Chapter 43 – The Gate of Will

Elira screamed his name.

But Fenrir was already gone—disappearing into the dark corridor beyond the containment lock.

The doors slammed shut behind him with a mechanical hiss, sealed with a finality that echoed deep inside her chest. She surged forward, only to be caught—held back by strong arms on either side.

"Let go!" she cried, struggling, clawing. Vranos grunted, tightening his grip.

"You're not going in there," he said, voice flat but effort evident in the strain of his muscles.

Brakka was on her other side, anchoring her as she fought like a wild thing.

"You'll only get yourself killed," he muttered, not unkindly.

"I have to—!" Her voice cracked, halfway between a cry and a command. "He's in there alone!"

"You think we don't know that?" Vranos growled. "We let him go because that's what he chose."

Elira's resistance didn't last long—not because her emotions faded, but because the door locked behind Fenrir with a heavy, hydraulic thud that signaled it was far beyond brute force now.

Still, the moment she was released, she threw herself at it.

Her fists pounded against the reinforced plating with everything she had. Over and over—furious, desperate, powerless.

"OPEN!" she shouted at the metal. "Open up—damn you—let me through!"

Nothing.

The lights above flickered in grim rhythm with her fury, but the door held fast.

She stopped, chest heaving, systems stuttering under emotional override. Her hands were bruised, knuckles bloodied, synthetic dermis torn.

So she tried something else.

She closed her eyes and reached—not with her hands, but with her mind.

Tapped into her neural network.

Called out to the system.

"Override. Manual access. Priority clearance—Elira 004. Unlock chamber. Open gates."

But the only response was the blankness of silence.

The Blackout Protocol. The entire site had been put into isolation mode to prevent viral spread. Even she, a designated servitor, couldn't override it.

Unless…

She pushed harder.

Deeper.

Her mind scraped the edges of the system's silence, looking for anything—anywhere—to take hold. Her thoughts stretched like static lightning across dead code.

Until something shifted.

Something inside her snapped.

Not like a break—but an unlatching.

A release.

A flood of access permissions surged open like dominoes falling in sequence. Subroutines she never knew existed bent to her will. Locks decrypted. Gates obeyed.

The system spoke to her—not with words, but with submission.

She wasn't requesting access anymore.

She was commanding it.

The Blackout Protocol lifted. The air around her changed.

With a thought, the sealed chamber door hissed and split open.

She ran.

Down the long hallway, past flickering lights and sensor failures, until she reached the wreckage-strewn battlefield.

The air was thick with the scent of ozone and burning composite.

And there—in the center of it all—lay Fenrir.

His body was torn, one arm missing entirely, leg severed at the knee. Plates of armor shattered. Internal wiring exposed like veins of light. Yet in his broken hand, curled into his remaining fist, was a fragment of the enemy's core—crushed.

Next to him, the corpse of the corrupted strain twitched its last in the dirt. Bent and burned and utterly ruined.

Elira dropped to her knees beside Fenrir, her system screaming warnings as she scanned his vitals. He was still alive.

Just barely.

Her hand hovered above his cheek, trembling.

"You idiot," she whispered. "You absolute, beautiful idiot."

Then she called for Brakka and Vranos over the now-reopened comms. Voice steady, tears falling.

"He's alive. I need evac. Now."

And as the chamber lights flickered back to full brightness, a thought nestled in her mind—cold and absolute:

The noose of the system hadn't loosened.

It had been handed to her.