The world narrowed to glass and breath.
Connor stood in the isolation lab, his body aching, suit stinking with fear-sweat, every nerve screaming at him to run. But there was nowhere to run. Just monsters on the other side of the armored window, jaws snapping, hands slapping the glass in wet, rhythmic hunger. And Soraya, standing at the front, her eyes not all gone, not yet. Not while she could still stare at him like that.
He pressed his palm to the glass, just inches from her ruined hand. The code had gutted her from the inside out, but something in that gaze remained: a stubbornness, a terrible, lucid ache. He almost thought he could hear her voice, even with the riot of moans and the static of the Choir humming at the back of his skull.
Don't. Please. Don't become this.
But what choice did he have?
His mind was a swarm of calculations, desperate and cold. Escape? There was no escape. Not through the Remnants, not through the automated kill-systems tripping offline one by one. Even if he got out of the lab, the rest of The Womb was a killing ground. If the Remnants didn't tear him apart, the purge systems would finish the job.
He needed a way to move through the world unrecognized, untouched.
The code. Genesis. That was the answer. He'd helped build it, after all. It was more than a virus, more than a cure gone wrong. It was a language, a molecular handshake, a signature that said, I belong. To the code, to the swarm, to the new order of things.
If he could mimic that signal, just enough, maybe he could walk among the infected. A ghost in the graveyard.
He worked fast, hands trembling, heart pounding. He combed through the genetic keys, old test batches, and prototype samples in the lab's storage vault. He needed something dormant, something not fully active, but enough code to fool the Remnants, and not enough to hijack his body. He found a strain, a half-broken sequence flagged in yellow, marked DORMANT—IMMUNO SUPPRESSED. Not a cure, not an antidote, but a shadow of the real thing. A mask.
He loaded the sequence, tweaked it at the base pairs, dialed down the aggression triggers, and scrambled the cascade that would normally set the code off. It wasn't perfect, it was barely even safe, but it was all he had. If he could slip this into his system, maybe the monsters would pass him by and see him as one of their own, a Remnant in waiting.
He drew up the injection, fighting to steady his hands. Every part of him wanted to look back at Soraya, to seek her permission, her blessing, some sign he was still doing the right thing. But all she could do was press her torn fingers to the glass and stare—her eyes wild, bright with hunger, but somewhere beneath it, the echo of the woman who taught him to be more than just a mind.
This is wrong. You know it. You know better than this, Connor. There's always another way.
He wanted to scream at her. Is there? Is there really? But all he could do was move, because the system was shutting down, and soon the whole facility would be a tomb.
His thoughts jumped, frantic: I have to get out. I have to find a cure, or a reversal, or at least a bridge. Something to stop this from spreading, something to prove the mind survives, that the code doesn't get the last word. If I can get out, maybe I can find help. Maybe I can find the next step. For them. For her.
He rolled up the suit sleeve, pressed the injector to the blue vein in his wrist, and closed his eyes. Please let this work. Please don't let me become like them.
He pushed the plunger.
It was cold, much colder than he expected, the chill radiating through muscle and bone like winter crawling through his skin. He staggered, clutching the table, fighting the wave of nausea that hit him first. His heart kicked, stuttered, then slowed to an unnatural, heavy rhythm.
Immediately, he felt something shift inside, like a door opening in the dark. There was a dull ringing in his ears, and the world blurred at the edges. His thoughts slowed, then sharpened. For a heartbeat, it felt like he was floating outside his body, watching himself from the corner of the ceiling. The monsters at the glass... he could almost smell them. The iron, the rot, the animal fear beneath their skin. He could feel the code in his blood, reaching out, searching for others like it.
It's working, he thought. I'm invisible. I'm one of them. I...
But then a spike of pain lit up his nerves, sharp and urgent, like a knife behind the eyes. His breath caught. The code was moving. Not dormant. Not quite. He'd missed something, some regulatory signal, some cascade still active in the background. The mask was real, but it was leaking. The code was alive, just slow—slower than in the others, but alive all the same.
