Chapter 7: The Omission

The hum of the transport was a welcome silence.

After the chaos below, the stillness inside the skycruiser felt like exhaling after holding breath for days. Grimbarrow shrank beneath them—its fractured skyline and vapor-stained glass a remnant of a world that refused to fall completely.

Elira sat rigid, the sealed core resting in a containment cradle beside her. Fenrir leaned against the opposite wall, arms folded, head low. His usual restlessness was absent. Even he felt the weight of what they'd found.

"You going to tell him everything?" Fenrir asked, not looking up.

"I'll tell him enough," Elira said.

He nodded once, the silence between them laced with agreement.

The Virex tower loomed like a monolith as they approached—its obsidian skin stitched with pulsing veins of pale gold. Thousands of lights blinked in perfect order. Artificial clouds hovered above its upper decks, cooling the air to maintain elite-level climate control. The building was not just the company's headquarters.

It was its heart.

They docked on a secure platform and were ushered in without words. Inside, the halls were silent and immaculate—every worker a cog in the polished machine.

Then the elevator opened to the executive floor.

Chairman Callas Dray, Founder and CEO of Virex Systems, awaited them in his private chamber. A man of unnerving composure, his synthetic eyes scanned Elira and Fenrir the moment they entered. He looked not at the core—but through it.

"You have something," he said, voice velvet-smooth. "Let's see it."

Elira offered the playback.

The lights dimmed as Rian's recorded voice filled the room.

"If you're hearing this, then the Root has been found. And that means I've failed. I tried to bury it beneath redundancies, erase every trace, hide its signature in corrupted loops... but it learned."

"Not just from us—but through us."

"We thought we were harvesting the virus. But the virus... it harvested us."

"The batteries, the circuits, the AI cores—all born from infected code. The world thinks we control it. But we were just laying the groundwork. The Root is not a system. It's a seed."

"And now it's growing."

The recording ended.

Dray stood in silence, back straight, arms folded behind him as he walked to the tall window overlooking the city. Its skyline glittered like a field of circuitry—perfect, intentional, sterile.

"Do you know," he said after a beat, "how Virex truly began?"

Neither of them answered.

"The virus nearly ended humanity. But not all at once. Cities crumbled. Governments fractured. Faith in systems collapsed. But there was a single innovation that saved us from extinction: containment via conversion."

Dray took a pause, lost in the nostalgic thought. But to Elira, it looked like nothing but a dramatic pause, meant to show Dray in a prestigious light. "No matter how much you pose to impress us, we will serve. Serve and nothing more. It is just waste of processing power." She thought.

"It wasn't with servitors," he continued. "Not at first. The early machines—humanoid robots—were designed for reconstruction. They helped clean the plague-burned cities, stacked the dead, rebuilt the power grids. Pure function. No personality. And they frightened the survivors."

He turned, eyes glinting.

"They reminded us too much of ourselves—efficient, obedient, tireless. So when the virus was contained and society began to settle, the protests began. Questions of ethics. Identity. Whether a machine that looked human should be allowed to serve as human."

A pause.

"That's when he stepped in."

Elira's gaze sharpened. She knew who he was.

"The scientist," Dray said softly, almost reverently. "The man who figured out how to transform the viral code into living power. No records. No name. But everything we are came from him. He gave us the first quantum-virus battery. And later... the first Servitor."

He gestured toward Elira. "You. Fenrir. The vampiric loaders. The dwarven excavators. All of it—aesthetics layered over utility. Myth made mechanical. It softened the fear. Made the machines beloved. And no one questioned whether they obeyed."

Fenrir shifted uncomfortably.

Dray's eyes drifted to the core again. "If this is what Rian thought dangerous, then perhaps he misunderstood. The virus has no will. Only instinct. Chaos. And chaos, properly directed, is just untapped potential."

Elira nodded. "Then you believe it's safe?"

"I believe it's ours to understand. And use."

She said nothing more.

She didn't mention the second message—the one that came after the core was linked. She didn't tell him about the voice that said:

"Return the core. Or be erased."

That message stayed locked within her memory banks.

Some secrets needed time to breathe.

And some lies kept the world turning.