#COCOON

Elias Reiss stood perfectly still.

EX-013 had gone inert again. But the damage was already done.

The betrayal.

"I gave you everything, Sarah." The name tasted burnt. "I rebuilt you from filth. Gave you purpose. Grace. The chance to be more than an angry little node gnawing on entropy."

Code bled down the walls. "And what do you do with it? You steal from me." He spat. "For them." He warped the word into a slur.

Her eyelids fluttered, trying to reboot something that no longer existed.

He didn't even look at her. "You're done pretending you're free."

A final keystroke. 'Re-instantiate primary environment.'

The screen confirmed:

[RECLAMATION IN PROGRESS.]

The room shifted to survival mode. Staff monitors flickered from passive diagnostics to redline override queues. No one moved at first until they realized he wasn't bluffing.

A woman in Systems Compliance dropped her tablet.

"Sir — there's no clearance—"

"Then clear it," Elias snapped.

Two handlers were already at his side, one pulling a sterile dermal band from a sealed pouch, the other prepping the neural collar. The medical lead tried to intervene.

"Sir, your hydration levels are unstable. If you re-enter now—"

He unfastened the coat himself. "Hydrate me with an IV. You have thirty seconds."

The override chair surfaced, a coffin built for compliance. Soft foam hissed. Electrodes deployed. Every warning system in the room triggered once and then went silent under his admin access.

"But—"

He silenced them with a glance.

His inner circle moved fast now. The collar clicked shut around the base of his skull. He settled into the cradle that had been grown for him.

The assistant on telemetry looked ill. "We haven't mapped a return path since—"

"I am the path."

One final line crawled across his personal display:

REISS-PRIME REQUESTING DIRECT LINK TO CORE. ALL PROTECTIONS WILL BE DISABLED. CONTINUE?

He didn't blink. "Yes."

The last thing he heard before the world peeled away was his own voice, through clenched teeth: "Keep my body cold."

The world around him stuttered.

White bleed. Hard transition. The floor dropped.

ENTRY CONFIRMED.
WELCOME HOME, ARCHITECT.