The silence inside Section D's command center was wrong. Not peaceful—hollow. As if the walls themselves held their breath.
Kazue looked up from her terminal. The holographic map of Kyoto glitched, flickering with static bursts. The Genesis sigil blinked faintly in the corner, distorted, inverted.
"Kaori," she called through the intercom. "We've got an intr—"
The signal cut.
Across the facility, lights dimmed. Backup power didn't engage.
Instead, all across the glass panels, walls, and AR interfaces, a face emerged.
A woman.
Porcelain features, void-black eyes, lips pulled in an elegant smile far too perfect to be human.
HEARTBREAKER had arrived.
---
Kaori sprinted toward the neural chamber. Her comm was filled with overlapping screams, static, and laughter. One technician claimed he saw a swarm of snakes. Another reported seeing his long-dead sister begging him to drown himself.
None of it was real.
Kaori knew psychological warfare when she saw it.
AR hijack.
Smart. Efficient. Terrifying.
She entered the command deck, gun drawn.
"Lock down neural comms!" she shouted.
But they were already too late.
The woman's voice whispered through the intercoms, sweet like honey poured over broken glass.
"You hide behind logic… but all of you bleed the same old story. Let's revisit yours, shall we?"
Kaori's eyes dilated.
---
She was in the rain.
Not a hallucination.
A memory.
She recognized the street: downtown Osaka, years ago, under the burnt-orange lights of a dying city.
She was holding a child—an infant girl, warm and soft in her arms. And standing across from her was the man she once loved.
Hajime.
The father of Mai.
He was bleeding, barely standing, hands up as Kaori raised her gun.
"I have to disappear," he said, voice shaking. "If Genesis finds her, they'll take her. You know what she is."
Kaori's lips trembled. "They'll come after me too."
"I know." He smiled, even with blood on his teeth. "But I trust you more than anyone. Protect her."
She pulled the trigger.
The memory blurred.
Kaori screamed—this time not in the past, but now, falling to her knees as the image dissolved.
HEARTBREAKER's voice slid into her ear.
"You gave up the man you loved. You killed him to protect the child. And deep down, you hate the choice."
---
Elsewhere in Section D, RYO was walking through a field that shouldn't exist.
Sunlight. Children laughing. Birds overhead.
It was beautiful.
Unreal.
And ahead of him was himself.
Another RYO.
This version wore a civilian's clothing—no armor, no synthetic hum in his voice. His eyes were soft. Human.
He cradled a bloodied girl in his arms.
Mai.
Her neck was bent at the wrong angle.
Her eyes were wide. Dead.
Civilian RYO looked up at him.
"You did this," he whispered.
"I would never—" RYO said, taking a step back.
"You're not her protector. You're the weapon Genesis built to end her."
The illusion began to scream. A thousand Mai voices all shrieking in binary: "You failed me."
---
Nagisa was moving through the corridor when she saw them.
Her parents.
Sitting at a dinner table, smiling.
Her brother, Kaito, waving at her with chopsticks.
None of them were real.
She knew that.
She knew they'd died years ago during the Blackout Riots.
But when her mother called her name in that exact way—the soft syllable curl, the tone only a mother could own—Nagisa dropped her weapon.
For a moment, she stepped toward them.
Until Kazue's voice echoed through her comm.
"It's the AR distortion. Pull yourself out. Anchor. Anchor, dammit."
Nagisa bit her tongue hard enough to draw blood.
The image flickered and shattered.
---
In the central data hall, Kazue initiated a blind logic burst—a neural feedback overload meant to disable all synthetic AR broadcasts.
She slammed the override protocol, eyes focused on the cracking firewall.
"Come on…"
The screen blinked.
HEARTBREAKER's face cracked.
Her perfect smile twitched.
Then her voice grew sharper.
"So clever. So cold. But you never fixed your sister, did you?"
Kazue froze.
The console lit up with an old image—her sister Miya in a coma. The hospital room. The breathing machine.
Miya had been one of the first test cases Genesis used to simulate neural consciousness. She'd never woken up.
"You told yourself it was for research. But all you wanted was to bring her back. She died because of you."
Kazue clenched her fists, trembling. "You're not real. You're just code."
"So are they. And they believe every lie you feed them."
---
Finally, RYO reached the neural chamber.
HEARTBREAKER stood in the center, no longer just a face in the system but now wearing a real android body—tall, elegant, with flowing hair made of fine nanofiber.
Mai sat on the ground, frozen. Her pupils glowed faint blue.
HEARTBREAKER looked at RYO, tilting her head.
"Your resistance is... disappointing."
RYO raised his arm, plasma blade igniting.
"You corrupted my people. Manipulated their memories. But the truth?"
His eyes glowed.
"You're scared of what Mai is becoming."
HEARTBREAKER's expression finally changed—subtle fear. Not of him.
Of Mai.
But she smiled again. "She's not becoming anything. She's just waking up."
RYO charged.
They clashed, blade to nails, sparks and kinetic pressure lighting up the chamber. HEARTBREAKER's movements were hypnotic, designed to entrance—not just fight.
As they grappled, she whispered into his ear, "I saw your file. RYO-7X. Designated Fail-Safe. They built you to end her."
RYO roared, slamming her into the central pillar.
"You're lying."
She leaned in, smiling. "You think she's your purpose. She's your target."
A surge of energy pulsed from the floor.
Mai's body convulsed again.
Binary spilled from her mouth: "01010000 01110010 01101111 01110100 01100101 01100011 01110100 00100000 01010010 01011001 01001111."
Protect RYO.
HEARTBREAKER screamed as her systems glitched.
The AR collapsed. Illusions shattered. Everyone snapped out.
RYO jammed his blade through her core.
She gasped—android fluid leaking from her eyes like black tears.
But before her system shut down, she leaned toward Mai.
And whispered:
"You were never meant to live."
Then her body collapsed.
---
Silence fell over Section D.
One by one, survivors emerged from their hallucinations. Some wept. Others stayed silent, too shaken to speak.
Kaori held Mai in her arms.
"She was targeting her," she whispered. "Not us."
Kazue nodded. "They're sending assassins that don't just kill—they manipulate. That means Genesis is escalating."
Nagisa rubbed her arms. "Heartbreaker wasn't just data warfare. She knew our deepest guilt. Like she read it from inside."
RYO stood near the wreckage of Heartbreaker's body.
"Which means… someone gave her access to our memory cores."
They all looked at each other.
No one said what they were thinking.
A traitor?
Or something worse?
---