Simon rushed out of the room and headed straight for the door marked Infirmary. His synthetic fingers smmed against the button on the side panel, and the door slid open in two smooth halves. Without hesitation, he stepped inside and climbed the dder leading to the upper level.

  The rungs creaked under his weight as he ascended, his sensors taking in every detail. His mind raced with anticipation, dreading what he might find—or not find—at the top.

  When he reached the infirmary, he froze.

  The room stretched before him, much like the rest of Tau—silent, abandoned, and overrun by grotesque, hardened structure gel. It clung to the walls and floor in fossilized veins.

  Simon stood in the doorway, motionless. His cameras locked onto the medical chair to his right.

  His processors stalled for a fraction of a second. His mind refused to accept what he was seeing.

  "No… they took her too," he murmured, his voice barely more than static. "Sarah…"

  His fists clenched at his sides.

  He wasn’t angry. Not really. What he felt was worse—regret, sorrow, an emptiness so profound it almost made him forget that he no longer had a human heart to feel it.

  She had suffered a fate worse than death.

  Sarah had endured unimaginable loneliness, starvation, and despair. She had watched her friends die, one by one, in the cold, suffocating depths of the ocean. And in the end, she had been left alone, the st guardian of something greater than herself.

  Simon had learned her story throughout his journey, piece by piece, from the bck boxes of her fallen companions. Each fragmented recording painted a picture of her struggle—her unshakable will, her desperate hope, and the crushing weight of her responsibility.

  He had listened to the ARK team’s final days—their voices breaking as they journeyed from Omicron to Tau, their st attempt to ensure humanity’s survival. He had mined the bck boxes of Ian and Jasper, heard Sarah comforting her friends as they wasted away, as they begged her to finish what they could not.

  But in the end... she didn't.

  And then he had arrived.

  When Simon had found her, she had been nothing but skin and bone, hooked up to a failing life support system. She was the st—perhaps the only—living human left on Earth. And she had spent her final days protecting the ARK, the st flicker of hope for a species perhaps already extinct.

  She had let him take the ARK, but the truth had destroyed her. When he told her that no one else had survived, that the world above was nothing but ruin, she had broken. The weight of it all—the knowledge that she was utterly, completely alone—had been too much.

  She had asked him to end it, to unplug the life support keeping her alive.

  And he had.

  Simon had granted her final wish.

  A mercy. A release. A way to escape the slow, suffocating death of solitude.

  Just as he had to the first Simon...

  He could still hear her voice, echoing in the depths of his memory, the st human's final words.

  She had spoken of her life in Greennd before the comet, of the friends she had made, of the people she had lost. She had clung to those memories, even as the darkness closed in around her.

  And before she took her st breath, she had begged him—

  "Send the ARK into space. Let humanity live among the stars."

  And he had done it.

  Despite everything, despite all the suffering, he had succeeded.

  But standing here, in the empty infirmary, staring at the vacant space where she had once in…

  It didn’t feel like a victory.

  It felt like another ghost added to the long list of the dead.

  Simon walked back to the dder and descended. He approached the mainframe and connected to it, structure gel flowing from his fingertips as the system linked with his mind.

  Digging through the files, he searched for security footage. He sifted through weeks of recordings, scanning, analyzing—until something made him stop.

  "What?" Simon murmured, his synthetic voice ced with confusion.

  Two weeks ago, two people wearing Haimatsu Power Suits had entered the station.

  They looked normal.

  No mutations. No signs of structure gel corruption. Their movements were precise, controlled—completely unlike the shambling husks of WAU’s creations.

  'But this is impossible. Everyone should be dead.'

  Simon’s mind raced. The st living human had died by his own hands. There was no one left. And yet, these people walked through the halls of Tau as if they belonged there.

  For the first time in a long while, Simon felt something stir inside him.

  Hope.

  He fast-forwarded through the footage, his focus sharpening. As the two figures stepped out of the pressurization chamber, one of them retrieved something from their suit—a small, glowing bluish orb.

  Simon zoomed in on it but he had no way of determining what it was. The orb pulsed faintly in the dim light, almost alive.

  Then, movement.

  Jin Yoshida.

  The corrupted man, the broken horror that still roamed the station. He had once been a human, but now, his shattered helmet housed nothing but writhing, dark tendrils that slithered where a face should have been.

