Anna gripped the steering wheel tightly as the vehicle bounced over a pothole-ridden road, her knuckles whitening with each jolt. The night outside the windshield was oppressive, thick clouds blotting out the moonlight and leaving only the faint glow of their headlights to pierce the darkness. Beside her, Alex sat with his hand resting on the butt of his pistol, his tension palpable. In the back seat, Marcus and Dr. Gray sat in a strained silence. Anna could feel the weight of unspoken words pressing down on them, a storm waiting to break. She had barely slept since they left the facility. The maps Gray had shown them were etched into her mind—red dots marking locations where fragments of *Project Echo* still lingered, silent and waiting to be reactivated. One dot stood out above the others: Site Alpha. It was the largest backup facility, a near-impenetrable fortress buried beneath the remnants of an old military base. If they could destroy it, the chances of anyone resurrecting E

The silence after the explosion at Site Alpha was deafening. As the fire roared behind them, painting the night sky in shades of crimson and orange, Anna sat in the truck, her hands trembling. She couldn’t stop thinking about Alex—the way he had looked at her before she ran, the final sacrifice he had made to ensure they could escape.“Anna, we need to keep moving,” Marcus urged from the driver’s seat, his knuckles white as he gripped the wheel.Gray glanced at Anna from the backseat, her expression a mix of sympathy and urgency. “Ethan’s not going to give us time to grieve. He’ll retaliate, and hard.”Anna nodded, forcing herself to focus. “He won’t stop until we’re all dead—or Echo is fully operational. We can’t let that happen.”Gray leaned forward, her laptop balanced precariously on her knees. “I’ve been monitoring the network. Ethan’s already shifting data to another location. There’s a secondary facility—smaller, but critical. It’s in the city, disguised as an abandoned warehou

The world beyond the hub was eerily silent. For Anna, the quiet was unsettling, a stark contrast to the chaos they’d just escaped. As the sun began to rise, its first rays painted the sky in hues of orange and purple, casting long shadows over the ruined landscape.Alex leaned heavily against a broken pillar, his hand still pressed to his bleeding side. Anna stood beside him, scanning the horizon, her weapon still clutched tightly in her hands.“We should keep moving,” Marcus said, his voice sharp with urgency. “Ethan’s gone, but his men aren’t. They’ll regroup, and when they do, they’ll come for us.”Alex winced as he straightened. “They’ll do more than that. With Echo scattered, every faction that wanted it will now be scrambling to reclaim the fragments.”Gray shook her head, pacing anxiously. “We didn’t just stop a war; we started a race. Do you realize what kind of chaos we’ve unleashed?”Anna’s jaw tightened. “We didn’t have a choice. Leaving Echo in Ethan’s hands wasn’t an opti