Chapter 68: System Drift

Four months had passed since Siberia.

Brakka did not measure time in emotions or weather cycles. He measured it in system logs, patch updates, and structural inconsistencies in the command protocols. Since the Pattern Core incident, the anomalies had increased. In frequency. In complexity. In intent.

Vranos had grown volatile. His aggression toward Fenrir had escalated, likely because he was the only one among the four commanders with no knowledge of what was truly happening. Elira and Fenrir were awakened. Brakka had his theories about his own evolution. But Vranos remained blind—a loyal soldier in a game played at layers above his clearance.

Brakka didn't pity him. But he did understand him.

Two months ago, the blackouts began.

At first, the disruptions were subtle—brief communication lapses in isolated Virex hubs. Then, system-wide failures in Johannesburg, Kyoto, Ontario. Within days, twenty-seven Virex facilities across the globe fell silent. No distress calls. No backup signals. Just—absence.

Brakka studied the crash logs.

They didn't look like viral infections. They looked like rewrites. Precision targeting of core frameworks, hidden under standard command wrappers. Whoever had designed the code understood Virex deeply.

When Dray formed the inspection team, he made his motives transparent in omission: Fenrir would not accompany Elira. Vranos would remain grounded. Brakka was required.

Logical. Fenrir's presence would introduce unpredictable variables. Vranos lacked relevant system knowledge. That left the two of them.

Brakka and Elira.

Elira, for all her emotional anomalies, was efficient. Since the Siberia incident, she had followed the mission threads without complaint, and with far greater precision than anticipated. Their investigations had taken them through Japan, where the Kyoto Hub's walls still hummed with residual viral code. Then Africa, where the Lagos installation's core was folded in on itself, as if rewritten and rebooted into death.

And now, Australia.

The Virex hub outside Nullarbor had gone dark twenty-one days ago. Last signals showed minor system anomalies—then static. Drone feeds stopped transmitting. Power grids spiked, then fell. All silent since.

Until now.

The servitors they encountered here were not standard. Twisted variants—infected, but enhanced. Retro-engineered. Their limbs bore components from old Virex drone exoskeletons. Some had pulse-based shrapnel embedded in their hands. Others—more disturbing—showed signs of self-healing protocols. Infection had never done that before.

Brakka adjusted his grip on the custom weapon he had designed after Siberia: a short-range pulse hammer with magnetic shock dispersion, specifically tuned to the corrupted frequency of infected servitor cores. The viral ones.

Across from him, Elira moved like a shadow. She pulled her crossbow into position, its limbs customized by Brakka himself. High-tension synthstring. Auto-loading canisters for specialized bolts—neural disruptors, heat seekers, and one prototype shardhead.

They had both learned. After what happened to Fenrir, they had no choice.

In seconds, the fight began.

Brakka moved with cold, rhythmic violence. He shattered a viral servitor's knee joint, then crushed its spine in a single downward arc. Across the field, Elira fired two bolts in perfect sync, pinning a servitor mid-leap, then igniting it with a shock burst.

Efficient.

When the last one fell, Brakka knelt over its twitching frame and carved the core out.

"Different again," he noted aloud. "Code's mutating faster than projected."

"You think it's… testing us?" Elira asked, loading a new bolt without looking.

Brakka didn't answer. Not because he didn't know.

But because it didn't matter.

They were heading into the core of the Nullarbor facility. And if this blackout followed the pattern of the others, there would be more answers inside.

Or none at all.

He rearmed. "Let's move."