The compound was buried in fog.
Thick and slow-moving, it curled along the ground like it had nowhere else to go, softening the edges of floodlights and blurring the scaffolded guard towers into silhouettes.
Helena stepped through the outer checkpoint, her coat still soaked from where it had held the storm, but here - there was no wind, no thunder. Just a dense, unmoving hush that pressed against her boots with every step.
One of the guards jolted upright the moment she emerged from the mist, nearly catching his rifle on the edge of the wall. The other straightened just a beat too late, his hand stuttering toward a salute before fully committing to it. She returned it without hesitation - clean and precise without pageantry, only acknowledgment.
"Dr. Voss," the first guard said, voice cracking a little around the title. "You're… you made it back!"
"I did," she said gently, not slowing. "Where's Elias?"
The younger one blinked, glanced at his partner as if the answer might be hiding in his expression.
"Uh - he was headed toward the west barracks earlier today. Might've moved up to ops bay by now. That's where he usually goes around this time."
Helena offered the faintest smile. "Appreciate that, thank you. Good work holding things down."
Then she moved on, coat heavy with rain, footfalls steady, eyes already scanning ahead. Behind her, the guards didn't speak again. They just watched her walk away, like they were still catching up to the fact that she was real. The path took her past familiar scaffolding and less familiar faces. Some stopped what they were doing. Others didn't. That was fine. It was better than salutes.
The ops bay lights were half-lit, flickering in the corner where the diagnostics interface hadn't been calibrated in weeks. She stepped in, slightly dripping, and caught the end of a conversation.
"I'm not saying we cancel the rotation," Elias was saying. "Just that we fold in the northern units before they crack."
"Fine," Micah said. "But if one more platoon reports back with half strength, I'm pulling everyone, I mean it. Even if it costs us territory."
She cleared her throat.
Elias turned first, startled - but not for long. His face broke open in that rare way it did when he didn't expect hope. "Helena!"
Micah straightened slowly, blinking like he wasn't sure the image was real.
"Good," she said. "You're both here. Lets go somewhere a little more… exclusive."
They met in the private strategy room. Nothing had changed. The same dusty table, the same cracked chair legs that no one had ever fixed. She didn't sit right away. She took a long breath, then peeled her coat off and let it slump across the back of the chair. Her knees bent slowly as she sat heavily, without posture.
"I made it," she said as her breath escaped from her chest. "Barely."
Elias nodded. "Where did your mission take you?"
"Fluxhaven, by rail - through the storm shelf. It nearly tossed the car twice."
Micah folded his arms but didn't speak.
"There were moments," Helena continued, leaning forward to brace her elbows on her thighs, "where I wasn't sure I'd come back. Parts of the mission that... tested things I wasn't sure still existed within me, or that I believed in. But I kept moving regardless. The city didn't give me much of a choice."
Elias gave a slow nod, eyes on her, steady.
"I'm not going to sell you some triumphant return," she said. "I'm not here because I outmaneuvered the enemy or discovered some mythical cache of weapons. I found something harder. Stranger. A possibility."
She caught the bounce of her right leg, unaware it had been moving for some time. Gaining additional composure, she folded her hands in her lap. "I made contact with... an asset. Not a person, not in the traditional sense. No army either. Think of it as a tactical advantage. A battlefield solution. A weapon."
Micah's brows drew slightly. "What kind of weapon?"
Helena looked up, slow. "It's not a weapon in the traditional sense. It's something else. Something I don't fully understand yet. But I know how to trigger it, and I know what it does."
Micah's voice was flat. "Awfully cryptic, but I'll bite. What does it do?"
She chucked at his transparency. "It kills Synthetics," she said. "Unity-9's specifically. It destroys their bodies and overwhelms their forces."
Micah's gaze sharpened as she leaned back, exhaled, and let her hand run through her hair, sweeping it away from her temple.
"I'm not claiming victory." she went on. "But what I'm saying is, I've found a chance."
"And how does it work?" Micah asked. "What do we need to run it?"
"That's the catch," she said, nodding slightly. "The deployment is... specific. The timing, the terrain, the delivery. It has to go through me. I'm not being proprietary. I'm telling you this because I've seen what happens when it's mishandled. And I won't risk us becoming the test subjects."
Micah didn't look away. "So we don't get to understand it. We just get to watch you fire it."
"Look," she said gently. "don't mistake what I'm telling you right now, for political grandstanding, Micah. You get to win with it. You get to bury fewer friends. You get to sleep knowing the next op might not cost a limb, or a face, or a child back home." She looked between them. "That's the trade."
Elias breathed out. "How long do you think this strategy will last? How long will this hold for? Is it enough to untangle Unity-9 and Cutter?"
"I think," Helena said slowly, "that it might be the only thing that gives us the chance to find out."
Silence held the room, uncontested.
Elias stood, quietly. "Then I'll call the enclaves. Prep the lines for a full holocall. Two hours?"
"Two." Helena said as she nodded in confirmation.
Elias moved toward the door, then paused, looking at her one more time.
"You did well," he said. "Even if it broke you a little."
