Part 4: Somewhere, They Run
Three floors below the surface of Obsidian Vault 9, a military-grade black site located beneath a decommissioned hydro dam in eastern Colorado, the air always smelled like cold metal and unspoken panic.
The war room was buried behind four doors, each requiring separate biometrics. Palm, retina, voiceprint, and DNA. And yet no one in that room felt secure.
Not anymore.
Not after what they had just seen.
The monitor in front of Mercer Halden was frozen mid-frame: Kairo-7, standing in the kill room, carved steel wall behind him glowing faintly.
FAILED ASSET = HUNTER
And beneath it, in his own voice—distorted by cracked vocal cords and something worse,
"Run."
It hadn't been a threat.
It had been a death sentence.
The room was dead quiet.
No one breathed, No one moved.
The feed had come through fifteen minutes ago.
Encrypted.
Looped through abandoned Black Ridge servers. Hidden in the data stream of a system that should've been dead the moment Kairo's cryopod failed.
But it wasn't dead.
Nothing was.
Halden stood frozen in front of the monitor, unmoving, arms stiff at his sides. He was a man who'd lived too long in sterile light—bald, sallow-skinned, veins like cords beneath his temple. He blinked once every few seconds, like a machine keeping time.
Behind him sat Dr. Rilla Chen, his former neural architect—petite, with wireframe glasses, hair in a surgical bun, hands shaking in her lap. The third figure, Elias Frell, ex-field commander turned corporate security strategist, was pale and sweating.
The tension in the room wasn't fear of Kairo.
It was terror of what he'd become.
Halden finally moved.
He didn't speak. He lifted a hand, bone-thin and trembling, and tapped his wrist console. A biometric pulse scanned his veins and recognized his identity.
CLEARANCE LEVEL: PRIMARCH
EXECUTE PROTOCOL: 14-E BLACK SNOW
NAME: FINAL EVACUATION DIRECTIVE
"Mercer," Rilla whispered. "This can't be happening."
Halden's voice was calm, Controlled. Ice over broken glass.
"It is happening. He's loose. He accessed the Shadow Node. Pulled the archive. He knows the roster."
Rilla clutched her stomach like she was about to vomit. "You told me the kill switch was permanent. You said if he breached the neural lattice—"
"It was permanent," Halden snapped. "Until someone tampered with the redundancy layer."
He didn't say it.
But they all knew who he meant.
Sera Lane.
"She was flagged as dead," Frell said. "Two years ago. We saw the footage—"
"You saw what we let you see," Halden said coldly.
Rilla stood, her voice cracking. "We can't fight him. You saw what he did to Tier Zero. Their bodies were—God, they weren't even—"
"They were dismantled," Frell said. "That's what you're trying not to say. That's what he does now."
The room went silent again.
Halden turned back to the console. Tapped a series of code into a sub-terminal. The screen split open into four quadrants, each showing a list of names.
Every scientist, engineer, handler, or operative tied to Project Paragon.
And next to each name,
STATUS: AT RISK
EVAC LEVEL: MAX
RELOCATION AUTHORIZED
NEW IDENTITY: GENERATING…
Digital aliases began to overwrite the names in real time. Fake passports. Shell locations. Obscured data trails.
They were scattering like roaches before the lights even hit.
But one screen turned red.
A flashing alert.
SUBJECT: DR. ADRIAN MIRE
LOCATION: BEIJING — DEAD
STATUS: DECEASED
METHOD: UNKNOWN
VISUAL CONFIRMATION: PENDING
NOTES: THORACIC CAVITY INVERTED, INTERNALS FUSED TO CEILING PANEL
Rilla covered her mouth. Frell swore under his breath.
Halden only stared.
"He's moving already."
"How—how did he get out of the Ridge?" Rilla asked, stepping backward. "How did he even survive that termination protocol?"
Halden didn't answer.
Because he didn't know.
And that was the worst part.
He had designed Kairo-7.
He had built the modules, overseen the testing. He had crafted the psychic override loop that stripped memory from flesh.
And still… Kairo had come back.
Not just alive.
Upgraded.
"He's not just Kairo anymore," Halden said softly. "He's what we made—without the leash."
Rilla began to hyperventilate. She backed toward the wall, knocking over a chair. "I'm not on the list. I—I had limited access. You can remove me. You can—"
A sharp sound cracked through the air.
A single click.
They turned to Frell.
He was holding a sidearm. Compact. Silent. Issued for emergencies.
His mouth was tight. Eyes empty.
"I won't run," he said quietly. "He'll find us anyway. I saw what he did to Captain Voss, There was nothing left to bury."
Rilla opened her mouth, one hand raised.
"Wait—"
Too late.
The gun barked once.
A thin spray of blood painted the wall behind him. Frell dropped, a twitching sack of meat, jaw hanging loose.
Silence.
Halden didn't flinch.
He watched Frell's body collapse with the same curiosity one might watch a rusted pipe burst.
Then he turned back to the console and keyed in a final override.
ACTIVATE: CODE BLACK
INITIATE FULL PURGE OF PROJECT PARAGON DATABASE
TRACE INFECTION PATH: KAIRO-7
He leaned forward, and whispered to the system,
"Let's see what you've become."
And miles away, in that rotting outpost in the sand, Kairo opened his eyes.
As if he'd heard them.
As if he knew.