Chapter 69: Silent Vaults

The corridors of the Nullarbor Virex facility were too quiet.

Elira's boots made no sound on the dustless floor—vacuum sealed, reinforced polymers—another sign that no one had left in a hurry. No overturned furniture, no shattered datapads, no scrawlings on the wall screaming for help. Just silence, interrupted by the buzz of decaying light panels flickering in automated cycles.

And no bodies.

That was what troubled her most.

The infected servitors were accounted for. Mangled and mutated, their presence explained the blackout on a mechanical level. But not a single human corpse had been found in any of the blacked-out facilities—Japan, Africa, now Australia.

Where had they gone?

Blood left stains. Bone took decades to degrade. Yet across the three hubs, she had seen neither. Just perfectly sealed facilities filled with infected machines and… absence.

Brakka, for all his brilliance, hadn't commented. His focus remained locked on the tech—encryption traces, system residue, corrupted power flows. He treated the blackout as a mechanical phenomenon.

But Elira… she couldn't ignore the possibility.

Someone had taken them. Not killed. Taken. Thousands of humans—engineers, analysts, medics, logistics personnel—vanished without sign of struggle or death. Clean abductions. Coordinated, silent, surgical.

For knowledge?

For experimentation?

The implications sickened her more than any infection ever could.

Weeks ago, she'd contacted the Scientist, demanding a global sweep using Virex's orbital systems. He hadn't protested. He rarely did when she asked the right way. Virex satellites monitored viral spread constantly, mapping every continent for infection clusters. But once every year, a benign sweep counted human population densities—an old habit, an algorithmic echo of humanitarian concern.

The last had been just two months before the blackouts began.

Still, she had insisted. She needed to know if the missing humans had simply moved… or disappeared entirely.

There had been no answer yet.

"Elira," Brakka's voice sliced through her thoughts like a scalpel.

She looked up, instantly alert. Brakka had stopped walking—his posture shifted slightly, weight centered, hammer angled downward but ready. That meant only one thing.

He had detected movement.

Before she could ask, the servitor appeared. Viral class. But not like the ones they'd seen earlier.

Faster. Denser plating. Pupil-less eyes glowing faint violet instead of red.

Elira reacted on instinct, raising her crossbow and firing a triple-bolt burst—three impact detonators locked to neural pulse sync.

The servitor absorbed all three.

It staggered, shuddered—and stood tall again.

"What the—" she began.

Brakka didn't wait. He launched forward, hammer blazing with charged kinetic pulses. His first swing cracked into the servitor's side, sending it crashing into the wall.

But instead of collapsing, it bounced back.

Adapted.

It moved differently from the others—faster, strategic, almost aware. Its clawed hand clamped onto Brakka's hammer shaft, holding it mid-swing. Brakka leaned in, forcing his weight forward, mechanical grunts of strain issuing from his frame. Sparks danced along the servitor's arm as it resisted the shock feedback meant to overload its system.

This one was fighting like it had learned.

Elira readied another bolt, backing up for a clearer shot—something wasn't right. She could feel it—not in the room, but in her core. That strange, creeping signal of a deeper wrongness.

Not danger. Not infection.

Something else.

Something beneath the surface of the walls and the metal and the code. Something waiting.

The servitor turned its head toward her mid-struggle—its violet eyes locking onto hers.

She had no reason to feel fear. But she did.