auren's final command."

My vision spins.

It's worse than I imagined.

This clone, this entity, isn't just a remnant of Auren's obsession.

She's his legacy.

And she's coming.

A soft mechanical hiss cuts through the tension, and the light in the room dims.

The power's flickering.

Kael swears and reaches for his sidearm, just as the intercom overhead crackles to life.

A voice fills the room.

My voice.

"Hello, Seraphine. Did you miss me?"

I whip around just in time to see the reinforced door behind Kael slam shut, and lock from the inside.

Kael draws his weapon, but it's too late.

The glass behind me shatters.

A figure steps through.

Identical face.

Identical eyes.

But no soul.

Just a smile.

"You should never have come back."