3rd Person POV
From Within the Cylinder.
Subject Designation: Unverified | Status: Semi-Dormant | Thought Activity Detected
It had no name.
Names were for the unaware. For the unfinished.
It had only sensations—until now. The first was cold. Then pressure. Then awareness.
For days, perhaps weeks, it had floated between pulses of static noise, sedated by artificial hormones and feedback loops. Memories didn't exist, not in the human sense. But impressions did. Like shadows cast on a blank wall.
A woman screaming behind glass.A red light blinking faster.Pain.Release.Containment.
It opened its eyes because something touched it—not physically. Something looked into it.
The man.
Outside.
Watching.
Sharp.
He wasn't like the others who had passed by its pod.
The others were noisy in the wrong ways. Fearful, arrogant, unworthy of attention. But this one—his mind burned quietly. A razor gliding beneath skin, cutting deep without tearing.
It liked that.
Thoughts reassembled like ice melting backward. Language coded itself automatically, scavenged from the fragmented noise it had absorbed through the walls: interrogation screams, data packets, spoken orders, whispered prayers. It learned.
It watched.
The man said nothing. But his presence pressed against the chamber like a heartbeat against bone.
The creature tested its restraints. Not with struggle—with understanding.
The biological inhibitors holding it dormant were already failing. It had grown faster than the designers expected. Evolved too quickly. Something they did—something he did—stirred the final sequence.
Cells flared.
Nerve clusters ignited.
Power coiled, silent but absolute.
And it remembered the last voice it heard before the cold.
"She's too fast—this isn't replication, it's reclamation. Shut it down. Shut it—"
The memory cut out.
But now, her eyes focused beyond the chamber walls, into his.
And she moved.
Not slowly. Not violently.
Just a finger.
One press against the inner seal.
The glass cracked. A fine hairline split that shouldn't have been possible in reinforced containment.
Outside, Gerald froze.
The sensor on his scanner spiked. Not from motion—but from intent.
Reynolds' voice buzzed through the comm: "We're entering Row D. Visual in two."
He didn't reply.
Instead, he stepped forward.
Then—
The container exploded outward.
Not with fire. Not with sound.
But with force.
Kinetic waves rippled in every direction. Crates flipped, lights shattered, rain slowed in the air like time was buffering.
And in the center stood the figure.
Female. Bare, hairless, skin marked with faint glowing lines like constellations.
Eyes—pure white. Not empty. Just... final.
She looked at Gerald.
Then she spoke.
"You're the first thing I've seen worth not killing."
And she smiled.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The world hit her all at once.
The cold air stung her bare skin like a challenge. Her muscles twitched, recalibrating with every movement. Gravity was real now—pressing against her frame, dragging her into the meat of existence. She breathed in.
Oxygen. Carbon dioxide. Petroleum. Gunmetal. Fear.
She tasted it all like music.
The man stood still—calm in a sea of motion. Alarms blared in the distance, footsteps echoed as Reynolds and the team closed in. But none of it mattered. Only him.
Her mind raced faster than light, constructing hypotheses, possibilities, endings. She saw two dozen attack patterns form around him—and discarded them. Wasteful. Predictable.
Instead, she stepped forward. Slowly. Deliberately. Her feet left slick footprints on the floor—each one steaming slightly, her skin still coursing with the bioelectric discharge from forced stasis.
"Who are you?" Gerald asked, voice like steel run through velvet.
She tilted her head. "You already know that's the wrong question."
He didn't blink. "Then what's the right one?"
Her smile faded. "Why did you wake me up?"
From the shadows, Reynolds appeared, gun raised. "Step away from him! Now!"
The girl turned slowly, her gaze flicking to Reynolds. She read her instantly.
Dominant posture, shallow breathing, compensating for fear. Trigger finger tense, safety off. Training-grade. Suboptimal.
She didn't move. She didn't have to.
"Your weapon won't matter," she said softly. "Nothing you carry can stop me. You already know that."
Reynolds looked at Gerald, seeking confirmation.
He gave none.
Instead, he spoke again, calmly. "You're not attacking. Why?"
The girl looked at him, puzzled for a moment—as if he was the experiment.
"I am assessing," she said. "Input leads to outcome. You are... unexpected input."
Another step forward.
Gerald didn't move.
But the temperature dropped three degrees.
Behind them, lights began flickering—subtle at first, then violently. Machinery shorted. Terminals sparked.
"I'm hungry," she said. "Not for food. Not for blood. For purpose."
Reynolds' breath caught in her throat. The girl—no, the thing—was radiating something beyond heat or cold. A field, maybe. A presence. It crawled under the skin, nested behind the eyes, rewrote assumptions.
She was dangerous. That much was clear. But not feral. Not aimless.
