The hallway shook with the weight of Prototype Eleven's steps.
Daniel wiped the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, raised the pistol with trembling hands, and fired again.
Bang.
The bullet pinged off Eleven's skull, barely slowing it.
"Of course," Daniel muttered hoarsely.
"Why would anything be easy today?"
Ten grabbed Mara's arm, trying to pull her back toward the coolant pipes.
"Mara, your ribs—you're bleeding—"
"I'll survive," Mara whispered, though every inhale felt like fire slicing through her side.
Eleven scanned them with its fractured, multi-lens gaze. Its chest expanded with a grotesque mechanical hiss, flexing tendrils of carbon muscle around exposed metal bones.
Then—it charged.
The floor thundered.
Daniel dove aside, rolling into a skid. Mara grabbed Ten and pulled her behind a wall of fallen conduit pipes as Eleven's bulk smashed into the corridor.
Sparks rained.
The ceiling cracked.
A ventilation unit crashed to the floor, spraying dust.
Daniel fired two more shots, but Eleven deflected them with its jagged forearm like swatting away flies.
"It's adapting!" Ten cried.
"It learns how we move!"
"Then we need to surprise it," Mara said.
Her voice was shaking—but steady enough.
Eleven lunged toward Daniel.
Daniel tried to sidestep—
Too slow.
Its clawed arm slammed him against the wall.
He coughed blood, vision swimming.
But instead of panicking, Daniel gritted his teeth, pressed the barrel of the gun under Eleven's plating, and fired point blank.
The bullet embedded deep.
Eleven recoiled, screeching in a metallic hiss of pain.
Daniel collapsed to the floor, gasping.
Ten darted forward, lifting her small hands—
"Ten—NO!" Mara shouted.
Too late.
A burst of energy exploded outward from her palms.
Raw.
Uncontrolled.
Terrified.
It slammed into Eleven—
and the creature froze mid-step, trembling violently as the electrical charge overloaded part of its nervous structure.
"Ten—behind me!" Mara ordered.
But Ten was breathing fast—too fast—her eyes glowing brightly.
"I—I can't stop it—" she gasped, clutching her head.
Eleven recovered with a horrific contortion, its spine snapping back into place. It shifted its weight—
And sprinted straight at Ten.
Mara leapt in front of her.
The air around Mara crackled.
Her fingers tingled.
Her vision blurred with white static.
And then—
Mara unleashed everything.
A burst of energy exploded from her in a ring, slamming Eleven backward into the far wall so hard that the metal caved.
The sound echoed like thunder.
Daniel stared, stunned.
"Mara… What the hell are you?"
Mara's breath came in ragged gasps.
"I wish I knew."
Ten took her hand.
"Mara… your glow. It's the same as Evel—"
The lights overhead flickered violently, interrupting her.
A voice cut through the speakers.
Cold.
Controlled.
Too familiar.
"Mara."
Voss.
Mara's blood ran cold.
"Stop resisting."
Every screen in the hallway flickered to life, showing Voss's face.
Behind her, glowing blue, were rows of encrypted files.
Files labeled:
EVELYN-0
MARA-1
TEN-3
ELEVEN (OBSOLETE)
Voss's eyes locked with the camera.
"Evelyn didn't create you to replace her," Voss said.
"She created you to correct her mistakes."
Mara clenched her fists.
"What mistakes?"
Voss tapped the console.
A file opened on every screen.
A heartbeat monitor.
A woman's voice.
Weak.
Broken.
"—if I die before the project is complete, promise me the girls will have a chance. They… they're not copies. They're my attempts to fix what went wrong with me."
Evelyn.
Mara's pulse stopped.
Ten covered her mouth with her hands, eyes filling with tears.
Daniel stared at the screens, lost.
But Voss wasn't finished.
"Evelyn couldn't survive the neurological degeneration," Voss said.
"So she built you to live without it."
Mara's heart twisted.
Pain.
Hope.
Horror.
"She never intended you to escape," Voss continued.
"She intended you to adapt."
The screens went black.
A new alarm began to blare.
"Protocol Ascension initiated."
"Prototype Eleven status: EVOLUTION TRIGGERED."
Mara snapped her head toward the far wall.
Eleven—
still embedded in the dented metal—
began to rise.
Slowly.
Unsteadily.
Then—
With a horrific cracking sound, it shed its damaged outer shell like a husk.
Underneath, something new writhed to life.
Sleeker.
Faster.
More human.
More monstrous.
Its eyes opened—
glowing the same color as Mara's.
Ten's voice trembled.
"Mara… it copied YOU."
Daniel's face drained of color.
"Mara—run."
But Mara didn't move.
She stared into Eleven's new eyes, which mirrored hers far too perfectly.
And she whispered:
"Come on, then."
The creature lunged.