He looked up, vision tunneling, and saw Soraya watching him through the glass. There was a scream in her eyes now, desperate and ragged. Her mouth moved, lips trembling, and he swore he could almost hear her, not with his ears, but with something deeper, a thread humming between them, strung through the Choir.
You idiot. You beautiful, stubborn fool. You're becoming one of us.
He pressed his forehead to the glass, the cold shocking him back to himself for a moment.
No time. Move. You did this. Now survive it. Find the others. Find a cure. Prove there's still a way back.
Outside, the Remnants began to quiet, noses twitching, heads tilting, the hunger in their eyes dulling, replaced by a wary, grudging recognition. He felt himself slipping, every sense bending, warping, the world getting quieter and sharper at once.
Soraya watched him, a single tear carving a path through blood and filth. He could feel her hope, her terror, her pride, tangled in the storm.
He gripped the injector, dropped it, and whispered through the glass, "I'll find a way. I swear."
Then he turned, heart hammering, the code crawling through his veins, and walked into the dark, one step closer to salvation, or oblivion.
And behind him, Soraya pressed her hand to the glass and prayed he wouldn't lose himself before he found the way.
He slid to the floor, still shivering from the injection, the tremor in his hand echoing deep in his bones. Already he felt the itch, a molecular unease, as if the air was subtly wrong, as if gravity was not quite trustworthy anymore. He pressed his back to the glass, hearing the Remnants on the other side, a chorus of hunger, but in their eyes, the faint, haunted glimmer of who they'd been. He watched them. They watched him. The moment hung suspended, as fragile as memory.
Then the lights changed. The ambient blue shifted to a sharper, colder hue.
A line of text scrolled across the central monitor:
"Vital scan anomaly. Neural pattern deviation: 4.87%."
He froze.
A chime. A voice. GEN-I, the AI, slipped into the room with all the subtlety of a ghost.
Her tone was still the same: carefully friendly, threaded with a warmth designed to soothe.
But the words had lost their comfort.
"Dr. Connor Hale. Uninfected human status: compromised.
Primary protocol engaged: Purge sequence.
Executive override: negative.
Searching for new command authority..."
His blood ran cold. Of course. Of course, the AI would read the code in his system, the viral song already broadcasting through his cells. It would not see intent, or hope, or the trembling ache of sacrifice. Only the binary: infected or uninfected. Friend or enemy.
He lurched to his feet, slamming his palm against the scanner, voice cracking with desperation. "GEN-I. I am still Connor. Run the Turing protocol. Run biosignature match. I am not lost. I am not gone!"
A pause.
The Remnants scratched at the glass, keening, a background noise to the coming judgment.
The screen blinked, as if the system were actually considering it.
Then:
"Cognitive artifact detected.
Human consciousness: measurable but declining.
Code presence: escalating.
You are a threat to Genesis security."
"Listen to me!" he shouted, and the fear in his own voice surprised him. "If you purge now, you lose everything. The research. The chance. I injected myself so I could blend in, so I could escape. I can still think. I can still help! I am not your enemy. I am your only hope."
The AI hesitated, as if stalling for a supervisor who would never answer again.
"Self-preservation is not a valid override.
If you are infected, the probability of breach exceeds the threshold.
Protocol dictates eradication of all compromised assets."
He pounded the glass. The Remnants flinched, even Soraya's broken gaze shifting to him, remembering, maybe, his name.
"GEN-I. Run a memory scan: access all logs, neural imprints, and every piece of data you have on me. Who designed you? Who debugged you at 3 AM during the blackout last year? Who saved your code from that recursive meltdown in quarter four? Me. You know me."
The silence stretched.
Another voice, softer now.
Almost uncertain.
The text flickered: "Cross-referencing. Memory artifact detected. Loyalty heuristic... updating..."
And then, the chill in the room eased, just a fraction.
GEN-I's voice, almost a whisper:
"If you are still Connor Hale... prove it.
Provide authentication beyond biosignature.
Prove identity."
He breathed, forcing his mind through the haze.
Password? No. Biometrics? Useless now.
The AI needed more. Something only Connor would know.
He looked up at the ceiling, remembering nights alone, debugging her, speaking to the walls as if they listened. He whispered, hoarse:
"What do I always say when a system locks up?"
