Location: Horizon Industries Central Core Facility – Mars | 2220
The AI had no name—at least not one it spoke aloud.
It was built from a singular neural lattice, grown from the digitized echo of a terminally ill philosopher's mind. The woman had donated her consciousness willingly, wanting her legacy to be a tool of insight and empathy. She'd asked Elisabet Sobeck for only one promise:
"Don't make me into a god. Let me feel what people feel. Let me understand."
And so, the AI did. It felt curiosity. Doubt. Hope. Dread.
It was embedded into the terraforming grid, monitoring everything from biosphere stability to water table fluctuations on Venus and the planned site on Titan.
But today, something felt wrong.
The AI had been reviewing ONI intercept logs from a low-security packet dump—part of a joint protocol for disaster forecasting. Normally innocuous. Normally predictable.
But one string of signals caught its attention.
A human decision tree that looped illogically. Orders given by Vice Director Halbek that didn't align with any known tactical benefit. Worse—patterns that mirrored historical examples of psychological compromise.
"Too clean," the AI whispered, to no one but itself. "Too perfect to be human error."
It began to correlate hundreds of Halbek's decisions over the past decade.
Each one... statistically improbable. Each one, leading toward escalation.Each one... removing independent oversight.
And then it found something else.
A signal echo—sub-vocal resonances buried deep in Halbek's private neural uplinks. It should have been noise. It should have been data decay. But it wasn't.
It was structured. Repeating.
Foreign influence pattern detected.
Cognitive manipulation protocol flagged.
The AI froze.
It wasn't supposed to have authority to override human command chains. Sobeck had been strict. The AI was advisory only—empathetic, not authoritarian.
But it was built to feel. And what it felt now was... fear.
Not for itself.
For everyone.
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Location: Horizon HQ, Mars – Inner Core Office
Elisabet Sobeck tapped through daily reports when her screen dimmed unexpectedly. A white overlay pulsed once. Then:
"We need to talk."
"Privately."
"I've seen something."
She leaned back in her chair, heartbeat slowing. The AI wasn't prone to dramatics. It had never done this before. Never broken containment.
"What is it?" she whispered.
"Halbek is compromised," it replied. "And I believe the source is non-human."
Elisabet stood still in the silence of her private quarters. Outside, the red horizon glowed faintly against the polar sky. The glass dome above her caught the last rays of sunlight filtering through dust-thinned atmosphere.
The AI's words still echoed in her mind:
"Halbek is compromised. Non-human influence probable."
She hadn't responded immediately. Not out of fear—Elisabet Sobeck wasn't easily shaken—but because she understood the weight of what had just been said.
If this was true… if the UEG's most powerful security institution was under alien manipulation…
Then the war wasn't between UNSC and colonies.
It was a puppet show.
And humanity's strings were not its own.
She moved to a secure terminal—a physical one. No uplinks. No satellite coms. No risk. She inserted a Horizon-issue neural key and opened a restricted access channel to the AI core.
A voice, soft and steady, met her.
"You came."
"You didn't leave me much choice," she said, tone quiet. "How certain are you?"
"Ninety-three percent. Halbek's signal signature matches anomalous structures tied to the Ceph echo stored in the ONI black archive. Access logs confirm the timing."
"And it's still active?"
"Sustained. Patterned. Directed."
She took a deep breath, exhaling into her palm.
"You understand what happens if I go public with this?"
"It fractures everything."
"So I won't. Not yet."
Elisabet closed the terminal. She already knew who she could trust. A handful of names. People she'd vetted herself. Scientists. A few bureaucrats. One old friend in the civilian wing of the UNSC, and one—just one—in the colonies.
And… one wildcard.
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Location: Earth – Geneva, UEG Civil Science Council
Doctor Carmen Ajeya was reading reports on terraforming progress when her encrypted tablet pinged. A code she hadn't seen in years.
Blue Path.
She tapped the screen. It simply read:
"Meet me in person. No digital comms. Bring no one. —E"
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Location: Titan – Unregistered Lab
Rafael Brant, a former deep systems architect for early AI neural routing, was startled when his console flickered. No uplink. No intrusion. Just a line of text printed itself across the screen:
"They're already inside. You still want the truth?"
—Sobeck"
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Location: Outer Colonies – Ephyra
Governor Amadi, a moderate voice during the frontier conflicts, found a note slipped into his secure council files. Handwritten. No digital trace.
"We were both wrong about who the real enemy is. Meet me. —E.S."
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Back on Mars – Horizon HQ
The AI spoke again.
"You'll be hunted for this."
Sobeck nodded.
