Valeria's gaze remained fixed on the data stream, her voice measured but laced with something unreadable.
"The Pythia interface was solely intended for tracking the Genesis Strain—specifically its adaptive recombinant pathways. ARPs," she said. "This level of integration should've triggered systemic rejection. Not stabilization."
Orion's fingers curled slightly against his palm. He rested a hand against his chin, brow furrowed in contemplation.
"Could my age be a factor?" he asked, voicing a thought that had only just surfaced. "Could that be why this is happening _now_ ?"
Valeria didn't look at him yet. Her mind was elsewhere—on the implications, the anomalies. With a flick of her wrist, the scan deepened. A larger display materialized: a breakdown of mutation efficiency, Hekatryon synchronization, Genesis markers.
There.
An anomaly. A signature hidden within the layers of his DNA, something beyond the expected interference of the Genesis strain. Valeria's pupils dilated just slightly—the closest she ever came to surprise.
A sharp intake of breath betrayed Valeria's usual control. She tilted her head, her gaze intensifying on the data.
"Impossible…" she murmured, her voice tinged with a strange mix of wonder and apprehension.
Varun stepped closer, his gaze flicking between Valeria and the shifting projections, reading the tension in her expression before speaking.
"What exactly are we looking at?" His voice was calm, measured—but there was an edge to it now, a rare trace of unease.
She exhaled through her nose, not in frustration, but in something closer to fascination. Orion's genetic sequence was adapting. Adjusting dynamically.
Valeria exhaled slowly, her sharp gaze finally landing on Orion. "All established models of host-pathogen compatibility predict that," she said, her voice measured yet tinged with surprise, "your genomic architecture should have exhibited rejection of the Genesis Strain—particularly at the loci responsible for synaptic modulation and metabolic plasticity."
"And yet…" Her eyes darkened slightly. "It didn't just stabilize your mutation. It somehow integrated those loci with your xenothalamus—instead of totally shutting it down."
Ren's brows drew together, her voice quieter now, laced with suspicion. "Uh-huh. Sounds fancy, but what does that mean?"
Valeria's expression didn't change, but Orion caught the flicker in her eyes—the gleam of discovery, of raw scientific intrigue. It was rare to see his mother truly captivated by something she hadn't accounted for.
She turned back to the data, her voice thoughtful, almost distant. "The Genesis Strain operates by identifying physical characteristics and matching them against its database of known genetic combinations." Her fingers danced over the interface. "But this goes beyond simple integration. The system's fundamental programming is being overridden. It's self-correcting its standards and, in effect, establishing a new benchmark for what it considers compatible."
Her hands moved swiftly, pulling up comparative sequences. She isolated the point of deviation, magnifying it until it filled the entire holo-display.
For a fraction of a second, Valeria hesitated.
Then she spoke, her tone quieter. "It's a convergence."
Varun let out a slow breath, his gaze sharpening. "Meaning what, exactly?" His voice held more than curiosity—it was a need for real answers.
Valeria's gaze lingered on the spiraling helix for a moment longer before she answered. "Your body is forging a new path without choosing sides." Her voice had a weight to it now, layered with memory and disbelief.
"The Genesis Strain and Hekatryon were both discovered in two of the Raptures. Attempts to hybridize them have always ended in failure."
She paused, murmuring almost to herself, "There was this family in the Dominion… What was their name again?" Her gaze flicked across the display, but her mind was clearly elsewhere. "Maybe I should look into them."
Ren stiffened, her voice hushed yet edged with something unreadable. "You're telling me… he can wield both?"
Valeria's lips parted slightly, then pressed into a thin line as she exhaled through her nose. Her gaze flickered over the data, but her mind was elsewhere.
What this meant for the Pythia System.
For the very foundation of everything she had devoted her past five years to unravel.
A shift like this… it wasn't just unexpected.
It was _paradigm-shattering._
Finally, she spoke, her voice almost reverent.
"It's not just that he can wield both," she murmured, her gaze locked onto the spiraling helix. "It's that his physiology has restructured itself at the epigenetic level to accommodate dual systemic architectures—Hekatryonic resonance and the Genesis Strain's adaptive recombinant networks. You could say we're vessels, while he's become the closest thing to a nexus."
Varun exhaled, stepping away from the floating data projections. His sharp eyes darted to Orion, studying him with a quiet intensity.
"All that time we invested in preparing you for Sensoria…" Varun's voice was a low rumble, thoughtful rather than disappointed. "It seems you've moved beyond that already. Time for a new plan."
Orion blinked, caught off guard. "But doesn't the Wraith style rely on Sensoria?"
Varun chuckled once, dryly, and tapped Orion's chest with two fingers. "It did. But things have changed."
He gestured toward the holo-display where his genetic adaptation had been outlined. "Your body is built for change. You don't need Sensoria to push you past human limitations, because you don't have them anymore."
Varun's tone shifted. "But with Hekatryon?" He stepped closer, eyes locked onto Orion's. "If you can wield it, it'll give you the edge you've been looking for."
His smirk was sharp, almost wolfish. "Because Hekatryon doesn't enhance the body—it bends the laws of the world around you." He tapped the air, emphasizing the words. "Controlling external forces? Shaping the battlefield itself? That's what Hekatryon does."
Valeria observed quietly, but Orion could tell she was listening closely.
"I need to strip the constraint layers first," she murmured, mostly to herself. "The system's locked in a predictive bias—rejecting data that contradicts established evolutionary pathways. It's unable to learn what it cannot accept."
Orion asked, watching the interface react to her commands. "Can you actually do that?"
Valeria gave a faint, dry smile. "I built it. Of course I can."
Her hands moved in a graceful flurry, each command dismantling pieces of the scaffolding she'd spent half a decade constructing.
"I'll reengineer the heuristic matrix," she said. "Make it adaptive, not predictive. It won't just track mutations anymore—it'll monitor interactive convergence fields."
She paused, her expression sharpening. "But that's only part of it."
Valeria nodded. "I'll also need to build a third protocol suite—one that factors in xenothalamic resonance."
She turned toward Orion, her voice suddenly became more maternal. "You've somehow linked two incompatible systems through your xenothalamus. That's the bridge. That's the reason the strain didn't kill you."
Orion's brow furrowed. "Is that dangerous?"
Valeria's voice dropped, soft and direct. "Yes. Incredibly. It means your mind isn't just interpreting signals—it's altering them. The Hekatryon reshapes the environment through conscious intent."
She paused. "If you lose control… the mutation could accelerate beyond your ability to stabilize it."
Ren crossed her arms, watching the whole thing unfold. "You're saying we need to teach the system to evolve along with him?"
Valeria looked at her and said. "No… not teach. More like Force."
Orion's mind raced.
Wielding Hekatryon and Sensoria had been his idea at first, but the time in the forest had changed him.
He had learned how fragile humans were—how fragile _he_ was. The forest had stripped him of his illusions, forced him to confront his limits.
The forest had shown him the brutal truth of survival.
He remembered the blisters, the hunger, the pain. The animals that stalked him. The cold nights where his breath felt like frost on his lungs.
The forest didn't care about his fighting style nor his techniques. It taught him that hesitation meant death. That the body could fail—and that survival came from becoming more than the sum of flesh and will.