Hawk didn’t break.
He rebuilt himself with fire.
And I wouldn’t allow Reese to mess with that.
32
Hawk
Lyric guided us through the corridors with soft verbal cues that felt less like directions and more like a shepherd leading two wolves straight into a pen.
“The next level is below,” she said. “Access via the lift ahead.”
“Lift?” Boone’s voice crackled faintly in our comms—weak, like it was fighting static. “Hawk, Julia—status?”
I clicked my mic. “We’re inside. Signal’s barely—”
The rest dissolved into scrambled noise.
Julia’s jaw tightened. “He’s isolating us.”
“Which means we’re getting close,” I replied.
We reached a set of double doors, seamless and unmarked. They opened with a soft sigh, revealing a lift bathed in sterile white light. The floor gleamed. No buttons. No controls.
Just a black glass panel on one wall.
“Step in,” Lyric said gently.
Julia looked at me. “If this thing drops us into a pit, I’m haunting you.”
I barely managed a smile. “I’ll take my chances.”
We stepped inside.
The doors sealed.
The lights dimmed.
And the air shifted—cooler, thicker, heavy with the electric scent of machinery running somewhere far beneath our feet.
Holographic text scrolled across the glass panel.
LEVEL 1 — SURFACE SYSTEMS
LEVEL 2 — DATA VAULT
LEVEL 3 — SIMULATIONS
LEVEL 4 — DECISIONS
LEVEL 5 — ECHO CORE
Julia read it aloud, voice flat. “Decisions? Echo Core? What the hell does that mean?”
“It means we’re not at the bottom yet,” I said.
Lyric’s voice chimed through the speakers. “Descending to Level 3.”
