Directive Override
The pressure groaned through the Dome like the lungs of a dying god. Metal ribs flexed, glass veins hummed, and somewhere in the distance alarms keened in uneven bursts. Jackie knelt by the outer airlock, coolant mist pooling around her boots, one hand braced against the hatch as diagnostic code scrolled in the right corner of her vision.
"Seal integrity at eighty-seven percent," Lyra's voice crackled through comms. "You open that lock now, the whole bay's going to feel it."
Jackie's right arm smoothly transformed, the servos hissing, her attention elsewhere as if the action was now a norm, six months of training a one mission had her feeling too much the pro.
The barrel of her cannon extended from the elbow joint, her entire right arm gleamed beneath emergency strobes. "If I don't open it," she said, her voice steady but strained, "the Leviathan finishes the job for us."
The Dome shuddered again. She closed her eyes and thought about her family, she had just spoken to them and said everything was okay. She thought about how she had only trained to repair hydraulic systems and yet she was steadily enter new levels of danger.
Her eyes snapped open. It was not a duty, or some arbitrary commitment, it was a choice.
Outside, through reinforced glass, a vast shadow drifted—something too big to name, blue bioluminescence ran the length of its body like veins of precious ore. Its movements disturbed the deep, sending waves of particulate light over the Dome's surface like auroras turned liquid.
Lyra cursed. "I told you—Nexus knew the Subaquilus Ore was destabilizing the wildlife. That thing isn't just an animal anymore."
"I know." Jackie locked the airlock's manual release. The gears engaged with a growl. "That's why I'm going out."
Aiden's voice cut in, thick with fear and concern. "Jackie, you don't even have full clearance gear—"
"I don't need it, I came down the pillars remember? My cybernetic suit is special."
She stepped through.
Pressure slammed against her suit. Sensors within her suit reacted, compensating for the rapid shift in pressure? There was hissing along her spine, as nanite channels ignited within it to protect her human delicacy against the nature of the deep. The water was ink, heavy and alive. The Leviathan loomed beneath her, a cathedral of motion—odd mirrored plating, veins of phosphor, and luminance pulsing under translucent armor. Her ocular implant sharpened the image, outlining heat signatures and electromagnetic interference. Beneath the organic mass, another pattern flickered—circuits. The thing was laced with tech.
"Biomech hybrid," she whispered. "Nexus built it, or broke it."
BDJ whispered into her neural net: Unidentified psycho-reactive field detected. Neural firewall destabilizing.
Her vision spasmed, fragmenting into glyphs. Pain speared behind her eye, bright as lightning. The cannon locked into charging cycle on its own, a whine that vibrated in her jawbone. Jackie bit down on a scream, her jaw clinching tight as the data flood hit.
She felt white hot pain as lines of cybernetics unfurled and attached to her optic nerve. Her optic implant growing, taking over what was left of her right optic nerve.
The Leviathan turned. Its eye—a vast orb of light—dilated toward her. Jackie aimed, her targeting HUD flickered, her optical implant whirled, calculated, and recalibrated, and for a moment she saw everything.
The red letters were clear as crystal as the ran across her HUD
:NEXUS DIRECTIVE ASSET-LEVIATHAN 6A – ASSET in stage 8 of development, still lacks full control, but has shown signs of compliance and has a increased chance for taming.
She blinked as BDJ calmly spoke: 78.49% Nexus Asset has been negatively affected by Subaquilus Ore in a research setting. Current course of action still has a success rate of 98.23%.
She fired.
The beam ripped through the water, ultraviolet and silent. It struck a ridge of the creature's plating, dispersing into a corona of refracted light. The Leviathan roared—not a sound but a vibration that thrummed through the Dome's bones—and veered away, spiraling toward the abyss Its huge tail sweeping into the nearby rock bed, a massive crater falling open like a sinkhole into a new world. The psychic pressure eased.
Jackie drifted, gasping against her comms. "Lyra. The Leviathan's redirecting."
Static. Then Lyra's shaky breath. "We see it. Aiden says it has opened one of the side tunnels to the mine."
"What are Tally's readings saying?"
"She agrees"
Jackie's optical implant whirled as her cybernetic eye focused in on the new creator. BDJ into neural net:
>No life detected within the perimeter of the breach and none detected for over a 100 feet. Probability that this is an abandoned side tunnel is at 86.98%.
Jackie nodded. "Lyra I am going in. I need to see, for myself, exactly what Nexus is up to."
"Wait." Lyra's voice sharpened. "Jackie, don't go in alone."
"I have to. I have to know. I will keep channels open."
She turned toward the dark shaft below, thrusters igniting in short bursts.
Miles away, in a control chamber webbed with holographic feeds, Orion watched her descent. Her vitals, the live telemetry, the system deviation curves—all of it spiked across his monitor in a storm of red. He touched the comm bead at his temple. "Control, this is Orion. Asset has evolved again, and continues to evade full remote diagnostic readouts. She's a risk, officially beyond safe parameters. Permission to eliminate."
A calm synthetic voice answered, filtered through encryption. "Permission not granted, Orion. Asset Jackie-Blue Diamond remains under observation. Reign it in."
He exhaled slowly. "You don't understand. If she continues, she will become an anomaly beyond our control. Everything I—" He stopped himself. "Acknowledged." He cut the line manually, the click sharp in his ear.
His reflection ghosted in the dark glass—eyes blank, as if his soul was lost when he lost his body, jaw tight. "They didn't see her reaction, they didn't see how quickly and smoothly she adapts to each change. She is already too powerful."
He moved. The chamber's door hissed open. Orion stepped into the transit tunnel, suit sealing with a whisper. He would take care of this himself.
---
Jackie descended through the shaft. The rock face was lined with veins of luminous ore, pulsing like a heartbeat. Her sensors whispered telemetry: heat gradients, seismic rhythms, something like whispers in the electromagnetic band. The airlock below opened into a cavern carved by drills and time. Machinery rusted beside glowing stone.
BDJ calmly spoke:> New network detected. Access potential: 93%.
Her ocular implant hummed, data blooming across her sight in fractal threads. The mine wasn't just a dig site—it was a conduit. Energy shimmered through the veins, connecting to deeper systems. She reached toward it with her left hand and felt static dance across her palm, tiny bites of electricity, pricking her skin as if it was shaking her hand, acknowledging her existence.
"Lyra," she said, voice quiet. "I found something... It's the ore.... It's alive."
"Alive?" Lyra repeated. "Jackie, what are you talking about?"
"Something Nexus never logged. I can feel it calling through the ore. It's—wait." Her sensors flared, her 360° visual arc flared to life. Her optic implant tracked the upper levels of the chamber, a lattice layer over the rock, a figure detected moving through the motion sensory web. She sighed "Seems I have company. Orion's here."
His familiar cybernetic signature scrolled across the bottom left corner of her vision.
"What?" Lyra's shout came ragged. "Jackie, wait, wait! Don't go further!"
"I have to. I have to. I need to understand what is happening here. This is bigger than Subaquilus One Lyra, this is about our world. How can I walk away?"
Her pulse synced with the hum of the ore. The floor beneath her shimmered, opening like an iris. Light spilled upward, swallowing her silhouette as she stepped inside.
Orion dropped into the shaft, his cybernetic body hissing as it adjusted to the impact, the sound of his synthetic lungs the only other noise in the shaft. His eyes locked on the glowing trail she left behind. His HUD tracked her vitals one last time before the signal vanished into static.
"She's gone underground," he said to no one at all, a strange resolve setting within him "It ends here."