A low hum.
Flashes of light.
Then… silence.
Mayu opened her eyes slowly.
The world around her was nothing but ruins.
The circular chamber lay split open, its walls molten from the psychic blast.
Debris still rained down from above, but the heart of the complex… was dead.
The Source had vanished.
Dissolved.
Reduced to a smoking crater.
"Mayu… can you hear me?"
It was Lia's voice—weak, trembling, but alive.
Mayu turned.
Zéro knelt beside the scout, one arm bleeding, yet smiling through the pain.
Seth leaned against a fallen pillar, gasping, his glasses cracked.
They had survived.
"D-did we… do it?" Seth asked.
Mayu didn't answer at once.
Her gaze remained fixed on the spot where the Source had stood.
She still felt a tremor.
An echo.
As if something… persisted.
"It's not over," she whispered.
"What do you mean?"
She stepped slowly toward the charred remains.
Her boots crunched in the ash.
Then she saw an opening.
A passage revealed beneath the Source's foundations.
A hatch, scorched by fire but still accessible.
"One level down," she said.
"They hid something here."
Zéro approached, pulling out a flashlight.
"You really want to go now? We're exhausted."
Mayu met his eyes.
"This is precisely when it matters. If the Source was the heart… what they protected below is the project's soul."
Lia glanced at the opening, then nodded.
"We finish what we started."
They descended.
The metal ladder groaned under their weight.
The air grew denser, filled with an unreal cold—almost glacial after the heat of battle.
At the bottom of the shaft lay a glass corridor.
All around… vats.
Hundreds of them in neat rows.
And inside each…
Bodies.
Clones.
Perfect copies of Mayu.
Some younger. Some older.
Some in stasis. Others… eyes open, but empty.
Mayu felt her stomach twist.
Dizziness washed over her.
"So this was it… their real reserve. The project's future."
Zéro knocked on a vat. The worn label quivered.
Subject #046. Status: Ready.
"You're the prototype," Seth murmured. "And those… the optimized versions."
Mayu moved to a vat at the far end.
Something inside glowed differently.
A figure.
Identical to her.
But… with open eyes. Alive.
And the same azure gaze.
"Number 00…" Mayu breathed.
And the copy… smiled.
A shiver ran down Mayu's spine.
It wasn't over.