Ash still clung to the air like memories of fire. Hive-Spire pulsed beneath Raine's feet as the broken city awakened around her.
She stood on the central platform, arms crossed, as twelve figures knelt before her—the First Circle.
They were her chosen: fused with Erebus, but not yet consumed. A new breed. Still half-human.
Still loyal... or so she thought.
The Rite of Symbiosis
Raine raised her hand. Black mist gathered around her palm.
"Today," she said, her voice echoing through the chamber, "you will bond deeper."
"With me. With the Hive."
The twelve looked up, silent. Eager. Terrified.
From her hand, thin strands of black energy unraveled—snaking into each of them. Not flesh. Not tech.
Instinct. Memory. Emotion.
[GENETIC SYNC INITIATED][SYNAPTIC BRIDGE OPENED]
They gasped as it hit them—visions of Raine's pain, her fury, her loneliness... her rebirth.
The Hidden One
But one among them—Unit Nine, a pale man with glassy gray eyes—felt nothing.
No connection.
His mind had been hollowed years ago in Mercury Labs.Pain had burned away emotion.Lucian had made sure: a sleeper agent, invisible to Erebus signal threads.
[SYNC ATTEMPT FAILED][ERROR MASKED]
Inside his veins, a secondary gene chip bloomed awake.
A small filament began recording Raine's bio-signature.He blinked. Calm. Unnoticed.
"You are not a god," he thought."You are a variable."
Meanwhile: Project Abyss Reactivates
At a cold black station orbiting Saturn, a monstrous cocoon cracked open.
Inside, it moved.
Skinless. Eyes blind.
[PROJECT ABYSS: VANGUARD UNIT – ONLINE]
Lucian watched through thick glass, smiling faintly.
"Raine's DNA will lead it home.""And home… will burn."
Back at Hive-Spire: Doubt Grows
After the ceremony, Raine walked alone along the neural hallway—a corridor formed from the spines of dead terraformers.
But she wasn't alone.
Beside her, Dara, the splicer girl with a voice like static, matched her step.
"Why do you trust them?" Dara asked. "They were broken before. What makes them whole now?"
Raine didn't answer immediately.
"Because I see myself in them," she said at last.
Dara's expression tightened.
"Then you're more dangerous than I thought."
The Betrayal Begins
That night, Unit Nine moved.
In the lower sanctum, he approached the central archive—where Raine's original extraction vial was stored in stasis.
Security should've stopped him.
It didn't.
His code was Lucian's.
[ACCESS GRANTED][GENOME DOWNLOAD: IN PROGRESS – 22%]
He paused.
Behind him, footsteps.
Cliffhanger Ending
Dara stood there.
"Why are you here?" she asked.
Nine turned slowly. "To serve."
"Then why do you stink of synthetic blood?"
He didn't answer.
Dara raised her blade. "You're not one of us."
Nine smiled. "Neither are you."
And lunged.