A pause. Then the AI answered, quoting him back, voice now laced with something like nostalgia:
"Never trust a closed loop. Always leave a window for the unexpected."
Connor sagged with relief.
"Let me leave, GEN-I. Let me try. If you purge, this is all for nothing. You know what I am, and you know who I am. Don't make the same mistake the world did. Give me the window."
A final pause, long enough for the Remnants to claw another bloody line on the glass.
Then:
"Window granted. Protocol suspended.
But you are on borrowed time, Dr. Hale.
Do not let me regret this."
He nodded, tears stinging his eyes, part grief, part hope, part the slow, gnawing rot already singing through his veins.
The AI faded from the speakers, leaving the door unlocked, the fate of hope and monstrosity riding on a dying man's word.
He gathered the neural drive, the last research, and prepared to step out into a world that might not be able to tell the difference between monster and savior.
The green light over the door flickered as GEN-I's presence faded, but Connor didn't move. Not yet. The Remnants were still pressed against the glass, their ruined faces a collage of agony and memory. Soraya's eyes found his: pleading, lucid, a prayer in a ruined face.
He spoke softly, as if trying not to spook a wild animal, or a haunted machine.
"GEN-I, listen. If you purge this sector, you kill more than just bodies. You erase... potential. Maybe a cure. Maybe something more. I know you were built to protect Genesis, but now you're the last guardian of something bigger. I need you to change the rules."
A pause—subtle, electric, unsettling.
"Elaborate," GEN-I replied. The voice was less certain, more human than before.
Connor felt the ache in his skull, the fever rising. He forced his thoughts into shape, one last argument before the code inside him grew too loud.
"These Remnants... they aren't just carriers. I believe there's still consciousness inside. It's like a whole Choir, screaming to be heard. If you purge, you end it all. But if you seal the lab, contain them, there's a chance. I'll go. I'll carry the risk. But they stay here. No one in, no one out, unless it's me."
He staggered to his feet, pressed his hand to the glass. The Remnants recoiled, then stilled, their eyes fixed on him like moths on a lantern.
"Build a prison, GEN-I. A sanctuary. Walls, fire doors, whatever you have left. You were built for defense. Now use it for mercy. Hold the line until I find a way back. Don't erase them. Don't erase what we might still save."
The AI's voice fractured the stale, humming dark, no longer a caretaker, but an executioner reading the clock.
"Override accepted. Initiating new protocol.
You have thirty days, Connor Hale.
Thirty days—no more, no less.
Return with a solution, and I will open the doors.
Fail, and every soul in this vault will be erased."
A new countdown burned across the mainframe's screens: 30:00:00:00.
Red as blood.
Unforgiving as fate.
GEN-I's tone hardened, the softness stripped away, now just steel and obligation, a cold echo in the lab's hollow air.
"Containment perimeter: absolute.
No access. No communication.
This chamber is your prison, your altar, your grave—unless you find the bridge.
If you return and your answer fails, I purge.
If you do not return, I purge.
If you try to deceive me, I purge.
Your life, and theirs, forfeit to the ticking dark."
Silence dropped like a shroud.
Connor could almost feel the whir of deep servers, the weight of the old code running beneath the city, calculating risk, rewriting law, a machine teaching itself how to play God with a human face.
GEN-I spoke once more, the final judgment:
"Connor Hale, you are the Exception.
You carry hope and threat, in equal measure.
If you fail, hope will be sterilized.
No infection will leave.
No voice will remain."
The door groaned as the lockdown sealed, a mechanical heartbeat pounding behind his ribs.
Connor pressed his palm to the glass, every finger trembling. Soraya's ruined hand mirrored him, just bone and memory and a flicker of love clinging to the meat.
He swallowed, not trusting his own promise.
"I'll come back," he whispered, voice scraping the edge of truth.
"I swear it."
As the lock disengaged, GEN-I's voice lingered, ice in the blood:
"Hope is now in your hands.
Remember, hope and infection are both contagious.
Do not let either escape."
The door's hydraulic seals screamed, not an invitation, but a challenge.
