The room was dark, the hum of unseen machines thrumming like distant thunder, the only light spilling from the circular interface display pulsing in slow waves; like a breathing organism, alive and waiting.
Inside stood Ford Brody, older now, but hardened like sun-scorched stone. His once reckless posture had given way to the calm weight of understanding, and the scar beneath his eye, once raw, had faded into a pale reminder of a past too bitter to forget.
He stood at the far end of the simulation chamber, watching the young boy before him move through the calibration ring. Sam Brody was leaner, taller than he remembered, his hair trimmed short as per regulations, and his movements efficient—no wasted motion, no hesitation.
"Neural load stable," came the voice of the technician behind the glass, "Minimal residual feedback."
Ford nodded silently. For five years, he and his son had trained inside this hidden compound buried deep beneath Colorado's mountain bedrock, isolated from the world that grieved over the deaths of its monsters and braced for the return of worse.
This place; operated by no single government, but built from the efforts of many, existed for one purpose: to construct the last wall between civilization and extinction.
And Sam had been chosen to be that wall.
It had all begun with the test. Most never even knew they were part of it. Subtle biometric scans masked as routine vaccinations, retinal analyses hidden in school health check-ups, genetic sampling embedded in minor blood draws, every child between fifteen and twenty had been screened.
Quietly. Thoroughly. And Sam had matched.
"His symmetry index is... unnaturally clean," the Japanese woman had told Ford years ago, when she first approached him at the bar, "The signal pattern is dense, stable, and harmonized. That kind of alignment is rare."
Ford had scoffed then, dismissed it as scientific nonsense. The only reason he accepted was the clause where he would be able to live with his son again, and if all went well, the chance to gain custody of his son once more.
But now? Now he understood. Sam's mind had a kind of rhythm that resonated in the frequencies of other minds, like two melodies finding perfect harmony when played side-by-side.
But harmony alone wasn't enough. That's where Ford came in. The system required a bonded pair. Normally siblings, identical twins if they could be found, but in a few rare cases, genetic affinity and emotional entanglement could override biology.
In a chamber built to sync two minds into one shared stream of consciousness, family didn't always mean shared blood; it meant shared loss. Shared guilt. Shared purpose.
"Readings show full coherence between units," the technician called again.
"I know," Ford said, mostly to himself.
As Sam completed the interface loop and removed the crown-like array of neural contacts from his head, he turned to face his father, a faint smile tugging at his lips.
"Did better this time," he said.
Ford folded his arms, unable to suppress the proud tilt of his chin. "You're not just doing better, kid. You're starting to make this thing yours."
Sam walked over, sweat darkening the collar of his training shirt, "You think it's time?"
Ford didn't answer right away. His mind was still back in that moment; years ago, when everything had started falling apart. When he'd lost Elle. When his father had been proven right too late. When he'd signed away his son, not knowing that fate would circle back and offer him a second chance. Not as a soldier. Not even as a father. But as a partner.
"I think the world doesn't get to decide what's coming," Ford said slowly. "But we get to decide what we're going to be when it gets here."
Their hands met in a silent clasp of forearms, and for the briefest second, Ford felt the faint, impossible buzz that always danced at the edge of their link during deep synchronization; a whisper of Sam's emotions passing through him like static through wire.
That was the real secret of the interface. It wasn't the machine. It was the unspoken, intuitive exchange of willpower and memory between two minds built to bear the same burden. That kind of connection couldn't be taught. It had to be lived.
"I'm ready," Sam said again, more firmly.
Ford looked past the glass, at the still form of the massive weapon coiled in dormant incompleteness behind reinforced blast shielding. A titan forged not from biology, but steel, nerves, and fire. They had walked in the footsteps of monsters, and soon mankind would answer with its own.
"Good," Ford clenched his jaw unknowingly. For the first time, he let an emotion enter his mind that had he had never allowed in before, one he never had space for before. Only grief had consumed him for as long as he could remember.
But now, he felt it. Anger. And it was not targeted inward. He would have his revenge.
Somewhere deep in the Pacific, far beyond the curtain of satellites and sonar buoys, a storm raged over the waves.
Not one born of climate or current, but of titanic wings and atmospheric displacement. The clouds churned. The sea boiled.
The balance was breaking again.