Pain bloomed behind Atlas's eyes like an exploding star.
Lines of code flooded his neural interface, each symbol branding itself into his mind with searing clarity. It wasn't just data—it was rewriting him. Every breath felt heavier. His muscles spasmed as foreign instructions battled with his own will.
He roared and dropped to one knee, gauntlet sparking against the fractured Martian stone. A sickening heat crawled under his skin.
[System Overwrite: Stage 1 Initiated]
[Cognitive Alignment Sync—FAILED]
[Subject Resisting. Increasing assimilation protocols.]
Nyra's voice, static-laced, pierced the chaos.
"Atlas—your neurogrid's being hijacked! Overwriter Protocol is digging into your root memory! You have seconds before full override!"
"I—won't—let it!"
He slammed his fist into the ground, and a pulse of raw kinetic force blasted out from his armor's core, throwing dust and debris in every direction. The invaders—Rellon, the fake sister, the altered hybrids—stumbled back.
"You think you're the only one with upgrades?" Atlas growled through gritted teeth.
With sheer willpower, he reached into his own interface—pulling every emergency failsafe Nyra had ever coded. Layers of firewalls. Backup personalities. Even the dangerous Echo Routines buried deep beneath the AI's security shell.
"Engage manual override!" he shouted.
Nyra hesitated. "Atlas, activating Echo Routines may—"
"DO IT!"
A shrill whine tore through his mind as a hidden subroutine unlocked.
[Echo Protocol Initiated… Personality Fragment Activated… Loading: Vanguard Memory Core]
Suddenly, a rush of memories—not his own—flooded him. Combat patterns, off-world battlefields, Vorr anatomy schematics, deep-space stealth tactics, and a single word imprinted on every page:
"Endure."
The Overwriter Protocol stuttered.
Then broke.
Atlas surged to his feet, eyes blazing with a flickering crimson glow, his aura igniting in a way that shook the air.
Rellon took a cautious step back.
"That… wasn't supposed to be possible."
Atlas leveled his rifle at him. "You should've made sure before jamming alien code into my skull."
Without warning, he fired.
But it wasn't just plasma.
The shot was laced with something more—energy from the Vanguard core—crackling black-red lightning that tore through Rellon's kinetic barrier like paper and sent the man flying into a broken column.
The ground shook from the impact.
The clone-sister lunged, blades drawn from her wrists. Atlas sidestepped, grabbed her arm, and drove her face-first into a stone slab. She twitched—sparks flying from her mouth—but she didn't scream.
She didn't bleed either.
Just circuits and nanite gel.
He felt nothing but rage.
"You're not her," he spat.
The machine didn't answer. It just rebooted.
Before he could fire again, a tremor rocked the ground beneath him—deeper this time. Not a quake.
Something was waking up.
"Atlas!" Nyra barked. "Seismic readings off the charts! Something massive is moving beneath the city. You've triggered a dormant facility!"
The clone jerked its head toward the far end of the ruins.
"Now he's seen it," she said, smiling eerily. "Now it will awaken."
The tremors intensified.
And then he saw it.
A tower, long buried under ash and stone, began to rise from the center of the city. It was ancient, alien, unlike any structure left by mankind. Its surface was smooth, obsidian-black, etched with glowing red veins like a beating heart.
At the very top: a symbol. One Atlas recognized from the stolen Vorr data.
A keyhole.
"The Obelisk," Rellon gasped, staggering to his feet, blood now leaking from his mouth. "It responded to your DNA. Your resonance woke it."
"What is it?" Atlas demanded, though deep down, he knew.
"Not what," Rellon coughed. "Who."
Atlas turned toward the rising tower, the air thick with electric tension.
And then it happened.
[Signal Detected… Linking to Source]
[Warning: Prime Core Consciousness Engaging]
[Preparing Neural Bridge to: THE WARDEN]
His HUD flickered. The world dimmed. And a voice—cold, mechanical, older than stars—whispered inside his skull.
"Found you."
Atlas staggered.
"Nyra—kill the link!"
"I can't! It's overriding all interfaces—this isn't a signal—it's a mind!"
A burning symbol branded itself onto his gauntlet: a circle pierced by a single vertical line.
The mark of the Warden.
The Vorr's true god.
The source of all their synthetic evolution.
"Why… me?" Atlas choked out.
The voice answered.
"Because you are the anomaly. The singular variable. The Final Seed."
And then the sky turned red.
A beam of light shot from the top of the Obelisk, piercing through Mars's atmosphere and shattering the storm cover. Alarms screamed inside the Skyrend, and Nyra's voice was frantic.
"Atlas, incoming transmission from deep space. Triangulating source—oh no—"
"What?!"
"The Vorr. They're responding. A fleet—A WHOLE DAMN FLEET—is headed here."
Atlas's heart dropped.
It wasn't a trap.
It was a beacon.
They hadn't found Earth.
He had just shown them where to come.
High above Mars, beyond the veil of storm and orbit, space shimmered as dozens of Vorr dreadships emerged from hyperspace—silent, massive, their black hulls reflecting no light.
And at their center floated a single, titanic vessel carved from obsidian and gold.
[Vorr Flagship 'Divine Chain' Arrived]
[Command Signal: Capture the Seed. Begin Harvest.]