Location: Forum Tower – Vault Observation Chamber
Time: 7:18 PM
Kaen stood before the newly corrupted feed from Vault Sector 9. The clean, symmetrical algorithms he had designed were now jagged—bleeding logic. Patterns emerged and vanished too fast for even the best AIs to catch.
He didn't blink.
Ezra slammed a console. "Who the hell is she? That wasn't one of the original vault hunters."
Kaen didn't respond immediately. He was watching a single frame of the feed—a face. Young. Brilliant. Angry. Calculating.
"She's not a scavenger," he finally said. "She's a successor."
Ezra blinked. "You mean…?"
Kaen nodded slowly.
> "Loop_01 wasn't just a failsafe…
It was a recruitment net."
---
Location: Sector 9 – The Corrupted Maze
Time: 7:20 PM
The girl—name still unknown to the outside world—walked deeper into the labyrinth her corrupted shard had birthed.
She had merged her memory fragment with Kaen's designs. She wasn't trapped in the maze. She was rebuilding it.
