They moved her by night.
X-12 wore a hood, silent as shadow. No cuffs. No resistance. Just a calm, eerie stillness that followed them from the Nevada facility to a blackout van crawling west.
Juno encrypted their trail every hour.
Maya stayed alert with her hand never far from her weapon.
Evan sat across from the girl. "What's your real name?"
She didn't answer.
Juno said quietly, "She's been called 'X-12' since birth. She might not know."
X-12 finally looked at Evan. "They called me Signal. That's all I remember."
Evan nodded. "Then that's what we'll use. For now."
In a bunker outside Oregon, they decrypted the last section of Evan's father's files.
A sequence of transmissions sent weeks before his death — not to Evan, but to Cain.
Juno's voice cracked. "He tried to warn Cain. To stop this."
Maya: "And Cain ignored him."
"No," Evan said. "Cain killed him."
The final file wasn't a message. It was a blueprint.
A device called CIRCADIAN. A global resonance engine, designed to ride on the satellite network that X-12's brain was bonded to.
Purpose: emotional override at scale.
With X-12's presence, CIRCADIAN could transmit engineered thought patterns to entire populations. Panic. Submission. Rage.
Juno traced the activation protocol.
It was set for 72 hours from now.
Maya closed her eyes. "Cain's going to turn the world into a weapon."
Signal spoke without blinking. "He's already begun."
She raised her hand. A tremor passed through the room — barely detectable, like the static before a storm.
Juno's console blinked.
"I just lost contact with our satellite feed. Everything's dark."
Signal stood.
"Cain blocked you. But I can trace him. His signal leaves fingerprints."
She touched the terminal.
Coordinates loaded: somewhere in the Arctic Circle.
Evan stared at the data. "He's going to activate from the ice shelf."
Maya checked ammo. "Then that's where we go."
Juno pulled up one more piece of data — a locked video from Evan's father, set to unlock if X-12 ever decrypted the full key.
The screen flickered.
Evan's father looked tired. Face thin. Eyes sharp.
"If you're watching this... then she found you. Good. That means you have a chance. But you need to know — Cain wasn't the enemy. Not at first. He was the first failure. The prototype."
Static.
Then:
"He's not human anymore. And he doesn't want control. He wants silence. Total silence."
The file ended.
No one spoke for a while.
Then Signal whispered:
"He wants to end all feeling."