"He’s stabilizing," she replied without turning. "But the anomaly we detected in the last scan—it’s getting stronger."
Cassius approached the console and tapped the screen. The display shifted, revealing Kendrick’s latest bioscan. A glowing signature, faint but distinct, pulsed in the upper quadrant.
"Residual Helix activity," Cassius muttered. "No enhancent, but no decay either."
Sophia finally turned. "That’s not possible unless—"
"He was exposed again," Cassius finished, his brow tightening. "But we’ve kept him clear for months. There’s been no new contact."
Sophia stared at the screen. "Then either soone tampered with his ds, or... he’s adapting."
Cassius fell silent. That possibility had been lingering at the edges of his mind for days. If Kendrick’s system had begun to integrate Helix markers naturally, it ant sothing much more dangerous was unfolding. The stability they’d hoped for might have taken a different turn.
anwhile, Kendrick lay on the cot in the adjoining room, unaware of the growing concern in the next room. Zephany sat beside him, her hand resting gently over his. She watched his sleeping face, the way his brows twitched now and then, and the faint glow that seed to pulse under his skin when the lights flickered.
She hadn’t slept much. Her thoughts were a battlefield—scattered pieces of her own identity, mories of Obscura, worries over Kendrick, and the crushing possibility that Helix hadn’t been dormant after all. And if he was changing again, what would it an for their lives?
She whispered, "You promised to be okay..."
Kendrick stirred. Slowly, his eyes fluttered open.
"Hey," he rasped.
Zephany offered a faint smile. "Hey yourself. You scared ."
He tried to sit up but winced, his hand flying to his side.
"Don’t move," she said quickly, guiding him back. "You’ve been out for nearly twenty hours."
He blinked at her. "Did... did sothing happen?"
Zephany hesitated, then nodded. "You collapsed. We brought you here. Cassius has been running tests."
Kendrick closed his eyes again, his voice low. "I had a dream... or sothing. I saw fire. Voices. Not mine. Like mories I never had."
Zephany’s breath caught. He was rembering.
She stood and walked to the door. "I’ll get Cassius. He needs to hear this."
Cassius entered a mont later, carrying a small tablet. He sat beside Kendrick without ceremony, his eyes sharp behind tired lenses.
"Tell about the dream," he said.
Kendrick nodded slowly, recounting what little he rembered. The flashes of white corridors, a woman in a lab coat, soone shouting, and then fire—a room engulfed in it.
Cassius listened silently, then finally said, "Those aren’t dreams. They’re fragnts."
"Fragnts of what?"
Sophia stepped forward. "Of the Helix facility. Of your ti there."
Kendrick stared. "I don’t rember ever being there."
"You weren’t conscious. Not fully," Cassius replied. "You were part of a stability test. Your data was flagged as promising, but you disappeared before they could finish. Your body retained markers, but your mind blocked it. Until now."
Zephany took a step closer. "Are they coming back? His mories?"
"In waves," Cassius said. "Triggered by stress or exposure. And they’ll keep coming. We need to monitor him more closely than ever."
Silence fell.
Then Zephany asked, "And if it’s not just mories? What if the Helix signature is changing him again?"
Cassius didn’t answer.
---
Far from the Institute, Brent stood in the shadows of the abandoned hospital’s courtyard, his coat soaked through from the rain. His eyes glinted as he peered through the scope of a modified lens. The signal beacon he’d embedded weeks ago had finally triggered. Soone had found the hidden room.
And worse, they’d stayed long enough to notice the remnants.
"Damn," he muttered. He pulled a phone from his coat and dialed.
"You said they wouldn’t get this far," he hissed.
On the other end, a calm voice replied, "I said they’d be delayed. You were the one who left a trail."
Brent cursed. "Then we move up the tiline."
"Are you sure? The data isn’t complete yet."
Brent’s eyes narrowed. "We don’t need complete. We need control. Activate the final subject."
A pause.
"Understood."
Brent ended the call and looked toward the far end of the ruins, where a figure stood in the mist—tall, motionless, half-lit by the flicker of faulty streetlights. A prototype. The last one Helix had developed before going dark.
The figure turned its head, red eyes glowing faintly.
"Ti to wake up," Brent murmured.
---
Back at the institute, Reynold leaned over the surveillance feed Jeric had set up from their last visit. The footage was grainy, but a figure had appeared in the lower fra—too tall, too smooth in movent.
"That’s not Brent," Jeric said.
"No," Reynold muttered. "That’s sothing else."
They exchanged a look.
And knew this was just the beginning.
---
The sun dipped low, casting a burnt-orange glow over the city as shadows lengthened across the aging hospital rooftop. Brent stood at the edge, wind tugging at the edges of his coat, his phone pressed to his ear.
"They’ve found the backup site," ca the voice on the other end. Elias’s tone was low, clipped. "Reynold and Jeric were inside for hours. They’ve seen the refrigeration unit, the equipnt, the laptop."
Brent’s jaw tensed. "And the files?"
"Still encrypted," Elias replied. "But if Reynold gets that drive back to Cassius, it won’t stay that way for long."
Brent’s eyes narrowed, scanning the street below. Cars moved like ants—innocent, unaware. But high above them, the last of Helix’s secrets teetered on the brink of exposure.
"We need to accelerate the extraction," he muttered. "If they link the biotric readings to the dormant vials, we lose everything."
"You said we had ti."
"We don’t," Brent snapped. "Cassius is already suspicious. That blood test he ran on Kendrick? He knows the regenerative markers aren’t natural. And Zephany’s proximity to both Cassius and the target... it’s no coincidence."
A pause crackled through the line. Then, Elias spoke again, quietly. "Then you better prepare for the worst. Because if Cassius finds , there won’t be another reboot."
The line went dead.
Brent slipped the phone into his pocket, his gaze hard. Then he turned and descended into the stairwell, each step echoing like a countdown.
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