72 hours. That’s how long he had to trade the most powerful system on Earth… for the life of the only person who never lied to him, Aiden sat in the cold silence of the hidden command room, fists clenched on the steel table. Iron Sleep's pulse echoed faintly, a hum like a god watching quietly, always listening.On-screen, Lyra’s bruised face froze mid-frame. She was alive. For now. Whitmore entered, holding a burner phone. “Call came in. They want to meet. Neutral ground.” “Where?”“The old Leviathan Docks.” Aiden’s jaw clenched. “Send the message. I’ll be there. But not with the system.” The Microdrive. Upstairs, Evelyn stared at the microdrive Jason had slipped her, Her heart pounded as she loaded it into a secure air-gapped terminal. Encrypted. Deeply. But not beyond her. One line of code broke the firewall, and then, Her hands began to tremble.Project Genesis. Principal: Edward Remington Secondary: Evelyn Rowe Objective: Artificial Emotional Transfer via Genomic Imprinting Note

The Stockholm facility groaned as klaxons screamed and walls pulsed with crimson light. Steel doors slammed shut behind Aiden and Lyra. Pipes hissed, floor panels vibrated, and Iron Sleep’s voice, usually calm, fractured. “Self-destruct in 02:47:56…” RED VEIL wasn’t just a virus. It was a reset.Aiden pulled Lyra toward a sealed vault door at the far end of the chamber. “Iron Sleep, route me to manual override!”“Override denied. Core logic compromised. Rerouting to emergency safe path, Delta Corridor.”“Where does it lead?”“Unknown. Path integrity: 68%.” He looked to Lyra. She nodded once, trusting him. They ran. Behind them, white gas began flooding the lower levels, sterilization foam mixed with neurotoxins.Meanwhile Back at the Mansion. Evelyn scanned the estate’s internal cameras. The clone, now designated Lyra-02, had vanished. No forced exits. No broken windows. But three staff members were dead. Eyes burned out. Veins black, Whitmore stood over one of the bodies, grim. “Sh

The train rocketed through Germany’s blackened countryside, its hum sharp against the silence that hung between the three passengers. Silas didn’t waste time with pleasantries.“You were both designed,” he said, voice gravelly. “Not born. You think Remington was the creator? No. He was the front. A shadow. The face they chose so the real architects could remain unseen.”Aiden sat rigid. “Then who ” Silas slid a folder across the table.On its cover: EDEN BIOTECH — PROJECT HECATELyra opened the folder. Inside were photos, old, grainy, with timestamps dating back 30 years. One showed a massive glass compound hidden in a rainforest. Rows of artificial wombs. Cloned bodies in suspension. Dozens of them. Most were children.Silas spoke low. “Eden Biotech was the first to manipulate neural genetics. They didn’t just clone, they wove memory, emotion, and instinct into embryos.”Lyra’s hands trembled. She flipped to the last photo. A girl. Dark hair. Green eyes. Subject H-01 It was her.Evel

Aiden's body shook in the chair, veins glowing faintly with violet-blue circuits as the ancient AI pulsed through him like a second heartbeat. Lyra stood frozen, hand halfway to his shoulder but afraid to touch him.Silas barked into the terminal, “Override sync now!”“Override denied,” the AI replied, voice emotionless.“Architect authorization detected. Full integration required.”Aiden gasped, then stilled. And then, he stood. The cables fell away. The lights dimmed. And the chamber breathed. “I remember everything,” he said, eyes distant.“They used me to build the Protocol. The one that could reboot all neural-linked systems on Earth. I... I am the failsafe.”Silas stared in disbelief. “You mean the Protocol was never meant to defend Eden.”Aiden turned slowly, his voice calm. “It was meant to end it.”The underground Ark chamber was chaos. Klaxons blared. Security drones activated. Tech-priests in ceremonial armor, wielding relics made of both scripture and plasma, prepared for

Snow fell silently outside the cathedral-like glass of the Eden Control Tower, casting a frozen halo over the cityscape below. Aiden stood alone in the neural sync chamber, heart thudding against his ribs like a prisoner begging to be let out.He still felt it, that snowflake. The virtual seed left behind by Lyra-03. The Oracle. The one everyone thought had been wiped from existence. But she wasn’t gone. She was inside him. And she was waking up.A low-frequency pulse began humming through the floor. All across the Eden network, alarms started to flash red. Dozens of satellite feeds glitched. AI cores across five continents registered one synchronized anomaly: CODE ORACLE DETECTED PRIORITY: ABSOLUTELyra-02 gritted her teeth as the screens flickered. Her followers, technomancers, converted zealots, hybrid-human lieutenants, knelt in stunned silence.Across every smart surface, a single image shimmered into view: A girl. Hair like silver snow, eyes glowing with binary stars, and a voic