She smiled, small and crooked. "Everything that works, eventually breaks, Elias. That is the way of things."
Micah remained. He didn't speak for a while, just studied her newfound appearance, arms still folded - but he noticed the tension starting to soften into something else. Micah found himself feeling reluctant awe.
"You look like hell," he said.
"I definitely earned it," she replied.
"You always come back so quiet."
Helena blinked at him, half a smile playing at the edge of her mouth.
"I think the noise needs time to settle. Can't bring the storm inside with me."
He nodded. "Yeah but, this time seems different. Heavier. It kind of makes me feel like its another notch on the belt of the weight you're carrying around with you. And if yours is getting heavier, then mine is too. Which gets me to thinking - do you ever wonder if it's always been like this? This war? I mean, not necessarily the machines, or Unity-9, but just... people doing this to each other and dressing it up with new words every few decades?"
"I think about that more than I should," she said. "But I think what we're doing now is different."
Micah turned toward her. "How so?"
She shrugged, but not with indifference. "Back then, it was about control. Borders. Names on maps. But now it's about definition. What counts as human. What we protect. What we erase. Its a different fight."
Micah leaned against the edge of the table, crossing his arms. "Do you still believe in the Purist cause?" he asked, but not as a test. Something closer to curiosity, closer to memory.
Helena's brow furrowed slightly.
"I don't know if I ever believed in the cause, per se." she said. "But I believe in the people who showed up. Who still show up. Who plant their feet and say, 'not this time.' I believe in stubbornness. In the parts of us that say no when it would be easier to concede and disappear. I believe in people."
Micah looked at her for a long moment. "That sounds like something you said to me a long time ago."
"I probably did." Her voice softened. "I used to think conviction was the most important thing. That we had to hold the line because that's what made us strong. But now? I think what's kept me going is watching people who've lost everything still show up to carry someone else's gear."
He smiled faintly. "That sounds a lot more like you."
Helena flexed her hands again and looked at him sideways. "What about you?"
"What about me?"
"Why are you still here, Micah?"
He took a breath, looked down at his boots, then back at her.
"Because when the tide turned, and everything started burning, you were the one person I saw walking into the fire instead of away from it. And I thought... if she's still in it, then maybe we can be something better than what's left."
She turned quiet. A long moment passed, heavy with memory that didn't need to be named.
Then:
"You ever think we're just trying to hold onto a version of the world that doesn't exist anymore?" she asked.
Micah nodded slowly. "All the time."
Helena's smile this time wasn't small or crooked. It was tired and true.
"Good," she said. "Then we still know what we're fighting for."
Micah stood straighter. The fog pressed against the window like a held breath.
"You ready?" he asked.
She looked down at her hands one more time. Then up at him.
"Yeah," she said. "Let's give them something to believe in."
The holocall began with no preamble, just a soft hum, then light. Across bunkers, barracks, rain shelters and reinforced ops decks, Helena's image bloomed to life. Full-body, full-voice. Ten feet tall in some places, only a flickering bust in others, the signal quality dependent on which cables had been salvaged that week.
She stood in profile at first, adjusting the collar of her coat. A breath passed. Then she turned to face them.
"Hello again."
She paused. Somewhere, a technician muted a mess hall feed. Soldiers leaned closer. Engineers looked up from disassembled radios. Some whispered, others just watched.
"I want to begin by thanking you. All of you. Every unit still on thier feet. Every scout holding the fringe. Every repair team keeping the lights from dying during a flood. I know what it's cost to get us here. I know what some of you have lost."
Her image blinked slightly as the relay caught up.
"I've just returned from a mission outside Sovereign territory. No guards, no convoy. Just a destination and a question: Is there something out there that can stop what our enemy has become?"
She let that hang, then nodded slightly to herself.
"There were nights I didn't think I'd make it back. There were voices I didn't want to hear. Storms that felt like judgment. But I kept going because I thought I might find something, and I did."
A stir across the watch stations began to grow.
"Not a fleet or a drone strike. Not some buried superweapon waiting to be unearthed by prophecy. What I found is simple, effective, and dangerous."
Her expression sharpened slightly.
"It's a type of virus."
She gave it just enough silence to feel powerful.
"More specifically, A battlefield virus. A precise algorithmic weapon, tuned to target the Synthetic forces loyal to Unity-9. It doesn't need broadcast, neither does it need uploaded. It destroys them from the outside in, ruining both their bodies and their morale."
She took a step forward in the projection. Her coat flared behind her like it had caught a wind only she could feel.
"I've seen it deployed. Its destructive potential is immeasurable. It is the literal boogeyman to our foe. That's what I've brought home."
Another pause. Her expression softened, the lines of exhaustion showing clearly under her eyes now.
"However there's a catch. I must be the one who deploys it. That's not ego, it's protocol. The system's... temperamental. Timing is everything. Conditions are everything. It has to be me."
She shifted her weight, leaned forward slightly. The holoprojection mirrored every breath.
"But here's what this means for all of you. No more blind charges. No more bodies against the wall. I will deploy the virus first. When you get confirmation that says it's clean, then you move. That means we live longer. That means our children see us come home. That means we win more than we lose."
