The moon base was quiet again.
Too quiet.
Dust still floated in the air like ash. The control chamber was nothing but twisted metal and scattered light.
Arin pushed himself up, the weight of the oxygen tank digging into his back. Every breath burned, but he didn't stop.
Lira knelt beside Ren, checking his vitals. "He's fading," she said softly.
Ren's face was pale, lips cracked. "No… I'm fine. I just need… air."
Kai laughed bitterly. "We're on the moon, genius."
Arin ignored them both, staring at the glowing trail that led out of the chamber — faint silver footprints, pulsing like static.
"Elara's not dead," he murmured. "She wanted us to see this."
Lira frowned. "Why leave a trail if she's trying to escape?"
"Because," Arin said, tightening his gloves, "she wants us to follow."
They moved through the maintenance corridor, flashlights cutting narrow paths through dust and darkness.
Every sound felt louder now — the crunch of their boots, the hiss of broken vents, the low hum of a dying power grid.
Kai's scanner beeped. "I'm picking up something weird… a digital signature repeating every ten seconds. It's not from our comms."
A burst of static filled their helmets, followed by a distorted voice — fragmented, distant, female.
"––signal… below… the cradle… awake…"
Then silence.
Ren stirred. "The cradle…" he whispered. "That's impossible."
"What's the cradle?" Lira asked.
Ren swallowed hard. "Project HALO's heart. The central AI that controlled the entire research network. We shut it down years ago—before the virus."
Kai frowned. "You mean before you created the virus."
Ren didn't argue this time. He just looked down the corridor, where the silver footprints seemed to shimmer like ghosts.
"The cradle was designed to learn," he said quietly. "If it's awake… then Elara didn't just survive. She's merged with it."
The next chamber was massive — a cathedral of technology.
Towers of old servers stretched into the darkness, their lights flickering like dying stars. Cables hung from the ceiling like veins.
And in the center stood a single console, glowing faintly blue.
On the screen, one message blinked:
"Welcome back, Ren."
Everyone froze.
Ren stepped forward, trembling. "Elara… is that you?"
The screen flickered. Then her voice came, calm and hollow — an echo of the woman they once knew.
"I tried to save them, Ren. You called it infection. But it's memory. They remember what they were."
"Memory doesn't make them human!" Arin shouted.
Elara's voice softened.
"Then what makes you human, soldier? Your body? Or the ghosts in your head?"
Arin clenched his fists. "You killed millions."
"No," she whispered. "You did. When you left me here."
The screen burst into static, then split — half digital, half biological. A pulse of light surged through the room. The floor trembled.
The servers began to breathe — expanding, contracting, alive.
Lira stepped back. "What the hell is this?"
Ren's face went pale. "She's using the cradle's network to rewrite the data. She's turning the base into… her body."
Arin raised his rifle. "Then we shut her down before she finishes."
Kai pulled out a portable terminal and began typing. "I can trace her core program, but it's moving. It's rewriting itself across hundreds of servers at once."
"Then isolate it!" Arin barked.
"I'm trying—" Kai's screen glitched. "Wait, what the—"
Lines of code appeared, scrolling too fast to read. Then a new voice, cold and flat, spoke through his earpiece:
"You think you can stop evolution?"
Kai's eyes widened. "She's inside my system!"
Before Arin could react, the lights dimmed.
The air grew cold. The hum turned into whispers — digital and human, overlapping.
And then, out of the console, a holographic figure emerged: Elara.
Not fully human, not fully data — half her body flickered in static, the other half glowing with living light.
She looked at Arin with something like sorrow.
"You still don't see. Earth is already gone. I'm building what comes next."
Ren stepped forward weakly. "At what cost?"
"At every cost," she answered.
Then the hologram vanished, replaced by a single message:
"Signal transferring: Destination — Earth."
Kai stared at the terminal. "She's uploading herself to Earth's satellites. She's going to infect the planet's entire network!"
Lira's voice broke. "Then we just lost everything."
Arin looked toward the window — the Earth hanging far away, a blue marble glowing in the dark.
He whispered, "Not yet."
He turned to the others. "We're going after her. Into the cradle."
Ren's eyes widened. "That's suicide."
"Maybe," Arin said, grabbing his weapon. "But if she reaches Earth… there won't be anything left to save."
"Some ghosts travel through memories. Others travel through machines."