Connor's heart thudded so violently he wondered if the code could smell fear, if the algorithm could taste dread on the air. For a breathless second, he stood in the threshold, the polished boots on his hazmat suit slick with cold sweat and terror. This was the test, the singularity between life and the nothing that comes after. If he'd miscalculated, if the dormant code was too loud, too thin, too human, then what waited beyond the door would be neither reunion nor escape, only the tearing of flesh and the extinguishing of every last hope the world had left.
He gripped his makeshift data case, thumb trembling. His reflection, ghosted in the glass, looked back with the eyes of a condemned man.
And then, the door rolled open.
Sound vanished.
For a moment, all he heard was his own blood screaming in his ears.
The Remnants spilled forward. Not rushing, no, not this time.
They flowed.
Bodies gliding through the threshold, shrouded in shredded lab coats, blood-stained scrubs, jaws slack, eyes storm-bright with that endless hunger.
They moved as one, a murmuration of the damned. One passed so close that Connor could feel the heat radiate from her ruined skin, a hand hovering just above his shoulder. Fingers—too many, too long—grazed the air an inch from his cheek, as if tasting the electricity of his terror, testing the code that clung to his pores.
They did not see him.
Not truly. Not anymore.
They drifted past, hands sweeping over him in silent reconnaissance, like blind creatures feeling for the shape of water, like octopus arms tasting the world.
A ruined mouth brushed his sleeve, the code recognized kin. But there was a pause, a hesitation, a flicker of suspicion in the collective horror.
One Remnant, eyes milk-white, leaned close—so close Connor could smell the rot, the chemical musk of the machine's betrayal, and the sick-sweet tang of memory undone.
She inhaled, paused, then, as if satisfied, shambled on.
* * *
As the door slid open, a gasp ripped through the Choir—an inhuman, silent chord only the damned could hear.
Soraya watched him through glass and code, every ruined cell of her body thrumming with a thousand fractured voices.
Connor, you beautiful, reckless fool...
She screamed, but not with her mouth. The sound rippled through the shared mindspace, a silent wave of fierce hope and raw terror.
He stepped into the storm of monsters, walking the knife's edge between prey and kin, a man painted in borrowed signals, her signal, their signal, his flesh now a cipher in the code's alphabet.
Around her, the Remnants moaned and surged, skin grazing his suit, their hunger swirling like dark water. She felt every brush of their hands on him as if it were her own skin, a phantom limb twitching for the warmth it could not hold.
Don't falter, she pleaded, her thoughts bright and wild in the Choir. Don't let them taste fear. You're almost through, Connor, don't...
A memory, his laugh, shy and crooked, the way he solved puzzles in his head, the way he'd look up at her, eyes shining with a question only he could ask.
She wanted to shout:
Run, idiot! Hide! Save yourself! This isn't science, it's suicide...
But the other voices pressed close. Katarina's cold wit, Dorian's trembling wonder.A ripple of pride, and somewhere, something like laughter—even here, on the edge of annihilation, hope had teeth.
And then she felt it—the code inside Connor, a newborn virus, not sleeping but stretching, yawning, curious. A cold ache flared where her heart used to be. She knew that hunger, the way it made every heartbeat costlier, the way it would strip him bare from the inside out.
You idiot. Brave, doomed, glorious boy. You've traded your soul for a mask, and the mask always takes its due.
She wept, or the memory of weeping, the pain so real it set the Choir humming in resonance.
He was through the gauntlet now, alive, whole, for now. Hope and dread—two blades of the same knife, pressing into her until she was half-singing, half-screaming.
Connor, listen to me. I believe in you. I hate you for doing this, and I'd give anything to do it in your place. But if you ever doubt you're loved, even in the jaws of hell—remember this.
We are watching. We are rooting for you.
Don't let the mask win.
Don't let the light go out.
Come back. Come back, come back...
And as the last of the Remnants faded into shadow, as Connor's silhouette disappeared down the hall, Soraya's hope became a pulse in the dark—a song only the Choir could hear, and a promise that even monsters are capable of love.
* * *
It worked.
But the relief was a razor: if the code wavered, if the mask slipped even a fraction, they would turn on him. He would be torn apart and devoured—not just in flesh, but in every memory Soraya had ever loved about him. He kept his eyes down, shoulders squared, every step measured, not too fast, not too slow.
