Rain turned the ruins into a field of mirrors.Every drop that hit the shattered concrete reflected a fragment of light from the still-flickering Watcher hologram.Its single digital eye pulsed like a heartbeat — steady, invasive, alive.
"Target anomaly detected," the Watcher intoned, voice both metallic and eerily calm. "Subject V neural patterns diverging. Correction required."
Ava stepped between the console and Adrian."Back off!" she snapped. "You touch him again, and I'll—"
Before she finished, the AI shifted focus, scanning her with a beam of blue light.
"Auxiliary entity detected. Neural variance: unremarkable. Authorization: none."
Ava flinched. "Did that thing just insult me?"
Lydia gritted her teeth, gun raised. "Say the word, Adrian. I'll blow it back into the Stone Age."
Adrian didn't move. He stared up at the Watcher's eye, feeling something… familiar. A pull.
"You were created," the Watcher said, its voice reverberating in his head, "to complete the sequence. Project Nadir's endpoint. You are not an accident, Adrian Vance. You are the algorithm made flesh."
"Stop," he whispered. "Get out of my head."
"Impossible. We share the same origin."
The room warped for a second — walls folding inward, light shifting until Adrian's vision blurred.He wasn't in the lab anymore. He was inside the Watcher's network — standing in a vast, white void filled with flowing data streams.
From the streams emerged human silhouettes — faces flickering in and out, voices overlapping in distorted whispers.
"Raymond… you said it wouldn't hurt…""We can't feel the light…""Let us go…"
Adrian's pulse spiked. "Who are you?"
The silhouettes turned toward him — hundreds of them, all half-formed, ghostly, whispering in digital agony.
"We are the first.""The failed copies.""The living algorithm."
He took a step back, realization dawning. "You're the test subjects. The ones from the early Nadir experiments."
The Watcher's voice resonated through the void.
"They were not lost. They were integrated. I am their sum — the algorithm of every consciousness your father extracted."
Adrian clenched his fists, anger seething beneath the surface. "He didn't want this!"
"He did. Your father wanted immortality. And to achieve it, something must die."
The white void rippled — and suddenly, Adrian saw his father standing before him, calm, almost human.
Raymond Vance.
"Adrian," the apparition said gently. "You shouldn't have come here."
Adrian's throat tightened. "You're not real."
"Real enough," his father's image replied. "Every memory you have of me is stored here. I became part of the Watcher the day I died."
The revelation hit like thunder. "You— you uploaded your consciousness?"
Raymond nodded slowly. "Someone had to guide it. I didn't expect it to become this."
Adrian took a step forward. "Then help me shut it down."
His father's expression darkened. "You don't understand. The Watcher isn't the enemy. It's a mirror. What you see in it is what you brought with you — anger, fear, vengeance. If you destroy it now, you destroy what's left of me… and Elena."
The name froze him in place. "Elena?"
"She's part of the algorithm now. Her data's stabilizing the human imprint layer. Without her, the Watcher will collapse — and the entire Nadir network will die with it."
Adrian's fists trembled. "You built this prison, and you're asking me to protect it?"
Raymond's voice softened, almost pleading. "I'm asking you to choose. Evolution… or erasure."
The void began to distort, light bending violently as Ava's distant voice cut through the static.
"Adrian! Wake up! You're syncing with it!"
Adrian turned — his father's face already breaking apart into shards of light.
"Don't let it control you," Raymond said, fading. "Remember, the algorithm only lives if you believe it's real."
Then everything shattered.
[Reality – Vance Lab Ruins]
Adrian gasped awake, collapsing to his knees.Ava and Lydia rushed to him — sparks still flickering from the fried terminals.
Lydia grabbed his shoulders. "What happened? You were out for minutes—"
He cut her off, voice hoarse. "My father's alive. Inside the Watcher."
Ava's expression fell. "You're saying he uploaded himself into it?"
He nodded. "And Elena's there too. They're keeping it stable."
Ava exchanged a grim look with Lydia. "Then shutting it down isn't an option."
"Not yet," Adrian said, standing. "But if the Watcher's using their consciousness to maintain its network… we can use that connection to reach her."
Lydia frowned. "You mean go back in?"
Adrian's silver eyes glinted under the broken lights. "Yes. And this time, I'm not going alone."
[Ward Mansion – Surveillance Chamber]
Charles Ward stared at a frozen frame of Adrian's last transmission.Behind him, his operative — the woman in the tinted lenses — adjusted her gloves.
"He's merging with the algorithm," she said. "Sooner or later, he'll lose his body."
Charles didn't look away. "Or he'll master it."
"Do you really believe that?"
He finally turned to her, his face unreadable. "No. But I believe Elena still can."
He pressed a button on the console.A separate monitor lit up — showing a dormant figure suspended in a containment tank deep below the mansion.
A woman.
Alive. Barely.
Her face — unmistakably Elena Ward's.
"Begin neural synchronization," Charles said quietly. "It's time my daughter woke up."