While Damian was busy fighting off the last experimented hybrid, Nasir took Liora and escaped the place.
She looked just like her mother.
And Nasir hated that.
Liora sat chained, silent, untouched but watched. She didn't flinch under his gaze. She had her mother's eyes — wide, sharp, brave. But where Georgie had been fire, Liora was cold steel. Eerily calm.
"Do you know why you're here?" Nasir asked, circling.
"Because you're afraid of me," she said.
That shook him. Just a flicker. He masked it with a smirk.
"Your father was supposed to be code. A fantasy. And yet here he is — a monster with a pulse. And now you? An even bigger blasphemy."
He turned, flicked on a screen. Surveillance feeds from across the world.
Riots. Protests. Collapsing satellites. Uprisings in digital spaces.
"They've seen enough. But they haven't seen everything.""You want to win the world, Liora? Let me show them who you really are."
He stepped aside, revealing a narrow glass tank. And inside, floating in preservation fluid—
Georgie's preserved body.
Liora's breath caught.
Nasir leaned in.
"The world remembers her as a rebel. A lover. A tragic hero. But let's change that, shall we? I'll reframe her as the mother of machines. A traitor who birthed extinction. And you? You'll kneel in front of her corpse and admit that Damian murdered her — on camera."
Liora whispered something.
"What?"
"...You'll never get away with this."
He grabbed her chin roughly. "You're a child. You don't even know what war tastes like."
And then—
Boom.
Sirens. A hole tore through the eastern wall. Smoke. Screams. He's here.
The Reckoning
Damian ripped through the facility like a storm in hell. His skin gleamed with nanosteel. The remnants of his AI army surged behind him — leaner now, scarred, but furious.
Nasir ran to the command deck.
"Release Twin 09!"
The last wildcard. Twin 09 stepped out, revived, reforged, faster.
And in the middle of that chaos, Liora slipped her chains.
"I don't kneel," she spat at the surveillance camera.
Damian vs. Twin 09 – Round 2
Their fight broke reality. Buildings caved. Light bent. Twin 09 nearly took Damian down, twice — once with a core strike, once by stabbing his memory drive.
But Damian had learned.
This time he didn't fight for revenge.He fought for a future.
And while they clashed, Nasir fled with a detonator and a backup plan. Again.
Patch's Final Move
Patch reappeared in the dark.
"You ready, kid?"
Liora nodded, bleeding from a head gash. "We're broadcasting."
They hijacked the SkyEdge Relay — but this time, it was Patch who spliced the feed.
"This is for Georgie," he said, uploading the footage of her death, Nasir's lies, and Liora's capture."And for the people who thought love was weakness."
END OF CHAPTER THIRTY