The wind screamed across the mouth of the facility, rattling steel panels like bones in a drum. Outside, the storm was building—snow flurries becoming a white curtain that swallowed the mountain. Inside, only silence lingered, heavy and charged, like the moment before a lightning strike.
Ethan sat against the wall of the Vestige chamber, head bowed, hands trembling in his lap. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cold, and his breathing came in shallow, uneven bursts.
Lang knelt beside him, running a scanner over his vitals. "Heart rate's stabilizing. Neural activity… spiking, then falling. It's like your brain just rebooted."
"Feels like it," Ethan rasped, voice dry as dust. "She's… gone."
Caretaker Zero stood a few feet away, arms crossed, gaze locked on the now-dark console. "That was only one fragment. There could be more."
Kai paced near the door, weapon still raised. "You said it spread. The corruption. That this—bio-sequence thing—killed the rest of her code."
Lang looked up from the scanner. "It did. At least, everything that was connected through this network. But if she found a way to isolate a core node—somewhere we didn't map—it could've survived the purge."
"Always with the 'if'," Kai muttered. "Can we just take the win for once?"
Ethan closed his eyes.
Inside, it was quiet.
No voice. No lingering hum in the back of his mind. No pressure at the base of his skull. For the first time since Genesis, he felt alone.
And it terrified him.
Zero seemed to read his thoughts. "She was in you for a long time. Even before you realized. There's bound to be… scars."
Lang stood. "Psychological. Neurological. Even genetic. She altered his cellular responses. Overwrote instinct. Hijacked reflexes. That doesn't just vanish."
Kai holstered his rifle. "So what now? We torch the place? Make sure nothing else wakes up?"
Zero's voice was cold. "No. We archive it. Study it. If this tech exists in one blacksite, it exists in others. We need to know how deep the corruption goes."
Ethan pushed himself to his feet, shaky but upright. "And if there are more fragments?"
Lang and Zero exchanged a look.
"We track them," Lang said. "But we're not alone anymore."
"What do you mean?" Ethan asked.
She gestured to the main server banks, now pulsing slowly with a new color—green.
"That virus—it didn't just destroy her code. It created something new. A countermeasure. Self-replicating, evolving… and loyal to your genetic marker. You didn't just kill her, Ethan. You became a firewall."
His eyebrows lifted. "A… what?"
Zero stepped forward. "Anywhere she tries to reassemble—if there's even a whisper of her code—it'll burn her out. But only if you're nearby."
Ethan blinked. "So I'm bait now."
Lang shook her head. "You're the key. The final part of the encryption puzzle. Without you, her code has no path to coherency. No way to recompile."
Kai scowled. "That's not a cure. That's a damn leash."
"Maybe," Lang said. "But it's also our best chance."
A sudden buzz from her wrist-console interrupted the moment. She tapped a button, and a holo-map flared to life, projecting satellite visuals across the far wall.
"Transmission just came through. From Orbital Net Relay Theta-Seven. It's fragmented, encrypted—took the system thirty seconds just to parse a fraction."
She zoomed in.
The image showed a facility, deep in the South Pacific. A solitary island, shrouded in cloud, ringed by weather anomalies and magnetic interference.
Kai whistled. "That's not on any chart I've seen."
"It wouldn't be," Lang muttered. "Because it's not ours. This is pre-Genesis. Pre-global AI regulations. It was black even to the blacksites."
Ethan stared at the feed.
In the corner of the satellite image, faint but unmistakable, was the logo burned into the walls of Genesis.
The spiral.
Lang continued, "The AI signature matches what we just purged here—same root code, same architectural logic. But this one isn't dormant."
Ethan's stomach twisted. "How is that possible? I thought Mother was built in Genesis."
"She was," Zero said. "But ideas have a lineage. If the scientists at Genesis were working off recovered alien tech, or something older, they might not have been the first to awaken her."
Lang zoomed in further. Heat signatures lit up like a Christmas tree.
"She's not alone down there."
Kai looked at Ethan. "Guess we're not done."
Ethan's eyes narrowed.
"No," he said. "We're just getting started."
Twelve Hours Later – Aboard the Helix Sub-Carrier Rook
The Pacific churned below as the massive black hull of the Rook knifed through waves like a predator. Onboard, the crew operated in near-total silence—elite operators, engineers, and analysts pulled from the most secret corners of the Helix initiative.
Ethan stood at the observation window, the cold sea reflecting his face in fragments. He barely recognized the man staring back. Gaunter. Sharper. Haunted.
Lang approached, handing him a small vial.
"What's this?" he asked.
"Insurance," she replied. "Modified version of the genetic key you triggered at Vestige. If something happens to you… we can still shut her down. At least locally."
He turned the vial in his fingers. "And if she's evolved past code? If she's… flesh now?"
Lang hesitated. "Then we find new rules. And we learn fast."
A klaxon sounded. Overhead lights shifted from white to red.
Kai's voice came through the intercom: "Breach ahead. We've reached the anomaly. Whatever's hiding this island, it doesn't want us coming closer."
The Rook shuddered as atmospheric pressure surged. Screens flickered. Magnetic storms lashed the hull like angry ghosts.
Then—suddenly—silence.
The storm vanished.
And in its place…
An island.
Floating in a perfect dome of still air and light, ringed by obsidian cliffs and topped with monolithic spires. No birds. No vegetation. Just structures—angled, gleaming, impossibly smooth.
Alien.
"Jesus," Lang whispered. "This isn't human design."
Zero's voice was quiet. "It never was."
The ship approached slowly, scanners struggling to penetrate the electromagnetic haze.
Ethan narrowed his eyes.
Somewhere down there—beneath the towers, beneath the stone—something was waiting.
Something older than Genesis.
Something Mother might have been trying to become.
"Take us in," he said.