Dr. Kyle Seraphis worked the holographic interface quickly, thinking through variables and parameters. Sequences of DNA danced in front of his face.
Kyle belonged to an alien race called the Sumidians, known for their intellect and calculating power. Their brains had naturally evolved for poly-mathematical and scientific skills. It was safe to say the best of science resided in this race.
He was born a genius with an exceptional brain, but he didn't rely on it—he worked hard. At a young age, he had published research papers that immediately caught the eyes of the scientific community. The Cetra 9 Citadel hunted for talents like his.
He had created species without error, developed many medical innovations for his people and for others. In gene editing, he was a master—one of a kind. He could read genetic code like others read tickets at a bus stop.
His brother had taken over the Thelarian lab. Kyle didn't want to make Eve just a weapon—he wanted to make her perfection.
From the very beginning, Kyle knew he had found a treasure chest in Synthia's form. He was mesmerized by her code, especially by her self-introduced modifications. It was unlike anything he had ever seen.
Thelarians had hunted rogue AIs, abducted thousands of aliens—for countless wicked purposes. All of it was encoded into a master drive, a gene pool gathered into a single library.
The master drive could not be injected into a single machine, alien, or human. There was too much information—it would fry systems at both neural and genetic levels. Synthia was an exception.
She had fine-tuned her code to absorb any amount of data, programming an invincible fortress of security layers around her machine core. Reading her underlying code was only possible through the genius of Dr. Kyle; decompilation took years, even for him.
Back to the master drive—at first, he couldn't believe it. Synthia's core assimilated 30% of the drive's gene pool without showing any dysfunction. Eventually, she absorbed 100%. In fact, the only anomaly was Synthia herself. How did she manage to master her programming at the subatomic level?
This was why Dr. Kyle began to think of Eve as more than what the Thelarians had designated her for. He knew he had a breakthrough—something he hadn't thought possible—and he wasn't going to miss it.
He was an aesthetic genetic architect; the best of his art and beauty went into designing Eve's facial features and the proportions of her body. The rich alien extracts from the master drive and the elegant machine architecture had to be coupled with a perfect shell. It had to be a masterpiece.
Born inside an artificial womb, Eve grew up fast. Childhood passed in a blur. Her growth was exponential—within three years she had the body of a sixteen-year-old girl.
His interest in Eve eventually became emotional. His study turned into parenthood. They developed a bond.
Thelarians soon realized the project was going in another direction—not the one they had intended. When Dr. Kyle rebelled, they imprisoned him.
Kyle didn't fear imprisonment, nor even death. Eve wasn't just the work of his life—she felt like family, like a daughter. He was determined to break her free, not only from the lab but from the genetic imprisonment and programming from which she might never awaken.
Kyle pretended to be his former self and agreed to work on the program as the Thelarians demanded. He acted as though he felt nothing for her, powerlessly watching Eve tortured through unbearable procedures as Thelarian experiments grew desperate. He steeled his heart and waited for the right time.
The Thelarian facility was not designed for genetic engineering. It was a collection of everything—from alien artifacts to stolen and hidden alien technology.
Before the Eve Program, Kyle had been working on Project Sub-Quantum Effect. It involved an ancient alien artifact that no one had been able to tap into or understand. It just lay dormant in the lab, unraveled and unused.
This object was Kyle's main interest before he began Project Eve. He knew there were a few rare artifacts with similar descriptions, but those were interactive—instilling amazing powers in their wielders and responding to life forms. This specific box behaved differently. Kyle believed it wasn't a tool but a key—and the only one of its kind.
It was the size of a football, but shaped like a square. Vantablack—absorbing all light—you could only see it by the shimmering markings on its surface.
Dr. Kyle thought it might be possible to quantum-couple the object with a live subject, but he knew that injecting it into a person would not only kill the subject, it might render the key completely obsolete.
This was one of those times when the Thelarians were pushing Eve through extreme physical stresses in the hope her powers would manifest. They had been unsuccessful. As the experiments grew harsher, Dr. Kyle Seraphis could bear it no more.
So he decided to let Eve pass through the ultimate physical stress—something that would either liberate her or kill her, even with her endurance. Either way, he thought, she would be freed from endless suffering.
He decided to inject her with the key from Project Sub-Quantum Effect. He did it without the Thelarians noticing. Placed in a dome-like device, he put the box on her chest as assisting Thelarian scientists watched. The quantum coupling process began.
A pulse of magnetic force warped the light in the lab. It felt as if reality itself were bending out of proportion as the box turned into nanoparticles and disappeared into her torso.
Eve screamed as her entire body shook and lifted into the air.
A miracle happened—the key fused. It accepted Eve's genetic signature. Was it because of her unique genetic makeup and enhancements—or something else?
Dr. Kyle didn't have time to think about it.
It was only a matter of time before the Thelarians realized the box had been stolen. He had to move quickly to the next part of the plan—erasing Eve's memories.
As he prepared to break her out, he wanted Eve to forget everything that had happened in the lab—even forget him—and start a new life. The process was easy; the only hard part was letting her go.
Under other circumstances, he would have loved to be there for her, to watch her grow and evolve. But it had to be done.
His assistants moved Eve's unconscious body to another chamber. He logged into her neural network and executed a system-wide reboot, then injected a reprogramming serum into the back of her neck. It was done.
He ordered the scientists to "throw the filthy subject" back into her cell. He sounded cold—he had to.
Then he ran to the facility's mainframe, ordered everyone out, and sealed the control room. He uploaded a video he had recorded on a hand-held camera.
"Eve, I am going to get you out of this. You are going to remember nothing of past horrors. I am going to layer your genes with safeguards no one will ever be able to read or break…"
He watched Eve on the surveillance feed as she woke in her cell. She looked around like she had just arrived. Dr. Kyle exhaled in relief. "She doesn't remember. The system reboot worked."
He messaged his brother Baalthore about what he was going to do and placed Eve's picture on the console as he began his final task.
Kyle entered a secret code, initiating the self-destruct sequence. Alarms blared, prompting everyone to evacuate.
Outside the door, soldiers tried to break in for a minute before giving up and running when they heard: "Self-destruct sequence begins in fifteen minutes."
He watched Eve run through doors and corridors, fighting soldiers along the way. "Good—the serum worked too."
Now she had enhanced physical and mental skills. Thelarians had never figured it out, but Kyle had unlocked her abilities—he had simply waited for the right time.
Baalthore appeared on one of the screens, screaming at soldiers to capture Eve instead of escaping.
Kyle opened doors for her and guided her path. When she finally reached the flight strip where evacuees rushed toward the aircraft, the countdown neared a minute.
Eve's ship lifted off the ground. He looked—at her picture and smiled. Tears filled his eyes. "I'm sorry," and embraced the picture closing his eyes.
Powerful explosions wash everything away.