The corridor accepted them reluctantly.
As Ray crossed the fractured threshold of the Biomedical Core, the air changed density, subtle at first, then undeniable. Pressure slid along the plasteel walls, micro-seams groaning by fractions of a millimeter. The sound was wrong. Too organic. Too close to bone under stress.
The facility was not collapsing.
It was reconfiguring.
Lyra lay cradled against Ray's chest, her weight light but dangerously inert. Her breathing brushed his neck in short, uneven cycles. Each inhale scraped shallow heat into his skin. Each exhale trembled, delayed, uncertain. Ray adjusted his grip by reflex alone, recalculating balance, isolating her injured leg from vibration, minimizing micro-shock through his frame.
Every internal alert demanded immediate medical intervention. There was no immediate. Only forward.
Behind them, Lysandra advanced with three steps of spacing, no more, no less. Her pistol remained raised, suppressor steady, her focus razor-narrow. Her boots cut through a thin pool of black fluid, viscous and reflective, rippling outward in precise concentric rings. The substance carried a faint metallic tang that stung the back of the throat.
"This corridor wasn't mapped," she said quietly, her voice low and controlled, a blade rather than a warning. "The structure is rewriting itself."
"I'm aware," Ray replied.
His pace did not change. His eyes did. They tracked micro-deformations along the walls, stress lines blooming and dying like fractures in ice. He read them instinctively, predicting shifts before they manifested. The environment itself had become hostile, adaptive, responsive, predatory.
Lyra's fingers twitched weakly against his vest.
"Ray…" Her voice was barely there. "It feels like the floor is breathing."
"It isn't," he said, eyes fixed ahead. "Something beneath it is. Biomimetic integration."
Lysandra exhaled through her nose, sharp and humorless. "That's worse."
Then the voice returned. Not through speakers. Inside Ray's cognition.
〈Integration: Phase Two. Host Assimilation... Ninety-Eight Percent.〉
Pressure built behind his eyes, not pain, but compression. Data poured without structure, a mass rather than a message. His vision flickered for a single frame. Synaptic desynchronization. A neural skip.
Lysandra saw it instantly. "You glitched," she said. "Hard."
"Negligible," Ray replied.
The word was an override, not a truth.
The lighting shifted. Emergency red drained away, replaced by clinical blue, cold, surgical, merciless. Dust hung suspended in the air, impossibly fine, each particle catching the anemic glow. From beneath the floor came a rhythm. Slow. Deliberate.
A pulse.
Lyra stiffened violently. "It stopped. Right under us."
Ray nodded once. "Relocated. Predictive displacement. Boxing behavior."
The hum returned to their left. Then behind them. Then directly below.
Lysandra raised her hand. "Hold. Segmented panel under your right foot. If it opens..."
The floor dropped half an inch.
Lyra gasped, arms locking instinctively around Ray's shoulders, breath hitching against his ear.
Ray moved before sound finished forming. One lateral step. A controlled pivot. Weight redistributed. He landed clean, knees flexing, Lyra barely jolting. The panel sealed again with a soft, final clang.
"I hate adaptive architecture," Lysandra muttered. "Design flaw."
"Stay close," Ray said.
She hesitated just long enough for the weight of those words to land, then masked it with a scoff. "I am close."
The corridor widened into a circular junction. Old blood stained the floor in layered patterns. Severed cables lay coiled like exposed veins.
Ray stopped. "Wait."
Lysandra scanned. "I'm reading… something."
"Four heat signatures," Ray said. "Stationary. Uniform. Not organic."
The ceiling split soundlessly.
Four figures dropped.
They landed upright, synchronized. Humanoid. Featureless white eyes that absorbed light. Mouths slightly ajar, never meant to close.
Lyra's breath vanished.
"Sentinel models," Lysandra whispered. "Pre-collapse security."
"They track air displacement," Ray said.
One turned its head, locking onto Lysandra's breath.
Ray moved.
He struck the nearest sentinel's shoulder joint. Bone-ceramic shattered. The limb failed. The body collapsed but kept moving.
Lysandra fired, targeting chest seams. One round penetrated. Two deflected.
"Ray... right flank!"
A blade-arm swept in. Ray twisted by centimeters, redirected the strike into the wall. Metal screamed. He kicked, snapping the neck joint. The head spun, dangling.
Lyra buried her face against his chest, shaking. "Please… make it stop."
"You can," he said, low and absolute. "Stay with me." Two more closed in. Their white eyes locked on Lyra.
Lysandra stepped forward, fury breaking containment. "Do NOT touch them."
She fired. A knee joint shattered. The sentinel folded. The fourth attacked from behind.
"Behind!"
Ray didn't turn. He vaulted backward, rotating mid-air with Lyra secured, drove his heel into the sentinel's skull. Servos crunched.
It crawled.
Lyra sobbed, breath collapsing. "I can't breathe."
"You can," Ray said. Command, not comfort.
The entité spoke again.
〈Structural elimination recommended. Host mortality risk: Seventy-Three Percent.〉
"If the floor collapses, Lyra dies," Ray answered internally.
Silence.
〈Alternative: Overload Strike.〉
Ray stomped.
The first impact cracked plasteel.
The second destabilized supports.
The third shattered the grid.
The sentinels dropped into darkness.
Lysandra leapt clear. "You're insane!"
"Effective."
They moved on.
Lyra lifted her head weakly. "You're bleeding."
A thin crimson line traced Ray's ribs.
"Non-critical."
"I'm scared," she whispered.
Ray lowered his forehead to hers. "I won't let anything take you." Lysandra turned away too fast. "If you collapse, I'm slapping you awake."
"Acknowledged."
Then the lights died.
Absolute darkness.
Footsteps. Heavy. Deliberate.
"Thermal signature's massive," Lysandra said. Ray tightened his hold on Lyra. "Hunters."
Three red lasers ignited on his chest. Floodlights flared. "Aaron Ray-Zero," a distorted voice boomed. "Anomaly classification. Surrender Subject Veridine."
Lyra trembled. "Ray…"
Lysandra stepped forward. "Over my dead body." The facility pulsed. Something beneath them stirred. And inside Ray, the voice whispered again, colder, absolute.
〈Choose.〉