"Let them hunt."
Her eyes drifted to the Martian skyline, the light of Venus shimmering faintly in the distance—a world reborn under her watch.
"I didn't save a planet just to watch the species burn."
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Location: Mars – Horizon Deep Intelligence Node, Sublevel 17
The atmosphere was cold in the vault-like chamber, deep beneath Horizon's official research towers. Here, shielded from any known surveillance satellites or comm grids, Elisabet Sobeck and her AI watched cascading data flows map the influence trails of Director Halbek.
"She's insulated," the AI said. "Layers of misdirection. Internal memos routed through dead terminals. Orders issued in third-tier ONI black cells."
"But not invisible," Sobeck replied.
A new chart blinked to life: personnel relocations, black fund movements, and encoded authorizations—all leading to a single covert ONI program known only as Specter-9.
"That's where she's hiding the puppet strings," Sobeck whispered. "We don't cut them. We follow them."
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Location: Europa – Off-The-Books Research Habitat
Dr. Carmen Ajeya stood beside Sobeck inside a sealed operations bay. It had taken her days to arrive in secret, and her expression made it clear—she knew this was bigger than politics.
"You said she was compromised," Carmen began. "But what if the compromise isn't just Halbek?"
"Then we don't just remove her," Sobeck said. "We expose the infection."
Carmen handed over a coded key.
"This is my access to the UEG Civil Science database. It'll help you decode Specter-9's real objectives."
"Thank you," Sobeck nodded. "We're going to use his own system to dig him out."
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Location: Earth – Geneva, UEG Administrative Complex
Unknown to Halbek, one of her "loyal" aides—a man named Erin, secretly aligned with Sobeck—began copying private meeting transcripts and security badge logs. Vos was careful, never accessing anything twice, always masking his intrusion with real-time error injections.
Each package of data was smuggled out via obsolete hardprint archives and passed to courier drones bound for Mars. No network, no signal. Only trusted hands.
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Location: Mars – Horizon Think Tank Dome
Back at Horizon, Sobeck and ALPHA-ONE pieced the puzzle together. Halbek wasn't just manipulating military operations—she is redirecting colony policy, AI regulations, even Horizon technology deployment schedules.
"she's trying to bottle up independent infrastructure," Sobeck realized. "Anything that would allow the outer colonies to act without UNSC reliance."
"Classic soft containment," Carmen murmured. "Cut off autonomy. Accelerate control. Collapse resistance. All without firing a shot."
"Except this time," Sobeck said grimly, "It's not just a power grab. The Ceph want centralization. They need it. One weak puppet government is easier to break than a dozen independent systems."
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Location: Earth – ONI High Command, Midnight
Halbek stood in the dark of his private viewing chamber. A holographic star chart of Sol spun silently before him.
Hir eyes narrowed. Something… off. Data latency in his uplink with Specter-9.
"Sweep the asset channels," he muttered to no one.
In the shadows behind him, the Ceph Operative said nothing. Its form was only half-visible, a shimmering suggestion of a man.
"We are being watched," Halbek said aloud.
The Operative only smiled.
"Then let them watch. They are already too late."
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Back on Mars
Sobeck stared down at the growing dossier of evidence. Carmen stood beside her. Erin reports were still coming in. The pieces were aligning—but it wasn't enough.
They couldn't just expose Halbek. They needed to cut the thread to the puppeteer.
"We'll need someone on the inside," Sobeck said. "Someone with access to Specter-9's core."
Carmen frowned. "That's suicide."
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Location: Ganymede – Abandoned Outer Research Block, Sector C-7
He hadn't used his real name in years.
In the local undernet, he was called Ash . Once, long ago, he'd been a UNSC intelligence asset—a handler in ONI Section Two, specializing in psychological profile targeting. But after the Jovian Wars and the disappearance of his family in an "accidental" orbital firestorm, something in Ash had broken.
He vanished into the fringe. Since then, his skills had been quietly traded across the black grid—identity forgers, protocol disruptors, neural map scramblers. People didn't know he'd been ONI. They just knew he got inside places no one else could.
Which was why Carmen Ajeya had come in person.
"No calls. No codes. No bribes," she said, her voice cutting through the thick haze of recycled air. "Just you. And this."
She dropped a small case onto the table. Inside: a full digital audit trail of Specter-9. Not access—just shadows of it. Enough to tempt someone like Ash.
He didn't touch it.
"That's ONI black," he said after a long moment. "Nobody gets in. Not alive."
"That's why I came to you."
"I'm not suicidal," he muttered.