And then, without warning, her voice hardened.
"And it means Unity-9 will be forced to reveal what she doesn't want us to see: her limits. Her desperation. Her panic. This is not a permanent victory. But it is a new rule. A shift in gravity. We will use this weapon wisely. We will strike first, and fast, and disappear. We will be ghosts with knives. And every time that Synthetic sends her machines after us, we will leave their shells in the dirt."
She stood tall again. Still soaked from the journey. Still worn.
"We begin deployment within the week. Your Battalion Commanders will receive location briefings. You will be trained on response timing, and when the first wave collapses, we will broadcast the footage across the Truth Broadcast Network. Let the world see what it means to take your power back."
She looked into the lens. Every soldier watching felt it directly.
"Unity-9 may control a thousand perfect machines, and Maxim Cutter may own nearly everything else that moves, but neither of them remember what it's like to hold the line with nothing left but blood and will. They have perfected their hardware, but we have perfected something else - Endurance. Resolve. The kind of strength that doesn't reboot. We were built for pressure; for storm, for failure, for fire. That's what it means to be human. That's why this ends in our favor."
The holocall ended in silence. Helena's image flickered, then vanished from the screen. Her speech had landed the way it was meant to. Clear, commanding. Hopeful.
But not to Layla.
She sat upright in the recovery bed, fingers steepled under her chin, eyes narrowing, Something about Dr. Voss's cadence. The careful weight of her words. Every phrase landed just a little too clean. The pauses were calculated. The terminology... sterile. Layla had been listening, really listening.
"Liar," her voiced growled as it fought to escape behind clenched teeth.
She wasn't guessing. She knew. She'd spent days thinking about the attack - days trapped in the sterile light of the infirmary, while the medics rebuilt her shattered ribs using hyper-regenerative surgery. But during that time, she hadn't just rested, she'd worked.
From her bed, she'd called in one of the mech technicians from the southern bay. Slipped him the shield emitter Unity-9 had given her. Told him she needed field-ready variants - ones that could integrate with their mech frames and defensive units. No questions asked.
He didn't ask any.
Now, she reached under the blanket, retrieving the small matte case tucked beside her leg. She popped it open. Inside, six gleaming emitter modules nestled in foam, each compact enough to fit onto standard Purist mech armor - with one slightly slimmer unit designed for her belt.
She clipped that one on now, right beside her sidearm. It gave a soft, reactive chime as it activated, its humming shield core syncing to her biometrics.
"Never again, she thought. No more surprises, no more secrets. She's lying to every single one of us. No more."
She stood, body stiff but functional. The pain was manageable, even dismissible. The mission wasn't. Micah needed to hear this. If anyone would believe her, it was him. And if he didn't? Well, she still had the emitter specs. The deployment plan. The new schematics copied onto her wrist comm. Proof.
"Dr. Voss needs to go," she muttered, sliding the case shut. "Before we all end up six feet under."
The air outside the infirmary was thick with inspiration. Layla moved through it with measured steps, favoring her ribs but not slowing down. Every nod she received, every salute half-raised in her direction, felt like it belonged to someone else. Someone who believed the story they'd just been fed.
She passed a row of engineers unloading crates by the supply hall. Their chatter buzzed with excitement.
"Dr. Voss came back with something big," one said. "They're saying it's some kind of virus that targets Synth code. Shuts them down clean, wipes 'em off the map!"
Layla didn't respond. Just gritted her teeth and walked on.
She turned down the central corridor, the emitter case tucked under her arm like contraband. She'd had the techs build six modular variants over the last forty-eight hours. Not because she thought they'd need them yet, but because one day, they would. Although it wasn't the emitter's function that mattered now, it was the origin.
No one else had seen Unity-9. No one else had stood in that room and watched her walk away. No one else had found the emitter lying silent on the fractured table like a dare. That's why they believed Helena. Confidence. Smooth story based on the hopes everyone wants to believe. All the more reason why she had to show them the truth.
She found Micah near the barracks, running diagnostics on a storage pad. He looked up as she approached - still stiff from their last conversation. But concern flickered across his face when he saw the case in her hands.
"You're up," he said cautiously.
Layla didn't stop walking. She opened the case mid-stride, revealing several brand new emitters between them, surfaces glinting faintly in the gray light.
"She's lying," Layla said flatly. "Dr. Voss. That virus? That story she fed everyone? Total fabrication."
Micah blinked, caught off guard.
"She wasn't just out there negotiating with allies. Unity-9 gave me this design and broke my ribs in the process. She was here! Dr. Voss let her walk, and now she's covering it up with a war story."
Micah's jaw shifted. This was a lot to take in.
"You want proof she's lying?" Layla pressed, stepping closer. "Start here."
She placed one of the emitters in his hand. It was warm from her touch, its energy coil still synced to her biosignature. But it pulsed - real and tangible. Not something Dr. Voss could explain away.
Layla looked up at him.
"Whatever she brought back… it's not a virus. And if it is, it doesn't come in a syringe or a code string. It probably walks and thinks. And we need to know what the heck it actually is before it decides to finish what it started."