The Vault Beneath Sector Seventeen

The eastern grid bled static as we descended—forgotten industrial arteries sprawling beneath Sector Seventeen like veins choked with rust and decay. Altaran's understructure shifted above, skyscrapers looming as fractured silhouettes behind polluted clouds.

I guided the hovercraft through the dense fog, its engines low, shields flickering faint green across the hull.

Vesper sat beside me, tension coiled sharp beneath her skin. Her embedded shard pulsed in sync with the four locked against my chest—resonance thick enough now to hum along the cabin walls.

"They buried the fifth beneath old Solis territory," I muttered, eyes locked on the route projected across my retinal display. "Deep storage vaults. Bio-secured. Neural gates coded to bloodlines they no longer trust."

"Which means," Vesper said quietly, "they've tripled defenses."

The hovercraft dipped low, slicing through the skeletal ruins of collapsed factories and decommissioned transport lines. Beyond them, the vault rose from the industrial wasteland—an obsidian structure half-sunken into the earth, cracked by decades of neglect but still pulsing faint with internal systems.

Drones circled the perimeter, scanning with tight beams of infrared. Walls reinforced with old-world alloy gleamed beneath layers of grime.

"Ghost mapped primary access," I said, disabling the hovercraft's systems and slipping into the shadows. "But secondary routes? Improvised."

We advanced on foot—boots silent across fractured concrete, bypassing patrol routes and sensor nodes with cautious precision.

At the vault's perimeter, I located the maintenance conduit—a narrow access port marked with outdated Solis insignias.

"Time to test your instincts," I whispered.

Vesper knelt, her fingers ghosting across the corroded interface. Despite fragmented memory, the buried knowledge burned steady. Within moments, the conduit hissed open.

"We're in," she confirmed.

The passage spiraled downward, slick with condensation, walls lined with dormant sensor arrays and shattered security nodes.

Deep inside, the air thickened—the hum of hidden systems, static bleeding faint across the floor.

The vault's core chamber opened like the ribs of some mechanical beast, walls lined with containment pillars. Neural canisters floated within liquid suspension, their surfaces etched with encrypted runes.

And at the center—the fifth shard.

Suspended within reinforced glass, pulsing a cold, steady blue. History frozen. Memory severed. Waiting.

I stepped forward, calibrating my stabilizer. The shard's resonance climbed, threads of forgotten fragments teasing the edges of my neural map.

"We trigger alarms the moment that glass fractures," Vesper warned.

"We're past subtle," I replied, activating the stabilizer's disruptor charge.

The containment glass shattered with controlled precision—the fifth shard snapping free, energy flaring through the chamber.

Instantly, alarms howled.

Doors sealed. Defense grids powered. Figures poured in—armored, faces hidden behind neural masks, insignias half-scrubbed—Blackwell's enforcers.

"They expected us," Vesper hissed.

"They always do," I muttered, shards pulsing hot beneath my ribs.

The enforcers opened fire—disruptor rounds slicing through the chamber.

I surged forward, memory fragments blooming behind my eyes—forgotten combat instincts slotting into place as the fifth shard's resonance synced.

Every strike, every dodge, felt rehearsed—echoes of a self buried beneath engineered amnesia.

We fought, the chamber fracturing under weapons fire, alarms bleeding static.

Vesper covered the rear—her shard interfacing with security nodes, scrambling internal defenses.

"Exit route," I demanded.

"East corridor," she shot back, overriding lockdown protocols.

We pushed through collapsing partitions, disruptor fire trailing close.

The fifth shard burned within me—threads of lost memory knitting tighter, fractures closing one fragment at a time.

By the time we breached the surface, the vault crumbled behind us—systems overloading, security compromised.

The hovercraft roared in low, Ghost's signal guiding us aboard.

"Fifth shard secured," I confirmed, breath sharp, mind reeling.

Vesper slumped beside me, her eyes dark with unraveling truths.

Altaran shifted outside—its fractures widening, its buried sins bleeding faster.

And the person I once was?

He was clawing his way back.

Piece by piece.

Shard by shard.

And they couldn't stop him.

Not anymore.