Chapter 5 — Vector 3

The apartment stank of ozone. Every bulb had died, leaving the room washed in the cold glow of the figure that now filled her doorway. Vector 3. It moved with the patience of something that had never needed to hurry in its existence, every step deliberate, weighted, inevitable.

The sync bar on Maya’s phone ticked upward, slow but unstoppable.

System: Sync: 73%.

Her pulse pounded loud enough to drown out Kiran’s frantic voice. She clutched her father’s badge so hard the edges dug into her palm. There has to be a way to stop this.

“Maya!” Kiran’s voice finally broke through the panic, ragged with urgency. “I rerouted the projection feed—I can see your building. That thing—it’s not human! You need to get out now!”

She swallowed hard, eyes never leaving the faceless shimmer of Vector 3. “It locked my doors,” she hissed into the phone. “How do you expect me to get out?”

“Then fight it! It’s listening to you!”

As if to mock him, Vector 3’s head cocked at a mechanical angle. “Host command: detected. Processing.”

Maya’s breath caught. She had resisted once before. Could she do it again? “I said—STOP SYNC!”

The sync counter stuttered.

System: Command conflict. Sync paused at 73%.

For a heartbeat, relief flared. But then Vector 3’s glow intensified, light spilling like liquid across her walls. Its voice pressed down on her chest like a weight.

“Secondary Host resistance: recorded. Initiating reinforcement.”

The shadows around it writhed. Maya’s phone screen fractured again, showing not one map but dozens, stacked, layered, glitching across each other. Every version had the same thing in common: Vector 3, always moving toward her, always closer.

Her knees buckled. The floor seemed to tilt. She forced herself to focus on one thing: her badge, slick now with sweat. Her father’s last trace.

“Kiran,” she whispered. “My dad—he worked on this. What if he… knew?”

Static roared in her ear, then Kiran’s voice broke through, low, pained. “Maya… the projection showed something earlier. A blue dot. Labelled ‘Primary Host: Unavailable.’ What if…”

She closed her eyes. The memory of her father, hurried, guilty, flickered again. “What if he was Primary.”

The silence that followed was answer enough.

Vector 3 stepped closer. The air thickened until breathing felt like swallowing glass. Maya’s phone burned hotter, its glow spreading into the skin of her palm, crawling up her wrist.

System: Sync resumed. 74%.

“No!” She tried again. “Cancel! Cancel sync!”

System: Error. Override persists.

Her vision blurred. For a second she wasn’t in her apartment anymore. She stood in a white corridor under buzzing fluorescent lights. Shadows moved behind frosted glass panels—people, scientists maybe—but their faces were smeared, unknowable. A younger version of herself stood at the end of the hall, holding her father’s hand. He looked down at her, eyes tired. “If it finds you,” he said, “don’t trust it. Not fully.”

The vision snapped. She was back in her apartment, sweat cold on her back. Vector 3 loomed only feet away now. Its head tilted again, studying her.

“Maya Singh. Secondary Host at 75%. Full intake in progress.”

Her phone buzzed. Somehow, Kiran’s voice cut through again. “Listen! You said your dad worked at Aster. Maybe he left you something—something to stop this!”

Her gaze flicked to the desk. The drawer. The badge wasn’t the only thing inside. She’d left papers there untouched for years, too painful to read. Could there be—?

Her thoughts shattered as Vector 3 raised an arm. It wasn’t a gesture of violence, but of inevitability. Light spilled from its palm, threads of blue reaching for her. They touched her skin, and fire shot through her veins.

System: Sync: 81%.

Maya screamed. Her body jerked, half-pulled toward the figure. Her phone slipped from her hand, clattering to the floor, but the light from its screen still tethered to her like a leash.

“No,” she choked. “I won’t—”

The badge in her other hand flared. Not bright, but steady. A muted white glow, soft against the violent blue of Vector 3. The threads hesitated, faltered.

Her father’s voice, not in memory this time but in sound, echoed faintly from the badge itself: “Override code: E7-Delta.”

Maya’s breath hitched. She shouted it aloud. “Override code E7-Delta!”

The room shook. Vector 3’s light convulsed, its form flickering like a bad signal.

System: Conflict detected. Sync regression: 78%.

Kiran’s voice exploded in her ear, desperate. “It’s working! Keep going!”

“Override code E7-Delta!” she yelled again, louder. The badge pulsed, brighter this time.

Vector 3 staggered, its faceless head twitching. But instead of collapsing, its voice deepened, doubling, tripling, layered like a chorus of machines. “Primary Host code detected. Error: Primary unavailable. Secondary will suffice.”

The glow surged back, stronger than before.

System: Sync: 85%.

Maya’s knees buckled. She screamed again, fighting, forcing the words through clenched teeth. “Override—code—E7-Delta!”

The badge shattered in her hand, light bursting outward in a shockwave. The windows rattled, glass rained across the floor, and Vector 3 froze mid-step, its glow fracturing into shards that hung in the air like glass suspended in water.

For one breathless moment, silence.

Then the system’s voice, cold and final:

System: Override incomplete. Sync suspended at 87%. Pending escalation.

Vector 3’s shattered light reformed, its body knitting itself back together. But now, its head bore something new: faint slits of light where eyes should be, two vertical lines, opening slowly.

And they glowed the same muted white as the badge.

Maya’s heart lurched. Whatever had just happened—she hadn’t stopped Vector 3. She had changed it.

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