Blood dripped from Kael's fingertips as he emerged into another level of the Ghost Sector. The lights here barely functioned—weak glows from backup batteries flickering like dying fireflies. The echo of his footsteps rang hollow across the decayed floor.
But he wasn't alone.
The corridor was lined with old mech-frames.
Some rusted. Some open. Some… twitching.
Kael raised his arm instinctively. The orb embedded in his forearm pulsed, feeding him threat data in real time. Most units were dead. A few held dying energy cores. But one—directly ahead—was fully charged.
A powered exo-rig.
[Warning: Omega-class Security Unit Detected]
It stepped forward. Nine feet tall. Four arms. Plated in black industrial armor etched with the faded sigil of NEXUS. A kill machine—one of the old prototypes.
Kael didn't flinch.
The exo-rig raised its twin cannons.
Kael moved.
Faster than he thought possible, his body lunged to the side as bullets screamed past, tearing through steel. He rolled behind a fallen pipe. The HUD flickered—
[Skill: Predatory Echo Activated]
—his vision slowed.
He saw the machine's targeting system cycling. Anticipated its next angle. The world around him pulsed with predictive arcs and possible outcomes.
He leapt.
Mid-air, his mutated arm erupted into tendrils, slamming the machine's left side. Sparks burst. The rig twisted unnaturally fast, trying to shake him off.
Kael landed on its back.
He plunged his hand into a weak point near the neck.
[Neural Override Attempted...]
The machine shrieked. Its systems resisted.
Kael screamed back, forcing Arkanis deeper into the circuits. Memories clashed. Human screams. Test data. Target acquisition routines.
[Override Successful]
The rig shut down.
Kael stood atop it, panting. His shirt torn, skin cracked with glowing lines. The orb in his arm flickered erratically, dimming and flaring as if struggling to stay stable.
He felt it then.
Another surge.
[Skill Unlocked: Machine Bond – Tier 1]
Knowledge filled him. How to manipulate outdated mechs. How to speak the machine's language.
He could build now. Modify. Control.
But the hunger still clawed.
[Bio-energy Required – 12:04:45 Remaining]
He dragged the inert rig into a collapsed tunnel and scavenged what he could: power cells, armor plating, a side blade—a plasma-edged combat knife fused to a shock core.
Kael strapped it to his waist.
It felt right.
The voice of Arkanis stirred again: You are more than host. You are vector.
Kael didn't respond.
He was already planning.
He opened his HUD map. The next sector down held what the overlay called "GENBANK-3"—an experimental cloning facility used in early war iterations.
If the data was correct, there would be bio-energy reserves there. Food.
Answers.
Weapons.
He moved fast now. His body was adapting. Old fatigue gone. Old pain irrelevant.
He no longer felt human. And that terrified him.
But he liked it.
GENBANK-3 was a ruin. Most of the facility had collapsed, but the core chamber still stood—encased in reinforced alloy, with biometric locks and hard-coded AI guardians.
The door didn't open to Kael.
So he burned through it.
His arm turned into a drill of energy and bone, liquefying the lock. The chamber opened with a scream of tearing steel.
Inside were rows of bio-tanks. Each filled with partially formed bodies—clones, experiments, half-grown hybrids.
Some were still alive.
One opened its eyes.
Kael flinched.
A boy—maybe ten—floating in the gel. Wires in his skull. Eyes black. Not with rage.
With recognition.
Kael stepped back.
But the boy raised a hand to the glass and whispered something.
Kael couldn't hear it. But Arkanis could.
"He knows the Old Code," the symbiote growled. "He is not of this timeline."
Kael's blood ran cold.
Then the facility's alarms exploded to life.
[WARNING: CORE BREACH]
[NEXUS FORCES EN ROUTE – ETA 00:18:22]
Kael cursed.
He grabbed a portable data core and ran.
Behind him, the clone's eyes glowed red.
Above ground, Director Halcor watched the feed.
"He found GENBANK-3."
His aide nodded. "Do we activate Omega Protocol?"
Halcor stared at the screen. Kael's mutated form running across metal, trailing fire and chaos.
"No," he said slowly.
"Send the Hunters."
Kael didn't know it yet.
But the next chapter of his life would be written in the blood of the ones like him.
The ones who didn't break the system.
The ones who were the system.
Kael collapsed behind a collapsed generator station several floors below GENBANK-3. His breath steamed in the cold. His vision jittered. His body ached from the strain of the override, and the hunger twisted deeper than before.
Arkanis hissed inside his thoughts. Too much energy used. Symbiosis not yet balanced.
Kael ignored the pain. He pulled the data core he had taken. Plugged it into his forearm port. His vision filled with cascading files.
PROJECT ARKOS. DATE STAMP: 84 YEARS AGO.
It detailed the rise of the NEXUS Program.
It showed footage of test subjects consumed by failed fusions. Children used as base genomes. Experiments implanted with symbiotes stolen from another reality.
Arkanis's origin.
Kael's own fate.
And the boy in the tank? It labeled him: ARKOS-1. SUCCESSFUL SYMBIOSIS — CLASS: ALPHA OMEGA
Kael stared at the screen.
That child wasn't a clone.
He was a key.
To what, he didn't know.
Yet.
Far below GENBANK-3, sealed behind quantum locks, a vault lit up.
Inside, sealed in containment fluid, Subject Zero opened his eyes.