---
Asuka knew she was being watched.
She didn't know when it started—just that at some point the air around her had changed. Every corridor felt narrower. Every silence heavier. Phantom didn't follow people like predators.
They followed them like accountants.
She kept her head down as she moved through the temporary operations hub Phantom had erected at the edge of the forest. Portable walls. Sealed doors. Too clean for a place surrounded by death. Too quiet for a place holding something like Richard.
The data she'd seen wouldn't leave her head.
Live feeds. Neural thresholds. Aggression modeling.
They weren't reacting to Richard.
They were anticipating him.
Asuka stopped at a junction, pretending to adjust the strap on her pack. She slipped the small drive into her sleeve—old-school, physical. Pluto would've laughed at her for that. But Phantom couldn't remotely wipe what it didn't know existed.
"Hey," she muttered to herself. "Just breathe. Get in, get out."
The mission was simple on paper: escort a Phantom unit to retrieve a damaged containment module from the perimeter. Low threat. Minimal exposure.
Bullshit.
Her comm crackled. "Escort team, move. Window closing."
Asuka swallowed. "Copy."
The forest swallowed them almost immediately. Trees bent at wrong angles. The ground shifted subtly underfoot, mechanical and alive in ways that made her skin crawl.
She felt it before it happened.
A pressure change.
A hum in the air.
Like the world holding its breath.
"Asuka," Devon's voice cut in over comms. "I've got interference—do you see that?"
She opened her mouth to respond.
Nothing came through.
"—suka? Asuka, say something!"
Her comm was dead.
She stopped walking.
The Phantom unit didn't.
"Hey!" she shouted. "Stop—comms are down!"
They didn't even slow.
That's when the ground gave way.
The earth dropped out beneath her with a violent crack, metal grinding under dirt. Asuka screamed as she fell hard onto her back, the impact driving the air from her lungs in a sharp, painful burst.
She gasped, coughing, vision swimming.
Above her, the Phantom unit stood at the edge of the collapse.
Not rushing to help.
Not reacting at all.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Asuka rasped.
The forest around her shifted.
Panels slid. Roots retracted. Something massive moved beneath the surface.
A containment breach.
"No," she whispered. "No, no, no—"
The thing pulled itself free with a sound like wet concrete tearing apart.
Plagued.
Not a lower-tier one.
Bigger. Faster. Smarter.
Its head snapped toward her instantly.
"HELP!" Asuka screamed into her dead comm. "RICHARD—SIARA—ANYONE!"
The Phantom handler's voice crackled faintly through a backup channel, distant and cold.
"Containment failure acknowledged."
That was it.
No extraction order.
No suppression command.
No warning.
The Plagued lunged.
Asuka rolled just in time, claws ripping through the ground where her head had been. She scrambled to her feet, pain screaming through her ribs.
"You assholes!" she yelled upward. "You fucking knew!"
The Phantom unit stepped back in unison.
The handler spoke, voice perfectly steady.
"Data acquisition in progress."
Asuka's heart dropped into her stomach.
She ran.
Branches tore at her face. The forest rearranged itself, her path twisting, narrowing. The Plagued chased her effortlessly, slamming into trees, snapping them like matchsticks.
She tripped.
Hit the ground hard.
The thing was on her instantly.
Its weight crushed the air from her lungs. She screamed as claws pierced her shoulder, hot pain exploding down her arm. Blood soaked into the dirt beneath her.
"Fuck—fuck—fuck!" she cried, kicking, punching, anything.
She reached into her sleeve with shaking fingers, yanked the drive free, and crushed it in her palm.
"YOU DON'T GET HIM," she sobbed. "YOU DON'T GET TO USE HIM—"
The Plagued reared back.
Asuka looked up at it, tears streaming down her face, chest burning, vision blurring.
"I figured you out," she whispered. "You bastards are worse than the monsters."
The claws came down.
Once.
Twice.
Her scream cut off abruptly.
Above, Phantom sensors recorded everything—heart rate spike, neural collapse, termination timestamp.
The handler spoke softly into their mic.
"Subject Asuka. KIA."
A pause.
Then, clinically:
"Designation: Acceptable Loss."
The forest went still.
---
Siara felt it before anyone said anything.
A silence where Asuka's presence used to be.
"Where's Asuka?" Luna asked, already knowing the answer.
No one replied.
Richard lifted his head slowly, something dark shifting behind his eyes.
Devon's voice broke over the comms. "She's not responding. She's—she's gone."
Siara stared at the forest.
At Phantom's vehicles.
At the people who had promised control.
Her hands curled into fists.
Somewhere nearby, a Phantom operative closed a file.
And the group—what was left of it—began to fracture.
Forever.