The walls groaned.
Not metal under stress. Something deeper. Something alive.
I stood frozen in the secured data vault, clutching the stolen drive against my chest. The dim lights flickered above me, casting erratic shadows along the walls. The facility—no, the system itself—had detected my presence. I could feel it.
"Kane," I whispered, my voice barely audible over the eerie hum growing around me. "I think it knows I’m here."
The console in front of me glitched violently, the text warping and reshaping into unrecognizable symbols. The words I'd been reading seconds ago were gone, replaced with something watching me back.
Then, the walls moved.
Not a trick of the eye. Not my imagination.
The space around me was shrinking.
A sound filled the vault.
Not from the speakers. Not from a
