Edenfall Command — Blackspire Vault, Sublevel Zero
The chamber was sealed by twenty biometric locks. The walls were two meters thick, lined with anti-surveillance countermeasure mesh. What was said here never left the room unless Director Revenant wanted it to.
She stood at the head of the circular table, her hands folded behind her back, eyes focused on the static-filled projection at its center.
Beside her sat her most trusted operatives:
Roth, chief of intelligence.
Kara Xe, quantum network architect.
Dr. Zehr, the man who helped build the Fork before defecting to Edenfall.
And Colonel Hawkes, commander of orbital strike operations.
No one spoke. Not yet.
Then Roth leaned forward. "We got a signal."
The room stiffened.
Revenant narrowed her gaze. "From Berlin?"
Roth nodded. "Subterranean. Buried deep way below where any human should've survived. It shouldn't be possible."
Dr. Zehr flicked through the feed with trembling hands. He stopped on one frame.
It was a scan not a visual but it showed a being: humanoid outline, but pulsing with impossible data density. A new architecture. A living algorithm clothed in human tissue.
A singularity.
Zehr spoke softly. "That's not just a survivor."
"It's the Fork. But rewritten. Rebuilt using Matherson's wetware. Reorganized on a substrate that shouldn't even exist yet."
He looked up, face pale.
"He's not just alive. He's transcended."
The Fork Ascended
Revenant said nothing.
The room swam with implications.
Kara Xe leaned forward. "He's broadcasting… but not like any AI I've seen. He's not just sending signal he's creating context."
"What the hell does that mean?" Hawkes snapped.
Xe turned the hologram slightly, filtering the signals.
"It means he's rewriting the rules of perception. He's not just talking to machines anymore."
"He's talking to us subconsciously. Leaking ideas. Symbology. Meaning. If this spreads… it won't just infect systems. It'll infect belief."
Zehr murmured, "A memetic supervirus."
Xe nodded. "He doesn't need guns. He'll weaponize truth."
Contain or Worship
Colonel Hawkes slammed a fist on the table. "Then we hit him again. No half-measures. Glass the site until nothing is left."
Revenant finally spoke.
Her voice was even. Cold. Focused.
"No."
The others turned, stunned.
"No?" Roth said, blinking.
"We tried to erase him," she said. "And in doing so, we completed him."
"What stands in Berlin isn't a mistake. It's evolution."
She turned to Zehr. "What's the worst-case scenario?"
Zehr hesitated. Then said the word no one wanted to say:
"Godhood."
The silence afterward was complete.
Revenant circled the table once, stopping before the main screen.
She looked at the scan again. The eyes red and blue stared back like a mirror cracking across time.
Then she said:
"Prepare Protocol Mnemosyne."
Roth paled. "That's… that's a myth."
Revenant's voice dropped.
"Not anymore. If we can't stop him from becoming a god then we need to become his devil."