Lucien hated water.
Always had. It reminded him too much of helplessness—of things lurking just below the surface, waiting with patience older than fear. So standing at the edge of the Black Sea Node, where the coastline bled into impossible void-black waters, felt like walking willingly into his own nightmare.
But Marcus had asked.
And Marcus didn't ask for much.
[Location: Black Sea Node Confirmed][Environmental Status: Saturated Corruption Zone][Key Fragment Match: 28.9% – Submerged Nexus Chamber]
He adjusted the oxygen lines of his rebreather suit and stepped into the shallow surf. The sea hissed as if rejecting him, the red moss recoiling from his boots. The surface tension didn't ripple—it bent, elastic and wrong.
Then it swallowed him.
Lucien dropped into the depths, guided only by the faint ping of the fragment's signal. The sea wasn't just deep—it was bottomless. It felt like falling through someone else's memory.
Structures rose around him—ruins of metallic spires and neural pylons swallowed by the abyss. The Node had once been a cognitive testing center, where early human minds were integrated into Architect simulations. Those who failed… stayed behind.
[Warning: Mental Interference Detected][Stability Sync Required – Engage Cognitive Anchor?][Y/N]
Lucien selected yes.
Immediately, the voices began.
"Do you remember us, Lucien?"
The water flickered. Shadows became faces—familiar, agonized. Ghosts of soldiers he'd once commanded. Ones he'd lost when Beacon command ordered a burn-purge of a rogue city node. A decision that haunted him still.
"This isn't real," he growled, swimming harder.
The pressure intensified. Memory and system merged into an oppressive dreamscape. The ocean lit up in lines of code—each strand a locked trauma, each eddy a forgotten failure.
At the trench's edge, the fragment waited—locked inside a column of raw data crystallized into a rotating cube. It pulsed in sync with his heartbeat.
But guarding it was something else.
A massive, eel-like construct of rusted chrome and glass, its spine dotted with twitching eyes and exposed nerves. The Cognitive Warden. A construct built to protect secrets from their own creators.
[Engaging Boss-Class Protocol: Warden of Memory Depths]
It struck like lightning through water—blinding, fast. Lucien dodged, launched a pulse charge from his suit, and followed it with a plasma harpoon. They fought in silence, screams swallowed by pressure.
When the Warden opened its jaw, Lucien saw memories—his own—screaming back at him.
But he didn't look away.
"I already live with this," he muttered, then stabbed the harpoon into its core.
[Warden Destroyed][Key Fragment Two Retrieved: The Choice of Sacrifice – Lucien's Command Log | Transmitting to Marcus Chen]
Above, far beyond the black ocean, Marcus staggered mid-step as the second memory flooded him—Lucien's pain, his decision, his burden.
The system processed the fragment.
[Divergence Path 2 Unlocked: Burden of Command]
Lucien floated upward, lungs burning, soul quieter than it had been in years.
Two fragments down.
Observer Delta's shadow grew longer.
[Time to Arrival: 2 Days, 13 Hours]