Neon rain slid off Raymond’s hair as he knelt in the ruined street, the afterglow of Predator Protocol still flickering over his skin like electric scars.Lira crouched beside him, breath sharp. “Ray. Talk to me. Are you… in control?”Raymond didn’t answer. Couldn’t.Because the System’s whisper hadn’t stopped since activating Overdrive.More enemies inbound. More data to harvest. More ways to evolve.He squeezed his eyes shut.“I’m fine,” he forced out.Jax snorted. “You look like someone shoved a lightbulb in your soul and broke it.”“Shut up, Jax,” Lira snapped.Raymond pushed himself to his feet. “We need to leave the area before Helix sends more Enforcers.”Lira glanced behind them. “They already did.”Two shadows detached from the smog.Raymond’s heart hammered.Not Enforcers.People.But not just any people.Neo-Helix Retrieval Wardens, humans spliced with corporate tech, wearing segmented exo-armor that gleamed with crimson circuitry.The first one stepped forward, visor glowi

The elevator screeched to a halt.Raymond braced one hand against the metal wall, the other gripping the still-cool edge of his humming Neon Scalpel. Lira stood beside him, one pistol raised, her breathing steady despite the sprint they’d just made through the abandoned sub-sector tunnels.A single emergency light flickered overhead.“Level C-Zero-Nine,” Raymond murmured, scanning the numbers etched on the ancient display panel. “This is the place. Helix’s proto-lab should be three corridors down.”Lira didn’t answer. She tilted her head, listening. Her cybernetic ear implant thrummed faintly.Then she whispered, “Someone’s already here.”The elevator doors groaned open.They stepped into a long, dust-laden hall filled with rows of decommissioned med-pods. Each one was cracked, scorched, or half-dismantled, ghosts of Helix’s scrapped experiments.Raymond swept his eyes across the pods. “These models… I know them.” A twist of dread surged in his gut. “They were early prototypes for res

Emergency sirens wailed somewhere deep in the facility, a long, hollow sound that vibrated through the ruined hallway. Requiem’s massive body lay slumped against the shattered med-pods, sparks still falling like dying fireflies.Raymond barely heard any of it.His pulse hammered. His skin prickled. His System flickered like a neon flame in a storm.Project Genesis.The words echoed in his skull like a death sentence.Lira steadied him with a hand on his arm. “Ray… hey. Breathe.”He tried. Failed.Moretti pushed herself up with a trembling arm, leaning heavily against the wall. “We have to move. Now. If Requiem was activated, Helix security will be here soon. They’ll purge the entire wing.”Lira growled, “Typical Helix solution: set everything on fire and sweep the ashes.”Raymond tore his eyes from Requiem’s lifeless bulk. “Moretti… what is Project Genesis? And why did Requiem react to me like, like I was its owner?”Moretti’s eyes shimmered with fear. “Because you are.”Raymond froze

Light swallowed him.Not warm, not cold, simply total. A roaring whiteness that felt like falling into the center of a star. Raymond couldn’t tell whether he was standing or dissolving. The air, the floor, his own heartbeat, everything vanished.For a terrifying moment, he wondered.Did I just die?Then the world fractured.Thousands of shards spun around him, memories, code fragments, medical charts, cries for help, notes scribbled in the margins of forbidden research. He saw his childhood. He saw detention cells. He saw Faye’s trembling smile when he saved her the first time.He saw another boy, a prototype on a surgical bed, too small to fight back.He saw knives. Needles. Commands.And he saw the cold eyes of Dr. Elara Myles watching it all.Raymond reached for a memory-shard and it shattered at his touch, dissolving into streams of raw data.This is the proto-core, he realized. This is what’s inside me.A place made of memories, some his, some not.A voice flickered somewhere in

Raymond tumbled through darkness, the world twisting around him. The floor below wasn’t solid, it was a churning void of neon and shadow, swirling as if the Deep Archive itself had melted into data.He landed hard on metal grating, sending a shiver up his spine. Pain bloomed across his ribs, but the System’s pulse washed over him, stitching ligaments and calming nerve endings.Good. You’re alive. Let’s move.He pushed himself up, testing the grip of his boots on the slick, vibrating surface. The chamber he had landed in was unlike anything he’d seen. Gigantic conduits snaked along the walls, carrying streams of glowing biofluid that pulsed with life and energy. The smell of ozone and synthetic blood hung heavy in the air. Somewhere deep inside, a low hum reverberated, like a heartbeat from the facility itself.Lira landed beside him, rolling into a crouch. “Ray! Are you okay?”Raymond exhaled, wiping sweat and blood from his brow. “Better than okay… mostly. What about you?”“I’m fine,