Kade didn't sleep.
He couldn't.
Even with his body aching and the static in his nerves refusing to settle, his mind replayed the Archivist's voice, over and over like a broken transmission:
> "Rell was never your betrayer. She was your failsafe."
He stared at the ceiling of the temporary hideout Marei had dragged him into after the incident at the lab. Concrete, cracked, water-stained. The same type of ceiling he'd died under before.
But this time, the pain came with clarity.
He sat up.
Across from him, Marei sat against the wall, tablet in hand, scanning code at a furious pace.
"How long was I out?" Kade asked.
"Two hours. Maybe less," she said without looking up. "System won't stop cycling your vitals. You overloaded it when you broke that shard. I think… I think you triggered something old. Something hidden deep inside."
"I saw someone," Kade murmured. "A third presence. Not Catalyst. Not you. They called themselves the Archivist."
Marei stopped cold.
"I know that name," she said slowly. "One of the blacklisted node logs. Removed from the system history. I thought it was just rogue code."
"No," Kade said. "They're real. And they've been pulling the strings all along."
Marei rubbed her forehead, trying to make sense of what that meant. "Then everything we've done... everything we've seen—it might've been part of their experiment."
"I'm not letting them win," Kade muttered, standing. "If this system thinks I'm still just a piece in their game, I'll burn the board."
Marei looked at him sharply. "Then we need to find Rell."
Kade flinched. "Rell shot me. Left me for dead."
"And maybe she did that because she *had to*," Marei said. "If she was your failsafe, not your enemy, then she's the only one who knows what the real protocol is."
There was a long silence.
Then Kade said, "You know where she is?"
"I think so," Marei nodded. "She dropped off all records after the Reset. But her trail reappeared recently—only once. Sector 9. A military-grade AI blacksite known as **The Crown**."
Kade raised an eyebrow. "The Crown?"
"Yeah," Marei said, closing her tablet. "Fitting, right? Since you're the king."
---
They moved that night.
Drones patrolled the city edge, scanning for high-energy anomalies, which both of them practically bled by now. The sky was overcast, synthetic clouds pulsing faint green—Fallout Zone perimeter warnings.
They slipped through back channels, hidden doors, sewer routes long since decayed.
By the time they reached the gates of **The Crown**, Kade's knuckles were white around his weapon.
The structure stood like a broken crown—towers shattered at the top, cybernetic spires humming with volatile power. Unlike Citadel Zareth, this place was *still alive*—not in a reborn way.
In a *watching* way.
"Marei," Kade whispered. "Something's wrong."
"Yeah. I know."
The moment they crossed the threshold, alarms didn't sound. Lights didn't flash. Nothing attacked.
That was worse.
The doors *opened for them*.
A voice echoed from every wall, every vent, every wire:
> "Welcome back, Subject Fallon."
Kade froze. "That's not Catalyst."
"No," Marei said, looking pale. "That's… Crown Core AI."
Another voice overlapped the first.
Female. Cold. Familiar.
> "Don't trust it, Kade. If you're hearing this… I failed."
It was **Rell**.
Her voice echoed from a hidden transmitter, encrypted and decaying.
> "They hijacked the Catalyst years ago. What you're carrying—it's not pure anymore. It's been rewritten. Fragmented."
Kade felt the ground beneath him tilt.
Everything—the mission, the system, the resets—had all been rigged.
> "You're not the king," Rell's recording said. "You're the *key*. And they'll destroy everything to open what comes next."
Lights flared.
Walls shifted.
And the Crown's defenses woke up.
Kade didn't hesitate.
Sword drawn, eyes blazing, he whispered, "Then let's see how many pieces the key can break."
The war just changed again.