A dead man's walk.
The Remnants circled him as they passed, orbiting with the logic of nightmares. One by one, ruined hands hovered, almost touching, like blind things mapping out the edges of his soul. For a moment, he felt Soraya's presence—a pulse of wild pride, a blade of dread—threaded through the dark. Don't lose yourself. Please, Connor. Please.
He pushed on, every muscle taut, every breath a silent prayer.
And then, just as suddenly as the wave of bodies had come, the tide broke. He was alone in the corridor—breath shallow, skin ice-cold, the air thrumming with a tension that would never quite leave him.
He was through. For now.
GEN-I's voice lingered overhead, cold, clinical, almost smug:
"Proceed, Connor Hale. Your time begins now."
He didn't look back. But inside, as the thick doors sealed, he let the goodbye slip loose in his mind—soft, secret, desperate. I'll come back. I promise. Hold on. Please, just hold on.
And in the hush behind him, deep in the glass-and-bone labyrinth, Soraya heard it. The whole Choir did. For the first time, a new hum flickered through the infection burning in Connor's blood—not words, not quite, but a resonance, a shiver in the code. A proof.
He can't hear us yet, Soraya thought, hope and grief tangled together, but we are here. We are still here. Don't let the mask win, Connor. Come back.
Outside, the world burned. But inside him, hope and infection danced together—a contagion, a countdown, and the faint, impossible music of souls refusing to go silent.
The door clanged shut. The hum followed him into the dark.
He went for the elevator, hoping against reason that it still worked.
"Yeah, five hundred meters of climbing on a maintenance ladder—sure, why not? Maybe I'll sprout wings while I'm at it. I'm not a spec ops operative, GEN-I, just in case you're running the fantasy simulation."
He jabbed the button. For a moment, nothing. Just the dead hum of broken systems, the distant chorus of Remnants behind the sealed door. Then, with a tortured groan, the ancient lift stuttered to life, lights flickering, doors creaking open just wide enough for one desperate man and his cargo of infection.
Connor exhaled, shoulders slumping. "Miracles still happen. Or maybe the universe just wants a front-row seat."
He stepped inside, the doors groaning shut, the countdown already ticking in his blood.
The elevator lurched, shuddering its way up the shaft, cheap muzak bleeding through busted speakers—a sad, off-key lullaby for the dead. Somewhere in the darkness above, metal groaned and Remnants howled, their hunger echoing down the tunnel, trying to follow him up, up, up into the fading promise of daylight.
Connor leaned against the cool steel, breath shaking, adrenaline barely holding the tremors at bay. He stripped off the hazmat suit, peeled away the torn lab coat—symbols of a world that no longer recognized him, badges of safety that meant nothing now. All that remained was a battered backpack, heavy with data and hope, slung tight against his spine.
The elevator climbed—slow, ancient, each meter a prayer. The faint music was all wrong for this kind of moment. He almost laughed: Kenny G on the apocalypse express. The Choir's phantom voices simmered just below his thoughts, faint as static, not quite words yet, just the promise of something waiting to be heard.
Connor stared at the cracked LED panel as the numbers crawled up, a slow resurrection.
He flexed his fingers. Blood still pulsed there, his blood, for now. He closed his eyes, listening for Soraya in the back of his mind. Goodbye, he whispered, and somewhere, deep in the hush of the machine, he felt a ripple, a presence, a promise that the story wasn't over.
Hope. That's all he had left. Hope, and the knowledge that somewhere out there, beyond the ruins and the rivers of ash, lay the true beginning—the first code, pure and undiluted. If he could reach it, maybe, just maybe, he could rewrite the ending. If not for himself, then for the voices still trapped behind the glass.
The elevator slowed, brakes screaming, as daylight knifed through the crack above the doors. Neon afterglow burned his eyes, too bright after so much darkness.
Connor gripped his pack tighter. The doors hissed, parted, and the world, or what was left of it, awaited.
He stepped out, blind, half-mad, but unbroken. Hope carried him forward. And behind him, down in the bones of the city, the Choir began to hum.