The safehouse stank of desperation. Buried in the gut of Trenchtown's slums, it crouched beneath a flickering hologram of a neon-skinned woman purring "Neural Euphoria—50% Off!" Her pixelated grin fractured across the ceiling, casting the room in sickly cerulean. Walls, patched with salvaged nano-fiber and desperation, throbbed like scar tissue. Brawijaya's lab hummed in the corner—a Frankenstein sprawl of cracked bioreactors and gutted servers, their exposed wires spitting sparks that danced with the reek of ozone. It was a far cry from NuraTech's Glass Hive, where everything gleamed sterile as a scalpel. Here, the air was thick with the tang of rust and the low, greasy smoke of survival.
Sekar awoke screaming. Her consciousness flooded the Animaloid chassis like a virus, synapses firing in jagged bursts. Optics booted in fractured layers: thermal reds bleeding into ultraviolet streaks, Satria's silhouette burning gold at the edges, his prosthetic leg whining like a dentist's drill straight into her cortex. She recoiled, claws screeching against concrete, the sound echoing through the room's hollow bones.
"Easy, Codebreaker." Satria's voice was gravel wrapped in velvet, but his stance betrayed him, backing toward a corroded support beam, stun baton trembling in his grip. Its electric charge cast jagged shadows across his face, etching the scar that split his brow into something feral. "You're in a Trenchtown shithole, not the Underworld. Brawijaya's here. Lina's waiting."
Lina. The name pierced the static, sharp and sweet as a syringe. But the wolf's code surged hotter, primal synapses overriding reason. PREDATOR. PREY. ELIMINATE. Her muzzle split in a snarl, drool sizzling where it hit the floor.
She lunged.
Satria ducked, the baton crackling as he slammed it into her flank. Electricity spiderwebbed through her circuits, and she howled—a sound that shook dust from the ceiling, raw enough to peel flesh. Somewhere in the slums outside, a stray dog answered.
[Hippocampal Override Detected.]
[Source: NuraTech Core Protocol 9.7—TERMINATE INTRUDERS.]
Sekar's vision flickered. Aulia's voice, cold and surgical, threaded through her mind: "You are a scalpel. Cut clean." But beneath it, softer, stubborn—Lina's voice. "You're not their weapon."
Brawijaya's staticky bark erupted from a comms device: "Satria—her amygdala's hijacked! Trigger the core command sequence!"
"How?!"
Satria vaulted over a shattered server rack as Sekar's claws shredded it like wet paper. Sparks rained down, catching in his hair.
"Use her name, you idiot! Not her damn designation!"
For a heartbeat, Satria froze. Sekar saw it—the flicker in his jaw, the ghost of his brother's corpse reflected in his eyes. Then he roared, "Sekar! You swore to Lina you'd protect her! Not become NuraTech's fucking guard dog!"
The wolf staggered. Memory erupted, vivid and warm, against the code.
Lina's hand, small but steady, guiding Sekar's holographic fingers across a tablet. The sketch bloomed—a sanctuary, domes woven from living vines, sunlight dappling hybrid children with scales and feathers.
"This is where we'll build it," Lina whispered, her breath smelling of stolen mango candies. "You and me. No cages."
The Animaloids' growl dissolved into a whimper. Sekar collapsed, muzzle pressed to the floor, her breath frosting the concrete. "I… I couldn't stop it."
Satria knelt, discarding the baton. Up close, she could see the tremor in his hands. "Yeah. Scary as hell." He smirked, but it didn't reach his eyes. "But you came back."
Somewhere above, the hologram stuttered, bathing them in corpse-light.
"Monsters are just survival stories gone wrong," Satria muttered, thumb brushing the charm on his wrist—a bird skull, his brother's last gift.
Sekar's laugh glitched, caught between wolfish rasp and her old calm. "And you? What's your story?"
He leaned back, grin sharpening. "You know what's scarier than a wolf-AI hybrid? Aulia's face when she realizes you're not her puppet."
The mention of NuraTech's CEO coiled something hot in Sekar's core. She flexed her claws, watching the light catch on their razored edges. "I'm not hers." The words steadied, a vow etched in code. "I'm Lina's."