  Hearing the door open, he screeched, an unnatural, high-pitched wail that echoed through the corridors. Then he shambled toward them, his body twisting unnaturally, tendrils reaching out, hunger in his every motion.

  But just as he was about to pounce—

  He froze.

  Like a statue. Motionless. Unmoving.

  One of the strangers stepped forward, unfazed. They grabbed Jin and dragged him away like dead weight. Simon could hardly process what he was seeing.

  'What just happened?'

  They descended deeper into the site, checking every door, every room, methodically sweeping through every corridor and nook.

  Then one of them spoke.

  "Lock it there."

  The other quickly hauled Jin into a room before sealing the door shut. The orb remained in their grip, faintly pulsing.

  Simon watched as they reached the living quarters. The heavy bulwark vault door had already been opened—by him. They stepped inside, carefully scanning the area. The dder Simon had used had been broken from his descent, the fall still vivid in his memory. One of them retrieved a rope and lowered themselves down.

  Simon’s focus sharpened.

  They weren’t just exploring. They had purpose.

  They found the bodies.

  Without hesitation, they began preparing them for transport. One of them pulled out a bck cube and pced it beside the corpses. Simon tensed as he watched.

  The cube moved.

  Its surface shifted, turned liquid, oozing like a living thing. It slithered over the bodies, enveloping them, forming getinous cocoons around each one.

  Simon’s processors surged.

  "That thing… it must be made from structure gel," he theorized.

  The strangers hauled the cocooned bodies onto their shoulders, carrying three of them as they made their way toward the exit. The footage ended there—no cameras outside to track where they had gone.

  Simon disconnected from the mainframe, his mind whirring with possibilities.

  "This is very strange," he muttered to himself.

  He repyed the details in his mind—the orb that could paralyze structure-gel-infested creatures. The bck cube that could preserve bodies. The people who walked through this nightmare as if they belonged here.

  His hope wavered.

  If there were others, it meant he wasn’t alone.

  But if they had technology capable of stopping creatures like Jin Yoshida, of harvesting bodies with structure gel—

  Who were they?

  And more importantly—

  Why the hell they took the bodies ?

  "I need to find them," Simon decided. "But first, I need to pay Jin a visit."

  Using the mainframe, he remotely unlocked the door to the room where Jin was locked away.

  The shuffling monstrosity quickly stumbled out, resuming its eerie patrol of the station. He wandering somewhere near the decompression chamber that led out of Site Tau.

  Simon rolled his shoulders. His synthetic muscles shifted with quiet efficiency.

  "Come on, Simon, you can do this," he muttered to himself.

  His cameras flickered to life, mapping out the best route. The mysterious visitors had taken the rope when they left, but Simon didn’t need it. His processors had already calcuted the trajectory.

  He took a shallow squat and jumped.

  The broken dder was several meters above him. Even with his full height, it was an impossible reach for a human. But for Simon, it was effortless. He soared through the darkness and nded without a sound, his mechanical limbs absorbing the impact with ease.

  The passage ahead was a tight, tubur hallway—pitch bck. A few minutes ago, the lights had still been on, but Simon had turned them all off. He didn’t need them. But Jin, despite his monstrous appearance, still did.

  Simon moved like a ghost, his silenced steps making no sound as he traversed the station. His attention remained split—half focused on his radar, tracking Jin’s position, half scanning the darkness ahead. The still-functioning cameras fed him information, keeping him aware of every movement Jin made. Even disconnected from the mainframe, Simon was the station now. He had control of everything within it.

  Down the dark halls, he suddenly stopped.

  Jin was ahead.

  The deformed creature shambled through the darkness, his body moving in an unnatural, jerky rhythm. From time to time, he stumbled into the walls, only to correct himself and continue his aimless patrol.

  Simon inched closer, his bdes already extending from his wrists.

  Two meters.

  One meter.

  Simon moved.

  Time slowed. His reflexes accelerated, the world sharpening to a razor’s edge.

  He raised his bdes—

  And brought them down in one swift motion.

  Two heavy thuds echoed in the silence.

  Jin’s arms hit the floor.

  A horrific screech tore through the air as a dark tendril shot from his helmet, lunging toward Simon’s face.

  Simon sidestepped effortlessly. Without his arms, Jin’s only defense was the writhing mass where his face should have been.

  But not for long.

  Simon ducked low and sshed. His bde met flesh and metal alike, cutting through Jin’s legs below the knee.

