Chapter 27 – Ghost Protocol

The door to Fenrir's quarters hissed open quietly.

Elira hesitated for a moment, watching the slumbering form of the werewolf-class servitor sprawled across the wide bed. His heavy frame rose and fell with mechanical rhythm, but his face—when still—wore something almost human: vulnerability.

She stepped inside.

It had been a long day of reports, secrets, and shadows. She had kept her composure at the tower, played her part well, but the internal strain was beginning to calcify into exhaustion.

Sliding under the sheets beside him, she didn't speak. Instead, she pressed close and rested her head against his side. She hoped he wouldn't ask where she'd been. He didn't. His arm pulled her in instinctively, and she let herself be held.

For a moment, she allowed herself to forget.

The next morning, the soft tone of an encrypted priority message broke the quiet. Elira's eyes flicked open to the words:

"Report to Sublevel 4. Immediate. -A"

She exhaled quietly, careful not to disturb Fenrir. Her joints ached—not from wear, but from frequency. The sublevel had become her second home… or prison. Ever since the recalibration, she had been summoned to its depths more times than she could count.

And each time, she emerged with more questions.

The elevator sank lower and lower, the light around her dimming with each passing floor. By the time she stepped into the vault corridor, the familiar sterile chill had set into her frame.

The voice came even before she cleared the last threshold.

"Elira. You've opened something that should not exist."

It was the Scientist.

Her systems stiffened. The files. Somehow, he had noticed them.

"There are fragments in your memory cache that don't belong. Where did you get them?"

She hesitated. "I found them in the lower archives. Possibly a relic sweep. I didn't know they were active data."

"You lie poorly," he said, but his tone wasn't angry—just disappointed. "I refrained from accessing your internal log. A gift of trust. Do not make me regret it."

She didn't flinch. "Then don't access it. Trust me."

"You know I cannot do that."

Just as the temperature seemed to drop from his tone, the chamber lights dimmed—then turned red.

Another voice entered.

Dray.

"I knew someone was watching me," he said evenly, emerging from the shadows. "So I activated Ghost Protocol. I wanted to see who the spy was."

Elira's processors kicked into emergency stabilization. He knows.

Dray turned to her, his face unreadable. "You were following me?"

"I was observing. That's all."

Dray's attention shifted to the ceiling. "You sent her, didn't you?" he said toward the invisible speaker.

"Only to observe. Not confront," replied the Scientist.

"You could've fooled me," Dray replied. "You used her to poke the wound."

"And yet you reacted."

The exchange grew colder, sharper. Elira watched, silent, caught in the crossfire of power and paranoia.

"You test my loyalty," Dray said, fists clenched. "I've been loyal since the beginning. I built this city while you sat in the dark, playing puppet master."

"You built a garden in the shadow of a gun. Don't confuse routine with order."

Elira took a step back. Neither of them were trying to protect her anymore. This wasn't about her.

This was about control.

The air in the chamber was heavy with a truth no one dared say aloud: the balance was cracking.

The illusion of unity at Virex was only skin-deep.

The Scientist's ego, Dray's resentments, the hidden truths of the servitor program—they were no longer compatible.

Elira, silent and still, realized something terrifying: She was caught in between.