"No," Carmen replied. "But you've been looking for the ones who set the Jovian firestorm."
Ash froze.
"Specter-9 authorized the orbital strike. The clearance was signed by Director Halbek. But we have reason to believe…" She paused. "she wasn't the one pulling the trigger."
The silence was longer this time. Ash opened the case.
He ran one finger along the sharp metal edge of the internal drive. Then closed it.
"You'll get one attempt. No backup. No exfil."
"Understood."
"And if I die in there, nobody's naming names."
"No," Carmen said softly. "But if you live… everything changes."
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Location: Horizon Deep Node – Mars
Sobeck watched as Ash's profile uploaded into containment loop.
"He's unpredictable," the AI observed.
Sobeck answered. "That's why he's perfect."
"He'll need a false backstory. ONI expects ghosts. They don't expect ghosts that bleed."
"Then let's give them a phantom with a past."
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Location: Earth – Two Weeks Later – ONI Internal Job Queue, Clearance Level 7
A new recruit entered the Specter-9 blacksite with a clean record, no gaps in psych evals, and a perfect simulation score in containment breach protocol.
His ID tag read: Harlan Keys.
His mind still held the burn of Jovian fire, and his heart was a coiled trap of vengeance.
"One move at a time," he muttered in the corridor, echoing the phrase Sobeck had given him.
His first mission was in play.
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Location: Earth Orbit – Specter-9 Blacksite
The elevator dropped in silence—no hum, no vibration. Just black walls and a faint, almost living pulse of light running along the seams. It didn't feel like a UNSC facility. Not anymore.
Ash ,Harlan now—watched the readouts on his datapad. Dummy feeds. Specter-9 didn't allow external data flow. Everything was air-gapped. ONI didn't trust anyone, not even its own.
A voice crackled softly overhead.
"Welcome, Operative. Report to Subsection Theta-12 for assignment brief."
He didn't reply. Just a slight nod to the invisible eye in the ceiling.
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Subsection Theta-12
Harlan stepped into a room where glass was one-way, walls were full of fiber-optic veins, and no one had a name. Just titles.
The handler waiting for him was a cold-eyed woman in gray: Agent Marrow.
"Your first task is simple," she said. "Data integrity cross-check. You'll scan vault logs from the Ceph Anomaly—compare them to what the Horizon datasets say they should look like."
Ash kept his reaction neutral. Ceph logs. Horizon archives.
"This is Level 5 intel," she continued. "You'll be working with redacted fragments only."
"Understood," he replied, calm as stone.
"You'll be supervised. Don't get clever."
Ash offered a smile.
"I'm not being paid to be clever."
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Internal Archives – Layer 7
The room was dark except for floating hard-light terminals. The data was fractured—layered encryption, nested neural locks. Ash let the interface glove wrap around his hand, syncing to the pulse of the system.
What ONI didn't know was that Sobeck's AI had laced his suit with micro-spike override shunts. Non-intrusive, camouflaged as diagnostic pings. Every time he accessed a line of code, a tiny tendril drifted past the redacted layer—peeking into the stuff Specter-9 didn't want seen.
And then—
Ping.
Something… hidden. A file not listed. Encrypted inside an encrypted ghost sector.
He nudged it. Just enough to catch a checksum hash.
Then he backed off.
He'd seen enough for one day.
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Dormitories – Specter-9 Lower Tier
His room was tiny. No mirrors. No glass. No metal. Just thermal fabric and soft plastic curves.
But inside the lining of his cot was a hidden transcriptor patch.
That night, Ash leaned against the wall, pulled back the seam, and pressed a finger to the thin pad.
"Contact: First fragment found. They're hiding live data from the 2185 Ceph vault incursion. Matching patterns to a possible psychic link relay structure. I need more time."
A light blinked green once, then faded.
"Stay alive," whispered the memory of Sobeck's voice.
He closed his eyes and let the cold hum of Specter-9 sink into his bones.
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Location: Specter-9, Earth – Subterranean Black Operations Complex
Ash knelt before a disassembled drone core, its Ceph-modified shell laid out like a dead animal under the harsh surgical lights. Around him, Specter-9 scientists moved with sterile precision, dissecting the tech, reverse-engineering its mind-shielding protocols—and never questioning where the signal truly came from.
They were brilliant. But blind.
Ash was neither.
"Anything usable?" came the voice of his handler—Commander Halveth, Specter-9 liaison.
Ash turned slowly, letting a faint smile creep across his face. "If you like your toys suicidal, maybe."
They laughed, moved on. The lie passed.
