Consciousness returned to Kael not as a gentle dawn, but as a flickering, disorienting surge. His head throbbed, a dull ache resonating behind his eyes, and the metallic tang of ozone still lingered on his tongue. When his eyelids finally fluttered open, he was met not with the familiar dust-choked gloom of the storage house, but with the sterile, clinical gleam of an unfamiliar ceiling. He lay on a surprisingly comfortable cot, the air around him cool and strangely purified.
He pushed himself to a sitting position, his muscles protesting with a stiffness that belied the apparent comfort. The room was clearly a research laboratory. Gleaming metallic surfaces, intricate wiring snaking across walls, and dormant, complex machinery filled the space. A large, reinforced glass panel separated his section from what appeared to be a central observation area.
Then, the anomaly appeared. Floating directly before his eyes, shimmering with a soft, ethereal blue light, were lines of text. They were not projected onto a screen, but seemed to exist in the very air, translucent yet perfectly legible.
USER: KAELSTATUS: AWAKENEDLEVEL: 1
EXPERIENCE POINTS: 0/100 (INITIALIZED)
APEX CONDUIT: ACTIVE (STABLE)
UNIQUE TRAIT: MUTAGENIC HARMONIZATION (PRIMARY)
CURRENT ENERGY ABSORPTION CAPACITY: 5%
STRENGTH: CALCULATING...
AGILITY: CALCULATING...
RESILIENCE: CALCULATING...
INTELLECT: CALCULATING...
LAST KNOWN LOCATION: SECTOR 7, SUB-ZONE GAMMA (SCHOOL DISTRICT)
ALERT: SYSTEM SYNCHRONIZATION PENDING
Kael stared, bewildered. This was no dream. This was real. The blue letters, hovering in his field of vision, were an interface, a window into the Apex system that had torn through him. It was a terrifying, yet oddly compelling, manifestation of his new reality. He was in an unknown facility, clearly under observation, and something within him was now displaying data.
Meanwhile, in an adjacent, heavily fortified chamber, Jax awoke with a snarl. The space was compact, its walls of reinforced steel pressing in on him. His newly crimson skin felt hot, constricted, and the gem in his chest pulsed with a low, furious rhythm. The confinement ignited a primal rage within him, a burgeoning fury that demanded space, demanded action. He felt the raw, untamed power thrumming beneath his skin, aching to be unleashed. The urge to smash, to tear, to break free of the oppressive enclosure was almost unbearable, a testament to the untamed nature of his transformation. He paced, a caged beast, his glowing red eyes scanning for any weakness, any point of egress.
In a third, equally isolated room, Orion stirred. His awakening was remarkably calm, devoid of the panic that gripped Jax or the confusion that clouded Kael. He simply opened his abyssal black eyes, and the world resolved itself into a symphony of unseen energies. The luminous blue lines on his pale skin pulsed steadily, no longer with the painful intensity of their initial manifestation, but with a serene, controlled glow. He perceived the intricate flow of power within the facility's walls, the subtle hum of its machinery, the faint, residual energy signatures of those who had moved through these sterile corridors. He sensed the confinement of his companions, their distinct energy patterns radiating distress and confusion. His new body, a conduit for these unseen forces, was functioning with an unsettling clarity, allowing him to discern the hidden architecture of the world around him.
Estelle awoke from a dream that was not a dream at all, but a torrent of fragmented images and information—cosmic equations, biological schematics of mutated organisms, historical data points flickering through her mind at impossible speeds. The "universe eye" on her forehead, though closed, pulsed softly beneath her skin. She sat up on her cot, her delicate features composed, her gaze fixed on the door. There was no surprise, no fear, only a profound sense of anticipation, as if the deluge of knowledge had prepared her for this precise moment.
A minute later, the door to Estelle's room slid open with a soft hiss. A slender woman, her posture impeccably straight, stepped into the room. Her dark hair was pulled back severely, and her expression was unreadable, a mask of professional detachment. She wore a pristine, forest-green Japanese army uniform, its precise tailoring and crisp lines a stark contrast to the ruined world outside. Her eyes, sharp and intelligent, met Estelle's.
"Estelle," the woman stated, her voice calm and clear, yet carrying an undeniable authority.
Estelle's "universe eye" on her forehead, though still closed, pulsed beneath her skin. A flash of information, a name, surged through her mind, unexpected even to her. Her eyes widened, and she spoke, her voice a soft, almost ethereal whisper, yet clear enough to cut through the sterile silence.
"Commander Arisato," Estelle said, the name forming on her lips as if it had always been there.
The woman in the uniform froze, her composed expression shattering into a mask of profound shock. Her eyes, sharp and intelligent moments before, now flickered with genuine surprise, a rare vulnerability. Even Estelle herself gasped, her hand instinctively rising to her forehead, startled by the unbidden knowledge that had just escaped her lips.