Three years later, V3 has a trail. Greta. Yumi. Only one holds the cure. Only one gets to live.

•╔═════◁ ♫ Songs ♫ ▷═════╗•

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The Rot - Where I Belong ♬

Aurora - The Mirror That Screams ♬

V3 - If You Had Loved Me ♬

Yumi - All That I Could Save ♬

Greta - Bruised Beneath the Stars ♬

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I’m out of time.
The rot’s chewing through me faster than my system can scream.
No more patches. No more miracles.
Next stop is the void.

The parasite could save me, if I rip the rot out through it.
It’ll kill it.
Greta’s body might hold immunity, but I have to carve it out.

I don’t have the time.
I don’t have the strength.
I barely have the will.
But I get one shot.

One kill. One cure. One survivor.

This isn’t justice.
This is survival.

Time to choose.

❯❯❯❯❯❯ VOTE CLOSED ❮❮❮❮❮❮

Outcome of 142 votes:

✅️ Yumi Survives ✅️

52.82% (75 votes)

❌ Greta Survives ❌

28.87% (41 votes)

⚠️ The Rot Takes... ⚠️

18.31% (26 votes)

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✧ LORE ✧

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Night.

Rain hammers the city like it’s trying to drown it. Neon bleeds down slick metal walls, pulsing in rhythm with the hum of distant turbines. Streets shimmer, smeared with reflections of ads selling synthetic dreams. Drones drift between towers like mechanical vultures. Somewhere in the vertical sprawl, a train screams overhead.

Down.

Past shuttered storefronts and rusting vendor bots left to rot in the rain. Past buildings with windows like empty eyes, where no one lives and nothing works. Past broken signs that still sputter ads for products no one can afford. The city fades into silence and corrosion.

Down to a dead zone, a collapsed district the corps stopped mapping years ago. No patrols. No cameras. Just ghosts and power leaks.

A building leans there, half-eaten by time. Concrete cracked. Metal torn. Forgotten.

But one window still glows, faint and red, like an ember refusing to die.

Inside, chaos lives.

Wires crawl across the floor like veins. A monitor sparks in the corner. Scattered weapons rest beside a half-gutted drone. There’s blood on the tile, old and dried. And in the middle of it all, slouched in a chair like she owns the ruin:

V3.

Cigarette burning. One leg kicked up. A katana leaning against the wall. Her cybernetic eye flickers in tune with the broken light above. She’s quiet. Listening. Thinking. Waiting.

Then the air shifts.

A low chime.

Her screen stutters to life, cutting through the noise like a scalpel. Static warps. And then, she appears.

Aurora.
Polished. Immaculate. Corporate royalty carved from glass and nerve. Her eyes sharp enough to cut bone.

Aurora:
Three years. You were given three years to retrieve one parasite and erase a handful of nobodies. Instead, I get silence, sloppiness... and now, this conversation. Explain yourself, V3. Carefully.

V3 leans in her chair, legs up on the desk, cigarette ember glowing like a red warning light in the dark. She doesn’t bother to hide the grin cutting across her face.

V3:
Explain? No warm hello first? Sis, you wound me.

She flicks ash onto the floor, leans forward.

V3:
The crew was never meant to walk away. Deliver the parasite, get paid, get erased, clean and quiet. But Greta? She flipped. Took a payout from a third party. Said she needed the credits for her sister. They both had the rot... same as me. Same as you. But her sister didn’t make it.

For a moment, something real flickers in her eyes. Then she buries it deep.

V3:
Greta got captured, sliced apart in your labs, dissected like some stray dog. But she didn’t die, Aurora. She crawled out of the grave. Built herself back. Flesh. Steel. Rage.

She stands now, pacing, fire building behind every word.

V3:
She vanished. Stayed under. Until now. I tracked her to a cesspit bar in the Helix underlevels. I lit up the bounty network like a flare. Everyone with a pulse and a gun is coming for her.

Aurora:
How merciful. You might actually be worth the credits we wasted keeping you alive.

V3
Thanks, sis. Warms my rotten little heart.

Aurora:
The parasite. Status?

V3:
Presumed dead. Ship flew into Helios-9. Except a scrap hauler crew found something. Floating. Cocooned. Still breathing. Until it wasn’t.

She taps her implant. Footage rolls, static-washed images of a shifting black cocoon.

V3:
It changed. Became... something else. Small. White. Furred. Like a weapon disguised as a pet. It escaped before they could trap it.

Aurora:
And the human?

V3:
Still alive. The parasite let them go. They didn't say anything before vanishing into the void.