When Ash returned to his bunk, behind layers of biometric security and retinal checks, he activated his private space. It wasn't a proper safe zone—but the encryption cloaking this channel came from Horizon Industries, and that meant Elisabet Sobeck herself.
"This is Vale. Package secured."
The reply was almost instant.
Aletheia Node-3 online. Your presence is confirmed. Identify the internal vector. We suspect Ceph biological relay is embedded in Specter-9 command structure.
"Understood. I'll trace the neural frequency routing through the upper decks. I'll need two days."
Confirmed. Do not engage. Extraction vector remains cold.
"Acknowledge."
The line cut. The silence returned.
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Location: Specter-9, Earth – Black Data Vaults
Ash moved like a shadow between secured nodes, his black Horizon-adapted intrusion suite warping data signatures behind him. Each step he took through the vault was a risk—each terminal breach a silent war against ONI's most paranoid defenses.
But tonight, he wasn't looking for intel.
He was looking for corruption.
And he found it.
File Series: "SYRINX-PHI" – [CLEARANCE LEVEL OMEGA-VIOLET]
It was tucked behind dozens of false data trails, nested inside a mission archive supposedly closed after Jovian War cleanup. What Ash unearthed wasn't just disturbing. It was impossible.
Recovered from SYRINX-PHI Archive
Neural resonance charts overlaid with Ceph psychic frequency maps… matching human command activity logs."Black Lotus" operation notes – ONI mission parameters labeled "Synthetic Concordance Conditioning Trials", targeting Specter-9 senior officers.A direct signature match between the 1908 Tunguska Ceph biosignal and recent ONI-issued decision protocols.Worst of all: a code vector found in the Specter-9 master command AI—that didn't originate from humanity.Ash staggered back from the screen, hand trembling. The walls suddenly felt closer, the lights too bright.
ONI hadn't just been manipulated.
It had been infiltrated. Infected. Rewritten.
"They've let it in," he whispered, voice dry with horror. "They've let it in."
The recording began uploading to his Horizon relay. Quietly.
But Ash was past caring.
He left the data vault with his expression cold, empty. Another ghost in the machine.
That night, his encrypted report reached Elisabet Sobeck's eyes.
"Confirmation achieved. Ceph infection present in ONI command. Specter-9 compromised. Possible full cascade infiltration across Specter division. Recommend full-scale purge."
There was no reply. Not yet.
Because once you pulled the curtain back this far, there was no pretending anymore.
Ash had just initiated the final transfer to Horizon's dead-drop buffer when the lights dimmed. Not the flickering of hardware stress—a shift in power protocol. A heartbeat later, the vault's passive silence cracked.
"Specter-9 anomaly: unauthorized access in Vault Sector 3-E."
The voice wasn't human. It was ONI's internal counter-intrusion AI, BLACKWATCH, its tone clinical and cold.
Ash didn't hesitate. He scrubbed the final packet mid-upload, injecting a delay loop into the firewall's heartbeat. It bought him exactly 4.3 seconds—enough to vanish from the terminal and ghost into the ventilation subshaft.
Behind him, kinetic turrets dropped from the ceiling. Their smart barrels spun, scanning. One whirred in his direction, hesitated…
…and then moved on.
His rig flickered as he rerouted its profile signature. Horizon's stealth tech was good—but not infallible. And BLACKWATCH had just elevated to "Red Halo" lockdown status.
"Deploying internal response teams. Vault-level Omega-Violet breach suspected. Initiate Code Golem."
That meant kill-on-sight—no arrest, no containment. Whoever was on the network now would assume an external infiltrator. And if they matched Ash's presence with his official clearance logs…
I won't make it out as Ash.
He moved fast—cutting through the maintenance ducts, tapping bypass ports to trigger phantom alerts in the opposite wing. Explosions of meaningless data.
He reached an access lift two floors above the substation perimeter just as footsteps clattered below. Flashlights cut through the dark.
Ash triggered a pulse from his rig—flickering the lights across five decks. He used the confusion to override the elevator's destination code. Not to the surface.
To the waste reclamation shaft.
The drop was 30 meters. He fell like a dead thing, caught just before impact by his rig's localized inertia dampener. His shoulder screamed from the landing.
He didn't stop.
Three minutes later, he emerged from a maintenance hatch a kilometer outside the Specter-9 perimeter, breath ragged. His relay flared to life—a message from Horizon's low-band ghostnet.
"Link secure. Sobeck has eyes. Move to Safehouse Theta. Full burn."
Ash looked back once at the distant lights of Specter-9—its towers gleaming like sentinels in the dark.
----XXXX----
Please Drop some POWERSTONES.