The Helix soldier stepped out of the smoke like a nightmare forged in steel.
His armour shimmered with faint blue veins — circuitry pulsing just beneath his flesh. Where skin met metal, the seams glowed like molten cracks. A human heart still beat somewhere inside that shell, but its rhythm was mechanical, measured.
Ethan froze. For the first time since the Core, he felt genuine fear.
Not for himself — but for what the Helix represented.
A perfect hybrid.
Part man.
Part machine.
And utterly obedient.
The Facility had taken Myles’s vision and weaponized it into a monster.
“Stay behind me,” Ethan whispered.
Hannah raised her rifle. “Orders?”
“Don’t kill it unless you have to,” Myles said sharply. “They’re still linked to the main network. If we take one down, the others will know.
