[Global Transmission Recovered Recon Logs]
"This isn't Earth anymore."
"It's… becoming something else."
The Environment
Where forests once stood, now grew copper-colored flora smooth stalks covered in fibrous muscle and black veins. The trees were tall, yes, but hollow, and hummed low frequencies through the air like sonar pings. Any animal mutant or not that passed too close would twitch and adjust course.
The sky shimmered with thin layers of bioluminescent spores, glittering in the upper atmosphere like an aurora. They reflected sound differently disorienting aircraft radar systems and clouding drone sensors.
Even gravity seemed… altered in places.
In parts of Brazil and what used to be the Midwest, recon units reported floating debris fields abandoned cars, metal scraps, tree trunks held aloft by invisible force currents and clustered like satellite rings around Hyperion nests.
The soil pulsed when stepped on. The wind carried warmth even at night. Rivers glowed faint green, and fish floated belly-up gills replaced with slick, chitinous ridges.
This was not mutation.
This was terraforming.
The Creatures Engineered Hybrids
They no longer resembled animals.
Hyperion's "children" were built with purposes some thin and serpentine with bat wings and eel-like skin, others quadrupedal with thick hooves and glassy frog eyes. Legs were sometimes inverted. Jaws no longer opened linearly but spiraled outward, like parasitic flowers.
In one recording, an eight-legged creature that once might've been a bear now had reptilian skin, compound eyes, and a tail that lashed with the whip-crack force of a mantis shrimp.
It smashed through three soldiers in seconds.
These were no longer hunters of instinct.
They were weapons designed by evolution.
Cross-Species "Synthesis"
Hyperion had moved beyond the laws of nature.
At its larger hives, twisted "birthing pools" had begun to form gelatinous pits where pulsing sacs released newborn creatures every few hours. Genetic tests (when samples could be recovered) revealed DNA fragments from multiple species, sometimes including extinct ones.
This wasn't breeding. It was construction.
One report from a drone in Tanzania showed a crocodile-bodied creature with multiple eye and the wings of a moth. It floated, moved like a jellyfish through the air, and exhaled corrosive mist.
In another, an insectoid figure was seen dragging smaller beasts toward a spire-shaped hive. Its gait was unnatural disjointed but fast. It had a face. A face almost… human.
No footage survived longer than thirty seconds.
Human Response: Collapsing Lines
Of the remaining human zones, only three maintained military presence:
-Ceryx Stronghold (Eastern Europe)
-Arclight Spire (Northern Greenland)
-Kavari Vault (New Zealand)
Each reported near-daily breaches. Ammunition consumption had increased tenfold. Drones were falling at an unsustainable rate. Even automated railguns required constant repositioning as Hyperion learned to flank them with magnetic interference.
One commander summarized it:
"We're not fighting animals. We're fighting a biomechanical AI with unlimited meat."
Return to Ceryx Deep Cell Lab – Mariel's Lab
In a room sealed beneath sixty meters of fortified alloy, Mariel watched the last Chimera sample pulse like a heart.
Weapons had failed.
Integration into bullets, gas, even smart bio-darts all of it collapsed upon exposure. Chimera needed something alive.
Not metal.
Not plastic.
A mind. A body.
Koji argued to try with test subjects clone tissue, maybe prisoners.
Toma shook his head. "We'll fail. Or worse, we'll make another Hyperion one we invited in."
Mariel stared at the tank.
"They're building soldiers out there.
Maybe it's time we built one in here."
That night, alone in her chamber, she reviewed the failed protocols. Every page. Every spike of rejection. Every diagram of collapsed organs, melted tissue, or total genomic collapse.
Except for one.
Trial 13.
Synchronization.
The only success.
She opened her terminal. Began recording.
Personal Log Dr. Mariel Kessler
"The world above is gone. The skies glow like veins. The oceans boil quiet. The trees listen hyperion has rewritten the planet… and now it's rewriting life.The Chimera strain works, but only inside something living.
I've lost friends. Colleagues. Family.
I'm done sending tissue into a tank and hoping for a miracle.
If this works, I become something more.
If it doesn't then I vanish, and no one else wastes time.
I'm not doing this to survive.
I'm doing this for humanity."
She walked to the sealed chamber.
Swiped her ID.
CHIMERA CORE UNLOCKED
The pod slid open, releasing soft light and a sound like whispering leaves.
Mariel stepped in.
And whispered
"Begin human integration protocol."