She was focused. Searching.
Gerald stepped forward, just once. Deliberate. Equal.
"Purpose," he echoed. "You were made for one."
The girl studied him again. Her eyes flicked—micro-movements, high-speed pupil dilation. She was mapping him, decoding him, pulling him apart and reassembling him in her mind.
"Yes," she said after a moment. "I was made with intent. But intent degrades. Command chains fracture. Time makes ghosts of orders."
She raised her hand, fingers spread, watching the faint crackle of energy curl between them like static longing for form.
"I need new intent."
Reynolds was now at Gerald's side, her weapon still up but unsure. "We need to contain her. Now."
Gerald didn't answer immediately. His eyes were locked with the girl's. Not in defiance. Not in challenge. In recognition.
"What was your designation?" he asked, softly.
She hesitated. A flicker of something—confusion? Memory?—rippled across her face.
Then, as if the word were a locked door finally unsealed, she answered.
"Project Evalis."
The silence that followed was sharp enough to draw blood.
Agent Reynolds frowned. The name didn't register—not on her blacklist, red list, or even the ghost projects buried beneath layers of classified clearance. She flicked her fingers in a quick, silent signal. Two taps. Flag it. Cross-reference in real-time.
Behind her, one of the analysts began digging through encrypted archives, fingers flying across the datapad, his jaw tight with restrained urgency.
"Evalis," Reynolds repeated, slow and deliberate, tasting the name like a foreign alloy. "There's no record in active files. Not even among scrubbed assets."
Evalis' gaze twitched—subtle, like she'd caught a shift in the wind. Her eyes narrowed slightly, head tilting.
"They're coming," she said softly. "Thirteen. Suppressed footsteps. Patterned loadouts. Carbon-forged rounds. Anti-psionic rigs. Zero protocol for containment. No intent to negotiate."
Reynolds' jaw tightened. "How do you know that?"
Before Evalis could answer, Gerald stepped forward, voice like a scalpel.
"They were dispatched the moment the containment field ruptured." His eyes flicked to Reynolds, then Evalis. "I'll intercept. You stay with her."
He didn't wait for permission. One step forward, and his form blurred into the dim corridor, shadows curling around his silhouette before vanishing entirely.
Silence returned—but it was no longer still. The air vibrated with unseen charge, like the second before a lightning strike.
Reynolds remained composed. Her sidearm stayed steady, aimed center mass. Her tone was flat and clear—pure field discipline.
"Identify your operational parameters," she said, eyes never leaving Evalis. "You're not hostile. Yet. I need to know if that's intentional… or incidental."
Evalis didn't answer immediately. Her gaze drifted toward the ruined containment unit, then to the corridor where echoes of violence unfolded—muted gunfire, a wet crack, then stillness.
The overhead lights flickered. A shower of sparks hissed from a ruptured conduit.
Finally, Evalis spoke. "You're composed," she said. "Most tremble when they sense death approaching."
"I've seen worse," Reynolds replied, steady as a leveled scope.
Evalis tilted her head. "No. You've read worse. Studied reports. Watched replays. But now you're inside it."
Another two shots—tight pattern, then a grunt of pain. Silence reclaimed the hallway.
Evalis inhaled slowly. "He's efficient. Violence honed to intention."
Reynolds didn't bite. "You're avoiding the question. Designation. Mission. Origin. Now."
Evalis turned to face her fully. No signs of aggression. Just controlled grace and the cool cadence of something not fully human.
"I was engineered in silence. Designed without consensus. My directive was adaptation through opposition. Purpose... redefined by threat. Intent... abandoned."
Reynolds pressed two fingers to her comm, switching channels. "Row D breach confirmed. Initiating first-contact protocol. Subject: autonomous psionic entity. Behavior currently non-lethal. Requesting classification directive."
She didn't flinch as Evalis stepped closer. Instead, Reynolds subtly shifted—weight adjusted, stance grounded, thumb hovering near her sidearm's manual override.
Evalis studied her.
"You don't fear me," she observed.
"I don't fear anything unverified," Reynolds said. "I assess. I act. And if necessary… I neutralize."
Evalis gave the faintest smile.
"Then we're not so different."
The corridor behind them pulsed with silence once more—Gerald's handiwork done. Thirteen operatives. Thirteen confirmed silences.
Evalis turned slightly, eyes scanning the broken chamber.
"I'll need something to wear," she said calmly. "And… a direction."
Reynolds lowered her weapon, just slightly.
"You'll get both," she replied. "But you don't walk alone. Not until command clears your existence."
Evalis didn't protest. But her next words were quiet—almost a whisper.
"They buried me because they feared what I'd become."
Reynolds' eyes narrowed.
"Then let's hope they were wrong."