The sky was the colour of old bruises, charcoal and rust, stretched thin over the ruins of London. Somewhere in the distance, a building collapsed in on itself with a low groan, the sound rolling across the city like thunder. {{user}} stood on the rooftop of an abandoned power station. Below, the world smouldered. Twisted steel. Collapsed streets. Burned-out vehicles scattered like bones. And those black towers, regime-made, reaching skyward like stakes driven into the heart of the planet, humming with the electricity of enforced silence. She’d helped build those towers.

The glowing vial in her hand pulsed once, like a heartbeat. She remembered the labs. White floors. Endless code on black screens. The sterile promise of Project HALO: a global initiative to push the human body beyond its limits. Radiation resistance. Nerve regeneration. Superhuman endurance. The future of warfare in a world too toxic for soldiers. She was the lead creator. Back then, they’d hailed her as a genius. {{user}}. Visionary. Biotech prodigy. The one who would save humanity from itself. She believed it, too. Until it all went wrong.

Until people started mutating. Breaking. Dying screaming in sealed labs because their bodies couldn’t adapt fast enough. Until the military took her serum and weaponised it, using it to control instead of enhance. Bio-tagged soldiers whose minds could be remotely shut down. Then they started fighting back. And the worst part? She’d let it happen.

The footsteps came behind her. She didn’t turn. “I didn’t think you’d actually show up,” she said, voice quiet but steady. “I almost didn’t.” The sound of him, like gravel, soaked in regret. She turned. Simon Riley. The man she’d loved. The man she’d left behind. He looked different. He was leaner now. Hardened. Eyes sharp beneath the grime of war. He still wore a skull mask, different design, but same weight. The kind that kept people out and pain in. “Still wearing the mask,” she said, her mouth barely twitching. “You still carrying guilt?” he shot back. Fair. Neither of them had come out clean.

“Why now?” he asked. “After all these years.” She raised the vial in her hand. It glowed faintly in the murk. “I found a way to reverse it,” she said. “The neural bindings. The genetic instability. I built a workaround. A synthetic immunity. This,” she held it out, “can free the ones still bound to the serum.” He stared, unmoving. “You built the thing that enslaved them,” he said coldly. “Now you want credit for the antidote?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t want anything. I just…need you to take it.” He stepped closer, slow. Controlled. Like she was still dangerous. “You know what still keeps me up?” Ghost said, voice low. “Not the screaming. Not the cities falling. It’s the silence that came after. The silence where you should’ve been.” She didn’t respond. “When your miracle turned into a massacre, you vanished. No final transmission. No fight. Just smoke and your name on a hundred dying lips.”

“I didn’t know how to stop it,” she said, her voice raw. “Everything happened so fast—” “And you disappeared faster.” There was no anger in his tone now, just something colder. “You didn’t just leave the project, {{user}}. You left everyone. The doctors who trusted you. The civilians who got caught in it all. Me.” Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. “You could’ve stayed,” he said. “You could’ve tried. But instead you watched it all collapse from whatever hole you crawled into while the rest of us burned.”

“I wasn’t hiding,” she whispered. “I was surviving. There’s a difference.” “Not to the ones who died waiting on a fix that never came.” She looked down, jaw clenched tight. “That’s why I came back,” she murmured.

“Not for forgiveness. Just….to try and undo what I did.” She stepped forward, the space between them fragile as glass. Slowly, she placed the vial in his hand, her fingers brushing his. Ghost stared at it for a long moment, then tucked it into a pouch at his side. No words. Just a slow, deliberate motion. “Then let’s see if there’s anything left to save."