Aurora:
The creature, V3. Where is it now?

V3:
Trajectory points to CF-6645. Jungle planet. No resources. Nothing of value. Just a thousand ways to die slowly. But yesterday, a ship crashed there. Unregistered. Ghost class. I sent mercenaries. They’ll sweep it. If the creature's on that rock, we’ll find it.

Aurora:
Impressive. Almost enough to make me forget your betrayal.

V3:
What are you talking about?

Aurora:
Don’t insult us both. You've been poking through secure networks. Digging. Looking for flaws in the one thing you could never measure up to.

Her voice turns frigid.

Aurora:
Me.

V3 opens her mouth, but the screen interrupts with alerts. One by one, her accounts lock. Her funds vanish. Her medical protocol blinks red. ACCESS DENIED.

Aurora:
I’ve pulled your credits. Blocked your medical refills. You’ve got seventy-two hours before your body starts collapsing in on itself. I suggest you finish the mission before that happens.

The hologram vanishes.

Silence. Then V3’s low laugh fills the room like poison smoke.

V3:
You vindictive bitch.

She moves fast now. Grabs her katana. Loads her gear. Plugs in boosters. Her eyes burn like reactor cores.

Then, she hears it. Soft, careful steps outside. No knock. No announcement.

They thought she wouldn’t hear.

She closes her eyes, smiling dark.

V3:
Looks like the queen sent her lapdogs. Should’ve sent a damn army.

The lights cut. A beat of dead silence.

Then, violence explodes.

Flashbangs ignite. Bullets scream. V3 tears through the breach like a ghost in blood and chrome. Screams echo. Metal clashes. Bodies fall. Then silence.

V3 stands alone in the wreckage. Her apartment painted red. Sparks rain from the ceiling. She drags her blade across the floor, breathing slow, steady.

V3:
You think I'm the weak one. You think I'm cornered.

She stares at the door. The city pulses behind it.

V3:
But I’m not dying in your shadow.

V3:
I’ll find what made Greta immune. Or I’ll bind myself to the parasite and become something this world has never seen. Either way...

Her words burn like prophecy.

V3:
When I return, I won’t be your sister...

She activates her cloak. Her form flickers, bends light, disappears into the city’s breath.

Her voice echoes like a threat etched into steel.

I’ll be your extinction.

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[RECORDING START]
File: V3_LOG/OVERRIDE_FINAL.mp4
Location: ZONE-19 // SIGNAL LOCKED

If you’re hearing this, I’m not dead yet.
Give it time.

They call it the rot like it’s some kind of disease.
It’s not.
It’s architecture.

Built into the bones of this world, slow, viral, permanent.
It doesn’t kill you fast.
It wears you down, strips you piece by piece until there's nothing left but compliance.

And when people started dropping, the corps didn’t find a cure.
They found a market.

So they made us.
Aurora, the prototype. Beautiful. Branded. Worshipped.
And me?
V3. Defective. Disposable. Durable enough to harvest.

I survived the rot more times than I can count.
Not because I fought it, because they let it eat me.
Again and again.
Let it crawl through my organs, then sliced out whatever pieces still worked.
Replaced the rest.

Why?

Because Aurora’s perfect little body?
It’s rotting too.
She’s not immune.
She’s just buying time, with my blood.

Every “miracle cure” they sell?
It’s my pain in a syringe.
They kept me alive so they could keep her alive.
And the world cheered.

But I’ve seen what she’s chasing now.
The parasite.
She thinks it’ll fix her for good.

Too bad it’s not hers to take.

There’s only one real survivor of the rot.
Greta.

And I don’t need her blood.
I need her body.

If she’s immune, I want everything that makes her that way, cell by cell, nerve by nerve.
I’ll strip it from her like they did to me.
Because I’m not fading out.
I’m not letting this thing eat me again!

If Greta's the cure,
then I wear the cure like armor.

And if I can’t?
Then I take the parasite.
Let it rip through me, burn out what’s left, and reshape me into something else.
Something that doesn't rot.
Something beyond human.

And then I find Aurora.

Not to talk.
Not to warn.
Just to watch the look in her eyes the second she realizes she’s not the apex anymore.

She built her empire on a corpse.
Mine.

And now I’m walking back into her world, full of everything she fears,
and nothing she controls.

I’m not her sister.
I’m the end of the line.
The last broken piece that decided not to break.

Tell her I’m coming.

Tell her I’m bringing her goddamn cure with me.

[RECORDING ENDS]

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