  Jin crashed forward, falling hard on his belly. He thrashed violently, his body convulsing as he tried to crawl, his tendrils shing wildly. The creature refused to stop. Even in pieces, it fought.

  Simon pressed his foot down on its back, pinning it in pce.

  Then, with a single precise motion, he severed Jin’s head.

  The head rolled slightly, the bck tendrils writhing in distress. And then—

  It moved.

  The severed head lunged at Simon, propelled by its writhing appendages.

  The tendrils shed out, wrapping around his arm like a vice. The force would have crushed human bones—but Simon no longer had bones to break.

  His free arm moved, wrist-bde fshing.

  With a clean thrust, the bde pierced the helmet, cutting through metal and skull alike, emerging from the other side in a spray of liquefied structure gel.

  The tendrils tightened—then convulsed wildly.

  Simon’s structure gel spread from his bde, crawling into Jin’s skull, siphoning every st trace of energy.

  The tentacles thrashed violently—

  Then slowed—

  Then went limp.

  Simon withdrew his bde. The head fell to the floor with a dull thud.

  The remaining structure gel inside it had already begun to harden.

  Simon exhaled.

  His shoulders rexed. His reflexes slowed. Time returned to normal.

  The fight was over.

  Jin Yoshida was finally dead.

  "Rest in peace, Jin," Simon muttered as he turned away, his voice hollow, the sentiment more ritual than heartfelt. He had no illusions that there was anything left of the man to find peace. Still, it felt right to say it.

  He headed down the hall toward the decompression chamber. The door behind him sealed shut with a hiss, and water began to flood the chamber, enveloping him in the familiar cold embrace of the abyss. The pressure stabilized. The door before him slid open, revealing the short tunnel that led outside.

  Simon stepped through, his sensors immediately scanning the area.

  The ocean stretched endlessly before him, swallowing all sound, all movement. He adjusted his vision, switching through multiple spectrums—infrared, electromagnetic, sonar. The currents around him were strong, turbulent as always. The poles that marked the path to the Abyss Climber Rig swayed lightly ,their beacons to only source of light ahead . This was the only way to the surface.

  Almost there.

  The Omega Sector was positioned near a fault line. Geological activity kept the waters unstable, with violent currents making any attempt to traverse the Abyss by foot nearly impossible. This was why the path of lights existed—to serve a dual function: guiding travelers and keeping the local fauna at bay. The creatures of the Abyss had been made far more aggressive by WAU’s influence, twisted into very territorial predators that prowled the deep.

  But WAU was gone now.

  So what did that mean for the creatures left behind?

  Simon had assumed, logically, that without the WAU’s directives, the creatures should have returned to their natural behavior, less hostile.

  But after what he had just seen with Jin, he wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

  His sensors picked up something unusual—something that sent an uneasiness through his mind.

  The structure gel was gone.

  Just like Site Alpha, Tau had been wiped clean.

  Simon turned his gaze back toward the station, scanning its exterior. He remembered how it had once been—coated in thick, strands of gel, infesting every surface, even filling the shattered portions of the structure. But now? It was sterile. As if something had carefully scraped it away.

  That thought disturbed him.

  'Why remove the gel outside but leave the gel inside untouched?'

  'They could have depressurized Tau entirely and then clean it out, but they didn’t.'

  'Why were they keeping it sealed ?'

  He shifted his attention back to his scans. To his right, faint power suit signals flickered at the periphery of the station’s detection range.

  The two strangers.

  The station had linked to them automatically the moment they had entered Tau and had kept tracking them since then.

  Their location made no sense.

  'There’s nothing out there. No structure, no wreckage. Nothing but the barren, lifeless ocean floor. So what the hell are they doing there?'

  Simon turned in their direction, adjusting his stance as the powerful current pushed against him. His legs shifted, his feet gripping the seabed with reinforced hydraulics.

  Then, his dorsal propulsion activated, countering the current’s force.

  A deep red light began to pulse from his form.

  At first, it seemed counterintuitive—to light himself up in the abyss, to become visible in a pce where invisibility meant survival.

  But it was a calcuted move.

  Most deep-sea creatures had evolved to be red or bck, a natural camoufge. In these depths, red light doesn’t reflect back—it simply vanishes.

  To the lifeforms of the abyss, Simon would be invisible.

  He could activate his cloaking system, but that would drain too much energy. He needed every reserve he had for whatever y ahead.

  And so, he walked.