The council's decision surged through the veins of the DAO like an electric shock, rewriting protocols and realigning priorities. But for Artur, in the silence of his room, nothing had changed. He remained seated on the floor, the axe resting across his lap—a dethroned monarch in a kingdom of one. The outside world, with its votes and strategies, was an abstraction without meaning. His reality had collapsed into the brutal truth Barros had given him: he had no home anymore. The forest was a trap. Freedom was an invitation to die. Peace was a memory.
He spent what felt like days in that stillness, not eating, barely moving, lost in an inner landscape of dead trees and purple skies. Guards came and went, leaving untouched trays of food, watching him with a new mixture of fear and reverence. He ignored them. They were part of the cage—and he had retreated to a place inside himself where the bars could not reach.
Then, one morning indistinguishable from the others, the routine broke.
The door opened—and it wasn't a guard or a scientist. It was a nurse. An older woman, her eyes holding a tired kind of compassion, not the clinical curiosity or cautious fear he had grown used to.
She said nothing. Just placed a folded stack of clothes on the bed.
Civilian clothes.
A worn pair of jeans. A thick flannel shirt. Work boots.
His clothes.
The same ones he had worn when the world ended on 26th Street—now cleaned, patched, restored.
Artur looked at them. Then at her.
Something stirred inside him. Not hope. Not yet. But something that wasn't despair.
A question.
"Get dressed," she said softly. "Agent Barros is waiting."
Dressing became a strange ritual.
Peeling off the DAO's gray uniform felt like shedding a second skin—a prisoner's skin. Putting his old clothes back on felt like trying to inhabit a ghost. They were… smaller. The flannel pulled tight across his shoulders and chest, stretched by the denser muscle he had gained. The boots, once broken in and familiar, now pressed uncomfortably against his feet.
His own body no longer fit his old life.
He picked up the axe.
The weight was the only thing that hadn't changed.
When the door opened again, he was ready. Not for anything specific—but ready for whatever came next.
The escort didn't take him to the Gym. Or an interrogation room.
They led him somewhere new.
The walls here weren't raw concrete—they were polished steel, reflecting his image back at him in warped fragments. The doors were heavier. The air colder.
This was the heart of the DAO.
They left him in a small, bare room. A metal table. Two chairs. Nothing else.
A Faraday cage. A space where nothing entered, nothing left.
A room for conversations that could not be overheard.
The door opened.
Barros stepped inside—alone.
No field gear this time. Just a simple suit. He looked tired, his shoulders weighed down by decisions Artur could barely imagine.
"Sit down, Artur," Barros said.
His voice wasn't that of a jailer. Or an interrogator.
It was one man speaking to another.
Artur remained standing.
Barros sighed, but didn't insist. He placed a reinforced laptop on the table.
"The council made a decision about you."
Artur waited to feel something—anger, hope, fear.
There was only emptiness.
"So?" he asked. "Are you going to kill me or put me on ice?"
"Neither," Barros said. "They decided the risk of keeping you here is greater than the risk of letting you go."
He met Artur's eyes. And for the first time, there was something there beyond analysis or authority.
Respect. Reluctant. Earned.
"You were right," Barros continued. "We can't force you to be our weapon. It doesn't work like that. You're… too volatile."
"So I'm free?" Artur asked.
The word sounded foreign in his own mouth.
"Almost," Barros said. "No more tests. No more needles. No more holograms. You're almost free to leave. But first… I need you to confirm something."
He opened the laptop and turned it toward Artur.
"You survived. You saw what they can do. You're the only living specialist in combat against Thalassoma. But you've only seen one side of the war. Your side."
His voice darkened.
"I need you to understand the war we were fighting before you. I need you to understand why we're desperate."
Artur stepped closer, wary.
Whatever was on that screen—that was the price.
He looked down.
DAO – PSYCHIC PROBE – EVIDENCE FILE 7B
Below it, a dark video window.
"What is this?" Artur asked.
"That… is 9th Street," Barros said quietly. "Through the eyes of the only other survivor. A man we found in a catatonic state, hiding in a basement. He died three days later without saying a word."
A pause.
"All we have are the last five minutes of his conscious memory."
Barros pressed play.
The screen flickered to life.
The image was grainy, unstable—like an old VHS tape being chewed apart by a dying machine.
A hallway.
A hospital corridor.
White tiles. Flickering fluorescent lights.
And something wrong.
The air shimmered.
The sound… a low, nauseating hum.
The cage.
"He was hiding in the hospital at the end of the street," Barros said softly. "He thought he was safe."
The view lurched violently—running.
Then it turned.
At the end of the corridor—through an open doorway—
The purple sky.
Artur felt the chill crawl down his spine.
The man reached a metal door and shoved it open, stumbling into a cramped supply room. He crouched behind metal shelves, trembling.
The camera—his eyes—peeked through a narrow crack in the door.
And then—
They came.
Not the calculated, cautious predators Artur had faced.
A flood.
A frenzy.
Arachnid creatures—yes—but moving with reckless, chaotic speed.
They poured into the corridor.
Not searching.
Killing.
Doctors. Nurses. Patients.
Human shapes torn apart in a blur of violence.
The camera shook violently. The man's heartbeat—amplified—pounded like a war drum.
"Do you recognize them?" Barros asked.
"It's them," Artur whispered. "But… they're stupid. Disorganized. Just… hungry."
"Exactly," Barros said. "9th Street was frenzy. Brute force. No tactics."
A pause.
"Now watch."
On the screen, one of the creatures stopped.
It turned.
Looked directly at the supply room door.
It couldn't see the man.
But it had… felt him.
It didn't charge the door.
It ran toward it—
Then leapt.
At the last second, it sprang upward—climbing the wall with insect speed, vanishing from sight.
The man let out a broken sound.
The camera tilted up.
To the ceiling.
Acoustic panels.
One second of silence.
Then—
A panel bulged.
Snapped upward.
And something pushed through.
Legs.
Eyes.
Red.
Artur stepped back instinctively, his body remembering the alley.
The creature dropped into the room with a dull thud.
The image spun wildly as the man collapsed.
The last thing recorded—
A close-up of the creature's jaw opening.
A flower of teeth.
Filling the entire screen.
Static.
Silence.
Barros closed the laptop.
"They learned," he said.
The weight in his voice was undeniable.
"From 9th Street to 26th—they learned to climb. To flank. To adapt. While we were building walls… they were learning war."
He looked at Artur.
"What do you think they learned from you?"
A beat.
"From your fight? From your resistance?"
Artur stared at the closed laptop.
The image of that jaw burned behind his eyes.
And then—
Understanding.
He wasn't just an anomaly.
He was a lesson.
His survival.
His defiance.
His war.
He had taught them.
Taught them how to fight something that fights back.
He looked at Barros.
And the final illusion collapsed.
"You're not setting me free," Artur said quietly. "You're deploying me."
Barros didn't flinch.
"We're giving you a choice."
His voice was steady.
"Go back to a forest that can't protect you. Wait for them to find you."
A pause.
"Or come with us. Help us predict their next move. Help us choose the battlefield. Help us hunt them—before they hunt us."
He extended his hand.
Not for a handshake.
An invitation.
An alliance.
"The war is coming, Artur," Barros said.
"The real war."
A breath.
"And whether you like it or not… you're our only soldier."