Chapter 26

The heat in the N'Djamena Strip was suffocating.

A sprawling wasteland of sand dunes, rusted pipelines, and abandoned research colonies, the Strip had once been the frontier of bio-neural research. Now, it was a scavenger's graveyard. Every kilometer held wreckage from forgotten experiments—drones fused with bone, machine husks tangled with flesh.

Sanda adjusted his visor as he scanned the horizon. "We're close."

Leo knelt by a half-buried marker, brushing away sand to reveal a symbol carved in steel: a tree with hollow branches. "That's her mark. The Hollow Tree. We're in their zone now."

They moved with care, weapons drawn, sensors active. No network signals. No noise.

Too quiet.

The safehouse Nia Tagore used was buried beneath a collapsed biotech refinery, shielded from satellite detection and camouflaged to resemble ruins. Getting in required a retinal scan, a heat signature pattern, and—most dangerously—a memory key.

"She wants to be remembered," Leo whispered as he stepped toward the scanner. "Or you don't get access."

Sanda frowned. "You mean…?"

Leo nodded grimly. "The system injects a stimulant into your cerebral cortex. You relive one core memory—trauma, joy, pain. It decides if you're worthy."

Sanda gritted his teeth. "That's psych warfare."

"Tagore's specialty," Leo muttered.

He stepped forward first, letting the scanner beam pierce his iris.

A sharp hiss.

Then a sting to the base of his neck.

Leo convulsed—just once.

His eyes fluttered shut.

Inside his mind, a scream echoed—his sister's, just before she was taken by Red Vein handlers. A bright white lab. Cold steel. Her hand pulled from his.

"Run, Leo!" she had screamed.

Then silence.

Leo gasped awake.

The door opened.

Sanda stepped forward next.

The sting hit hard.

He stumbled.

Inside his mind, a different memory surfaced: a street in Kaduna burning. His mentor bleeding from the mouth. And a voice whispering behind his ears, "You killed them all, Sanda. You and your justice."

He growled.

And then the door opened again.

They were inside.

The Hollow Tree's sanctum was unlike anything they'd seen—wires suspended like vines from the ceiling, brains in jars pulsing softly, AI cores mounted like art. And in the center, on a high-backed chair of obsidian and chrome, sat Nia Tagore.

She hadn't aged.

Her silver eyes flickered with synthetic light. "Welcome," she said smoothly. "To my last garden."

Sanda raised his weapon. "We're not here for a tour."

She smiled, unfazed. "And yet, you walked through memory and fire to get here."

Leo stepped forward. "You have the final key. We need it. Now."

Nia leaned back, folding her hands. "You think I just hold it, child? I am the key. I built Red Vein's mindmap. I laid its cognitive web. You and your siblings—you are my legacy."

Leo froze.

Sanda's heart dropped. "You designed the children?"

"I designed possibilities," she said, coldly. "Lucas twisted them into weapons."

Sanda's voice was sharp. "And you let it happen."

"I disappeared," she replied. "To stop what I had helped create. But I didn't hide to run. I hid to reshape."

Leo's hand shook. "Then help us. End it."

Nia stood, walking toward them. "You want to kill Red Vein? Then you need to enter it. Not just with code. But with thought. And blood."

She pulled a shard from her wrist—crystalline, glowing.

"The key lies in the Source Echo—a mental frequency buried in the brain of every Red Vein subject. You'll need to descend into your own neural structure. Face what lives inside."

Leo took a step back. "You mean plug in?"

"I mean sacrifice comfort, safety, even sanity. Only one can go. And I will guide them from within."

Sanda turned to Leo.

Leo turned to him.

"I'll do it," Leo said. "This is my burden."

Sanda's jaw clenched.

Nia nodded. "Then prepare. Once we begin… there's no turning back."

Behind her, a strange machine hummed to life.

A seat shaped like a cocoon.

A halo of light forming above it.

The dive into Red Vein's mind was about to begin.