4:00 AM – Outer Rim of Sector 3
The night was broken by flame.
Rebel cells—former agents, displaced citizens, rogue AIs—rallied behind leaked Root files and a single message burned into the darknet: They turned children into weapons. Division Zero must fall.
Miura led the charge through the ghost streets, her squad ghosting between shadows and shattered neon. Explosives in hand. Code disruptors at the ready.
Boom.
A surveillance tower collapsed in a rain of sparks. Another fell soon after. The city's eye went blind, bit by bit.
Across the comm:
"Phase Two complete. Signal flare deployed. Ryoji, we're cleared."
Below – Sewer Access Level Gamma
Ryoji moved like a wraith, soaked to the bone. Beside him, Aiko followed, gaze locked ahead—different now. Sharper. Something inside her had shifted since the Root collapsed.
They reached a sealed terminal. Division Zero markings etched in red. Aiko stepped forward and pressed her palm to it.
Click.
The lock accepted her.
The door hissed open.
Behind it—silence, and stairs that dropped into the black beneath the city's bones.
Helix Vault: Sublevel Sigma
The walls pulsed.
Cold. Metallic. Alive.
Hundreds of containment pods lined the vast chamber, each one filled with liquid stasis. Some housed bodies. Some—machines. Others, indistinguishable. Failed prototypes. Test subjects never meant to wake.
Aiko stared, frozen. "I remember this place."
Ryoji checked a console. "What is it?"
Her voice dropped. "The ones who didn't survive… they were stored. Some… changed."
Lights snapped on overhead.
One of the pods… was empty.
A siren began to scream.
UNSEALED ENTITY DETECTED
CODE DESIGNATION: HELIX-0
Ryoji drew both knives.
"Something's already out."
Meanwhile – Division Zero HQ
Shirow watched the red warning flash across his screens.
"Helix-0 is awake."
The woman in black flinched. "We never perfected that unit."
"That's the point," Shirow said. "It's chaos incarnate."
She swallowed. "Should we intervene?"
He turned, smiling faintly.
"No. We let them meet their mistake."
Back Underground
The walls shook. One pod cracked, hissing mist and memory. A figure stumbled out—tall, skeletal, clad in black wetware armor. Its face twitched with fragments of human expression.
It turned its head toward Aiko.
She gasped.
"I know him."
"Who is it?" Ryoji asked.
"My brother."
Aboveground – Sector Uprising Intensifies
Miura's squad hit another node, taking down a comm relay. A drone zipped past—she shot it clean out of the sky.
Suddenly, all comms went dead.
STATIC. THEN—A NEW SIGNAL.
A voice—not Shirow's. Not theirs. Something… wrong.
"We see you. We remember."
Miura froze.
"Who the hell is that?"
The commline pulsed.
"We are Helix."
To be continued in Chapter 35…..