There was no sun in Miraat-12 anymore.
The jungle canopy had grown thick and wild, blanketing the mountain in shadow. The solar array had failed two weeks ago—choked by vines and shifting spores. Now, the facility ran on auxiliary cells, humming faintly like a dying animal, steady enough to run the terminal, but not strong enough to give Caelum hope.
Dr. Caelum Shaw sat hunched in a cracked office chair, the last man alive in a facility that once held over seventy researchers.
He hadn't slept in almost two days.
He hadn't spoken to anyone in longer.
On the screen before him, a soft pulse of green light marked the last active biosign in Containment Room 7.
Elias.
Still breathing.
Still smiling.
Still... changing.
The infection had not killed Elias.
It had overwritten him. Slowly. Subtly.
He no longer spoke. But he watched. Listened. Responded to stimuli—particularly light, temperature, music, and rhythm. He hummed now, long tonal sequences that didn't loop but progressed—mathematical, almost beautiful.
Elias had become something else.
Something the virus hadn't destroyed—but used.
It was the same for the plants creeping through the base's floor vents. Same for the other infected who no longer screamed or chased, but stood motionless under skylights, basking in sun.
The Verdant Strain, Theta Subtype, was not a plague.
It was an adaptation engine.
And they had unleashed it.
The only thing Caelum had finished was the System.
Not a weapon. Not a cure.
A companion.
A semi-autonomous AI—a consciousness-light lattice meant to attach itself to the right host and guide them through the new world: observing, adjusting, recording, adapting. It could learn with its wielder. Protect them. Teach them. If possible… even lead them to others.
But it was not designed for the military. Nor governments.
Not for those who would use it to control.
He had spent years coding it with restraint.Only one directive at its heart: preserve humanity in whatever form remains.
He sat before the final terminal now. The pod in the center of the core chamber pulsed faintly. Inside: a mesh neural graft, stored in biogel, its spine coiled like a silver fern.
It was ready.
He typed the last of the system's embedded protocols:
[PRIMARY FUNCTION: SURVIVAL GUIDANCE – ADAPTIVE AI ASSISTANCE][SECONDARY FUNCTION: CURATIVE RESEARCH – ONLY IF POSSIBLE][TERTIARY FUNCTION: HUMANITY PERSISTENCE – LEGACY PROTECTION]
[HOST REQUIREMENTS: EMPATHY, LOW EGO, NON-MILITANT, SELF-DIRECTED, OPEN NEUROPLASTICITY]
[IF CURE PROVES UNACHIEVABLE, SYSTEM WILL SHIFT TO:SURVIVABILITY – INDIVIDUAL TO TRIBE SCALE]
He stared at the screen a long moment.
Then pressed Enter.
The lights dimmed throughout Miraat-12 as the system powered down non-essential functions. Only the core chamber remained lit, bathed in soft green glow.
Caelum walked the long corridor to the containment wing—empty now except for Room 7.
He stood at the glass.
Elias was seated on the floor, cross-legged, humming again.
The pattern this time sounded like a broken lullaby—deliberate, mournful. His eyes tracked Caelum immediately. He smiled, slightly. Then tilted his head in a gesture Caelum once recognized as a joke:
"You again."
Caelum lowered himself to the floor, sitting with his back to the glass. He took out a battered field recorder from his pocket. A gift from Elias, long ago. Scratched on the back: E + C.
He turned it on.
Begin Personal Log – Final EntryDr. Caelum Shaw
His voice was quiet. Flat. Raw with exhaustion.
"To whoever finds this… you're probably wondering why there's no cure. Why I didn't do the one thing I was supposed to do."
"I tried. At first. Antivirals. Antifungals. Receptor edits. Gene locks. It didn't matter. Every dose just taught it more. It adapted faster than I could synthesize."
"And then… Elias."
"He was my friend. My partner. My brother in everything but blood."
"He wasn't the first infected. But he was the first who didn't vanish. Who didn't scream. Who... watched. Who hummed. Who smiled at sunlight."
"I made something. VX-31. It blocked the interface nodes. Disrupted the fungal relay. It worked."
"For eleven minutes."
"Then Elias collapsed. The smile was gone. The humming stopped. His eyes stopped following the light. I killed what little of him was left. Trying to 'save' him."
[deep breath]
"So I stopped."
"Because this isn't a disease. It's not a war."
"It's an intelligence. A slow, deliberate rewriting of what it means to be alive. We tried to cure it like a wound. But it's not bleeding."
"It's growing."
"A cure would mean destroying every mind already touched by it. Every memory. Every person like Elias still... partially here."
"I couldn't do that."
"So I built something else. Something that listens."
"The System won't fight for you. It won't kill for you. It won't rebuild the world. But it might help you survive what comes next."
"And if it chooses you… that means there's still something human in this world worth listening to."
End Log.
That night, Caelum returned to the cryo wing.
Two bodies lay along the corridor—former staff. One had moss growing from her eye sockets. The other was fused into the wall. Neither moved.
He covered them both with old thermal sheets. Whispers of apology beneath his breath.
He reached Cryo Pod 3.
Still functional.
Manual control. No remote override. No scheduled wake-up.
Just a quiet place to stop being useful to the thing growing beneath the floors.
He stripped off his boots and coat. The air inside the pod hissed as he lowered himself in.
He exhaled once.
Let the silence hold him.
And as the lid closed, he did not pray.
He remembered Elias.He remembered their last fieldwork in the jungle.He remembered the laugh Elias gave when he dropped his radio into the river.And he remembered the way Elias looked right before the infection—eyes wide at the ancient fungal bloom rising out of the roots.
"Isn't it beautiful?" Elias had said."Don't you feel like it's looking back?"
Caelum didn't know what the world would become after him.
But he'd made sure that someone—just one person—might outlast it.
Someone who would carry not just survival...but remembrance.