The halls of Atlas HQ pulsed with the sterile perfection of a machine. Soldiers in polished exo-suits marched in rhythm, the walls humming with silent security systems — every corner a reminder that Jonathan Irons' empire was airtight. Almost.
Logan Cole walked those halls like a shadow, his strides unhurried but calculated. To the untrained eye, he looked like any other soldier heading to debrief. To the trained, he looked like a man who belonged.
But Logan had learned long ago: just because you wore the uniform didn't mean you were on the same side.
For weeks, suspicion had rooted deep inside his gut. Something about Irons didn't add up — the speeches, the missions, the way every war seemed to conveniently leave Atlas stronger and the world weaker. Logan wasn't the type to chase ghosts, but his instincts had never failed him before. And they were screaming.
His gloved hand moved to the biometric lock on the executive wing. He swiped the stolen clearance key — lifted from a general's desk two days ago — and watched the light flicker from red to green.
Click.
One step closer.
The corridors leading to Irons' office were an iron fortress. Retinal scanners. Pulse readers. Armed checkpoints. Everything short of goddamn landmines. Logan weaved through the layers like he was born to — timing security rotations, hacking terminals, masking his digital footprint.
He knew he shouldn't have made it this far.
And yet, here he was.
The final door stood before him. Irons' private sanctum.
Even for Logan, the odds of breaching it were near zero. But luck, or something worse, seemed to be on his side tonight.
A sharp exhale. A flick of his wrist. A bypass module slipped into the port beneath the handle. The lock clicked open.
"...You're kidding me." Logan whispered, surprised even at his own success.
The office was as cold and calculated as the man himself. Walls lined with world maps, conflict zones marked in red. A single desk sat at the center — a monument to ego, spotless save for a sleek data terminal.
Logan moved fast, slipping into the chair, fingers dancing across the keys. Security was high, but so was his patience. Lines of encrypted text unfurled across the screen until something stopped him cold. A file.
PROJECT: MANTICORE.
He pulled it up. Images. Schematics. Weapon models. The deeper he read, the colder his blood ran. This wasn't a weapon designed to end wars. It was designed to control them. To wipe out enemies on a genetic level — no collateral, no mess, just targeted extinction.
Logan's voice was barely a breath.
"The fuck is Manticore..."
His mind raced, connecting dots. War zones they'd been sent to. Targets that didn't make sense. Civilians who disappeared.
A click echoed behind him.
"Well, well... Logan."
The voice was calm. Amused, almost.
"What do we have here?"
Logan turned his head, slow and sharp. Standing at the doorway, flanked by Atlas soldiers, was Jonathan Irons himself. His smile was the kind you'd expect from a man watching a predictable ending unfold.
But it wasn't Irons that hit Logan hardest. It was the two standing at his side.
Gideon. Ilona.
His friends. His family.
Gideon's jaw was locked, unreadable. Ilona's face, pale. Her eyes shimmered, glassy with confusion and pain.
Logan stood up from the desk, file still glowing behind him.
"What is Manticore?" His voice cut through the room like a blade.
Irons didn't answer. He simply stared at him, disappointed. Like a father watching a favorite son ruin himself.
"I had high hopes for you, Logan. Really did." Irons stepped forward. "But you just couldn't leave it alone."
He turned his head slightly.
"Gideon. Ilona. Detain him."
The words struck like gunfire.
Gideon was the first to move, his steps slow, deliberate, almost reluctant. His rifle hung loose, like he didn't want to raise it. Logan's voice cracked the silence.
"Gideon... you have to believe me. You're my brother, man. You know me."
For a moment, Gideon paused. Logan saw it — the fracture in his armor. The doubt. But it vanished just as fast. Gideon shook his head, stepping closer.
"I don't want to do this, mate. But you've crossed a line."
Logan's chest tightened, his gaze flicking to Ilona. If anyone would understand, it would be her.
"Ilona..." his voice softened. "You know me. You know I'm not crazy."
Tears welled in her eyes, her voice barely a whisper.
"Logan, please. You need help. We can help you."