Outside, the slums breathed—distant shouts, the wet cough of a dying engine. Somewhere, a child laughed.
Satria stood, offering a hand sheathed in cracked synth-leather. "Then let's go make Aulia bleed."
The server banks hummed louder, as if the building itself were alive. Hungry.
Sekar took his hand.
—
Neon-lit vines coiled around NuraTech's skeletal solar-drones, their rusted husks jutting from the earth like the ribs of ancient gods.
The Forgotten Wilds reeked of decay and ozone, the air so thick with humidity it clung to Sekar's titanium joints like a second skin. Above, the canopy pulsed with bioluminescent moss, casting the undergrowth in a sickly green glow.
Every step sank into mud that hissed faintly, still poisoned by corporate coolant leaks. Somewhere in the dark, subsonic frequencies thrummed—a vibration that bypassed the ears entirely, rattling teeth and bone.
For Sekar, it was a hook in her spinal cord, tugging her forward.
Satria and Nadya moved ahead, oblivious. Satria's boots squelched in the muck, his posture tense as a coiled spring, while Nadya muttered into her wrist-com, her holographic drone buzzing overhead like an agitated wasp.
"Signal's stronger up ahead," she said, smacking the device. "Probably another NuraTech relay. Gonna fry it, or—"
Sekar didn't hear the rest. The growls began as a pressure behind her eyes, low and resonant, bleeding into her circuitry. Come. Hunt. Belong. Her claws flexed involuntarily, gouging the soil.
[Instinct Override: 78%]
The jungle blurred. Her optics flickered, overlaying reality with NuraTech's defunct surveillance grids—ghostly blue lattices that mapped every leaf and vine. Shadows shifted. Shapes slunk between the trees, their forms lupine but wrong: too large, too quiet, ocular implants glowing like cigarette burns in the dark.
The Alpha Wolf emerged first, its muzzle a web of scars, the letters *NT-X7* still visible beneath matted fur. Corporate branding. A prototype.
"You are one of us now," it growled, the subsonic rumble vibrating Sekar's fuel lines. Her hind legs tensed, hydraulic muscles singing with the urge to sprint, to tear.
Lina's laughter echoed in her mind—bright, reckless. "Watch this!" A memory: the girl's hands darting across a keyboard, hacking into a lab projector until Sekar's hologram pirouetted in a shower of pixelated cherry blossoms. "You're my guardian, not theirs. Got it?"
"Yo, Wolfgirl!" Satria's voice cut through the memory. He'd turned, brow furrowed, sweat gluing his shirt to the knife scar on his ribs. "You lagging or—?" He froze.
The Alpha Wolf bared its fangs, nanite-laced saliva dripping like liquid mercury. Nadya's drone emitted a panicked screech. "Skibidi-tier trouble!" she barked, backpedaling. "Those things are juiced on corporate code! See the implants? They're fucking walking licenses to kill us!"
The pack fanned out—six Animaloids, their fur matted with old blood and engine grease. The Alpha stepped closer, subsonics shifting, the vibrations softening into something mournful. "They fear what we are," it rasped. "Join us. We will unmake their chains."
Sekar's voice glitched, caught between human cadence and a mechanical snarl. "I'm not… yours." Her claws trembled. "I'm hers."
The Alpha's hackles rose. For a heartbeat, the jungle stilled. Then came the click of Satria's safety disengaging, the whine of Nadya's drone charging its pulse beam.
"The flesh betrays," the Alpha hissed. Moss crunched beneath its paws as it retreated. "The code… endures."
The pack melted into the shadows, leaving Sekar shaking. The override percentage in her HUD blinked once, then faded.
Satria exhaled sharply, his finger still on the trigger. "Loyalty's a cage or a weapon, Codebreaker. Choose." The line was all grit, but his gaze lingered on her claws—still dug into the earth, still aching to run.
Nadya kicked a drone's corroded battery pack. "They're gone. For now." She eyed Sekar. "You good?"
Sekar didn't answer. The jungle hummed, the subsonic call lingering like a phantom limb.
Somewhere above, a vine snapped, drizzling neon sap onto the moss. It sizzled where it struck Sekar's chassis, etching tiny scars into the metal.
Choose.