When the last Cerberus collapsed onto the oil- and blood-soaked floor — reduced to a smoking heap of twisted metal and shattered ceramic — Astra slowly turned toward Lyra.
Her eyes still burned with deep violet light. Her pupils remained vertical slits.
Fingers on her right hand twitched uncontrollably, as if remnants of a foreign force still refused to leave her body. The air around her shimmered faintly, reality itself struggling to adjust to her presence.
"How… do you know… its name?" Astra asked.
Her voice sounded like rust scraping glass — layered, distorted, carrying the low vibrating echo of Thanatos beneath it.
Lyra did not step back.
She walked straight up to her.
Calm. Unflinching.
In her hand appeared a compact medical device — scratched, worn, powered by a flickering emerald crystal. Without hesitation, she pressed its cold tip against Astra's neck, just below the jaw.
"Because I'm the one who was supposed to dispose of you in the incubation stage, Astra," Lyra said quietly but firmly. "Twenty-three years ago. I was a junior geneticist in Project Clean Code. Your DNA was flagged as a zero-level anomaly back then. I was supposed to press the button."
She paused.
"Instead… I swapped the samples and sent you to the lower sectors. And I chose a life on the run."
The device emitted a sharp, high-frequency beep. The emerald crystal flared brighter.
Astra felt a cold wave rush through her spine — then upward into her skull.
The violet glow in her eyes began to fade, as if someone was dimming a light inside her brain. Her vertical pupils trembled… and slowly returned closer to human shape.
Her knees weakened.
The world tilted.
She would have collapsed face-first into oil and debris if Kai hadn't rushed forward to catch her.
His prosthetic leg screeched under the strain, but he held her.
"Hey… stay with me," he whispered, voice shaking.
Lyra was already moving — collecting stasis capsules, checking her rifle, slinging a small pack over her shoulder.
"The Corporation just lost an entire Cerberus elite unit," she said without turning. "That's not a minor cleanup anymore. That means in ten, maybe twelve minutes, this sector will be hit with a full purge."
"No more troops. No more drones."
"They'll drop the ceiling."
"Plasma bombs. gravitational collapse charges. neutron-level sterilizers. Anything to erase the entire district and label it an 'environmental failure.'"
Astra forced herself back to awareness.
Her head still spun, her body felt чужим — foreign, heavy, disconnected — but every word Lyra spoke resonated inside her like recognition.
As if she had always known someone would eventually choose to let her live.
"We need to go underground," Astra rasped, looking at Kai. "Deep under the city. Where cables become roots… and code forgets its rules."
Kai flinched.
His face went even paler.
"The Labyrinth?" he whispered. "Nobody survives there more than a month. It's full of… code errors. Mutants even the System couldn't erase. Ghost protocols that still think they're human…"
"Then that's exactly where we go," Lyra cut in, snapping her last pouch shut.
"We are the biggest system error in existence. The loudest one. The most dangerous one."
"And if we want to live long enough to change anything… we go where even the Dead Moon loses signal."
Above them, sirens began to howl.
Low. Heavy. Bone-deep.
The artificial "Sky" of Sector 01 shifted into a deep crimson state.
Total purge protocol.
Holographic panels repeated the same message over and over:
WARNING. OMEGA-LEVEL THREAT. ALL CITIZENS MUST EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY. NON-COMPLIANCE CONSTITUTES TREASON.
Lyra tilted her head, listening.
"Time's up," she said. "Move. I've got an old service shaft elevator three blocks from here. It bypasses all official levels. If we're lucky, it drops us right into the edge of the Labyrinth."
Astra straightened, leaning on Kai's shoulder.
Weakness still clung to her body… but deep inside her chest, something cold and hungry stirred again.
Thanatos hadn't left.
It had simply gone quiet.
Waiting.
She looked at Lyra for a long moment.
"You saved us today," Astra said slowly. "But if you ever stick that thing in my neck again without warning… I can't promise I'll be able to stop him."
Lyra smirked, slinging her rifle over her shoulder.
"Fair enough."
"Now move, spark. The hunt has officially begun."
"And this time… they'll burn everything just to reach you."
The three fugitives ran into the darkness of the side tunnel.
Behind them, the crimson glow of the Sky grew brighter.
And the sirens grew louder.
The System was no longer performing a cleanup.
It was declaring war.