Her words cut deeper than any bullet. His world — the two people he trusted most — stood on the wrong side of the line. His fists clenched at his sides, knuckles pale under the pressure.
His eyes drifted past them, to the balcony.
Gideon caught the shift. His voice sharpened.
"No. Don't."
But Logan was already moving.
His boots slammed onto the balcony rail. Time seemed to freeze as his body pivoted, the cold night air rushing against his face. He looked back once. Gideon's arm reached out. Ilona's voice cracked through her tears.
And then he jumped.
The world blurred into weightless silence before shattering into chaos as his body crashed through a window on the lower floor. Glass exploded in all directions. His form vanished into the dark.
Gideon and Ilona sprinted to the edge, peering over.
"Shit," Gideon muttered under his breath, eyes scanning the drop.
But Logan was gone.
All that remained was the broken glass, the cold wind, and the silent question neither of them wanted to answer:
What if he wasn't crazy?
The sharp scent of blood followed Logan through the cold, steel veins of the Atlas facility. His vision pulsed with shallow blurs, a side effect of the fall and the fresh glass cuts burning across his arms and chest. But pain was familiar — pain kept him sharp.
Each step left a faint trail of crimson behind, but Logan didn't slow. He wouldn't give Irons the satisfaction of bleeding out on his floor.
Turning a corner, he came face-to-face with a sealed door — the kind only top-clearance personnel were supposed to access. The biometric scanner glowed patiently, waiting for someone important.
Logan smirked.
"Child's play."
His fingers danced over the panel, bypassing the lock sequence with practiced ease. A soft hiss filled the air as the magnetic bolts disengaged and the door cracked open.
Inside, the room was different from the polished Atlas corridors. The lighting flickered, almost as if the room had been forgotten. Dust clung to the air, covering crates, sealed data drives, and half-covered consoles. Logan's boots echoed softly against the floor as he stepped inside.
His eyes drifted toward a console half-buried in old files.
PROJECT: CRYSIS
He stared at the label, his mind chewing on the name.
"Crysis...?"
Flipping through the files, the story began to form: a prototype exosuit. Far beyond anything Atlas had ever fielded. Something that could've changed warfare entirely — but the project was scrapped, abandoned, left to rot in the dark. His lips curled into a bitter grin.
"Nanosuit... fitting."
Moving deeper into the room, he saw it.
Mounted like a forgotten trophy, draped in dust and silence — the prototype suit. Sleek, matte-black plating hugged the artificial musculature beneath it, its design far more advanced than any exosuit Atlas had deployed. It wasn't designed to be worn like armor. It was meant to become an extension of the soldier.
Without hesitation, Logan stepped forward and tore the suit free from its display rack.
The fabric flexed unnaturally as it moved, almost alive in his hands. He slipped one arm in, then the next. The material clung to his skin like water — every inch locking around his muscles, sealing itself across his body until there wasn't an inch left exposed.
The HUD flickered to life across his visor, a cool, synthetic voice greeting him.
"Nanosuit systems online. Diagnostics: Optimal."
Logan flexed his fingers, watching the muscles under the suit ripple and respond in perfect sync. Strength. Agility. Reaction time. Cloaking. Adaptive shielding.
"Why the hell would Atlas abandon something like you?" he muttered under his breath.
Before the thought could settle, a voice echoed down the hallway — cold, commanding, unmistakable.
"Search the area! He's still inside!"
Irons.
Logan instinctively ducked low, slipping into the shadows as boots thundered closer.
The Nanosuit's voice spoke again, calm and clinical:
"Engaging Adaptive Camouflage."
A shimmer crawled across his body, bending the light, and the world around him blurred as his body disappeared. His heartbeat slowed. His breathing softened. He stood perfectly still as Irons stormed into the room, flanked by a squad of soldiers and a cluster of panicked scientists.
One scientist pointed toward the empty display rack.
"The prototype is gone."
Irons' jaw clenched tight, teeth grinding with fury.
"Logan." His voice was a growl. "That son of a bitch took it."
He turned to his men.
"Find him. Bring me back that suit. I want his head on a plate."
But Logan was already moving, ghosting silently past them all. As he stepped into the hall, he brushed shoulders with two Atlas soldiers, who didn't so much as flinch.
The Nanosuit's camouflage held perfectly.
Out through the main gates, the cold night air hit him like freedom.
And still, nobody saw him.
With one swift motion, Logan dropped off the perimeter walkway, clearing the massive steel walls surrounding the facility. His body moved like liquid muscle, enhanced by the suit's power, and landed softly beyond the perimeter fence. He hit the ground running, diving into the dense tree line.
His lungs burned from adrenaline and exhaustion, but his legs carried him faster than he'd ever run before.
The suit spoke again.
"Activating Fusion Mode. Stand by."
Logan frowned, his pace slowing, eyes narrowing.
"Fusion? What the hell are you talking about—"
Before the thought could finish, the suit began to change.
The material pulsed against his skin, tightening, merging. It wasn't just wearing the suit anymore — it was becoming him. Molecular bonds rewrote themselves in real-time, threading deep into his body. Muscles hardened, bones subtly reinforced, nerves synced to the Nanosuit's systems.
His heart rate stabilized. Wounds from the glass fall began to close. Strength surged through him, more natural than mechanical now.
His voice cracked through the confusion.
"Explain. Now."
The suit answered, calm as ever.
"Fusion Mode complete. The Nanosuit has integrated into your biological structure. Symbiotic interface established. Suit is no longer external — it is now part of your DNA."
Logan stood there, feeling every inch of his new reality. The exhaustion was gone. The pain — gone. The suit wasn't draining his stamina, it was replenishing it. He felt sharper, faster, stronger than he'd ever thought humanly possible.
"Jesus Christ." He looked at his hands. "What the hell did you just turn me into?"
The AI answered simply.
"Optimal soldier. Evolution complete."
And as the moonlight pierced the treetops, Logan Cole — soldier, fugitive, and now something altogether more — vanished into the night.
Atlas would never see him coming.
The briefing room was silent. Not the usual kind of military silence — this was the heavy, suffocating kind. The kind that pressed against your chest and hollowed out your gut.
Every soldier in the facility stood at rigid attention, faces locked in grim expressions, waiting for the words they all feared.
Jonathan Irons stood at the front, hands behind his back, voice cold and sharp as a blade.
"Logan Cole is dead."
No emotion. No ceremony. Just fact — like it was another name scratched off a mission roster.
"His actions were... unfortunate. But let me be clear." Irons' gaze swept the room, lingering on each face. "He made his choice. He was a threat to Atlas. And Atlas eliminates threats."
Gideon stood at Irons' side, silent. His posture was perfect, but for a second — just a second — his knees wobbled beneath the weight of the lie. His fingers twitched, tightening into fists as his jaw flexed. But he pushed it all down, locking it behind the same iron will that had carried him through countless missions.
He said nothing.
But Ilona couldn't.
The tears welled faster than she could blink them away. One slipped free, then another. Without a word, she turned on her heel and left, boots echoing down the steel corridor until the sound disappeared.
She found a quiet corner, away from the eyes of her squad, away from the eyes of Irons.
Her body finally gave out, slumping down against the cold wall as the tears fell harder. Hands shaking, she buried her face in them, her mind a whirl of questions and guilt.
"What was I supposed to do...?" she whispered through trembling breath.
The man she believed in. The man she trusted. The man she loved.
Branded a traitor. Left for dead.
And she'd let it happen.
Miles away, the dark canopy of the forest swayed under the night sky. The world here was quieter, untouched by the steel grip of Atlas.
High above the ground, a lone figure soared through the treetops, leaping effortlessly from branch to branch. The suit wrapped around him like living armor — sleek, otherworldly, designed for perfection.
Logan paused on a thick branch, turning back one last time.
His visor's HUD highlighted the Atlas facility in the distance, a cold gray shape against the dark horizon.
He stared at it for a long moment.
"Goodbye, Brother. Ilona."
The wind carried his words away as he turned forward, and disappeared into the night.