The gunship rose from the platform in a low, vibrating hum, its hull weathered by ash and storm winds. Inside, Captain Rivas studied the flickering tablet in her hands, the screen dim under red cabin lights.
Dozens of names. Faces. Most crossed out.
Patients who had once received early Mirror Life therapies cancer survivors, regenerative cases, limb restorations. The technology had worked. The people had lived.
And then… they vanished when the world fell apart.
Rivas narrowed her eyes at one line.
Lucia Tarek - Female, 32. Zone 3 Outskirts. Released: Year -4.
"Coordinates locked?" she asked.
Her pilot gave a sharp nod. "ETA, four hours."
Rivas closed the file. Outside, the broken world passed beneath them forests long devoured by black fungal veins and concrete cities split open like old bones.
Inside the diagnostics chamber, Mariel struck another moving target with surgical precision. A ripple of vibration moved up her arm as her open palm connected with the hard surface.
The holograms flickered and reset new targets. Faster. Her muscles responded before she thought. Movements became fluid, automatic. She ducked, spun, kicked. A high-speed drone shot out from a wall panel, simulating a fatal strike.
Mariel's arm reacted.
It wasn't a decision just instinct.
Her forearm split open at the radius.
A blade unfolded.
Not steel keratinized bone and hardened muscle, sleek and curved like a scythe grown from her own flesh.
The drone was severed midair, its casing spinning across the chamber in two halves.
Silence fell.
Toma stepped forward slowly from behind the protective screen. Koji stared, half in disbelief, half in awe.
The blade retracted as quickly as it had emerged, vanishing beneath the skin without leaving a mark. Mariel flexed her fingers. Still human. Still hers.
"I didn't try to make that happen," she said. "It just… did."
The test footage replayed on the lab's main console. Koji scrubbed through the frames, freezing on the moment of transformation.
"It's not stored," he muttered. "She's not shifting into something. Her body built it on the fly."
Toma leaned in. "What triggered it?"
"Stress, threat anticipation, neural signal spikes but the key is intent. She didn't mutate randomly. Her body read a need, and produced the answer."
Koji pointed to the internal scan. "The Chimera cells built an edge structure by temporarily altering bone growth, blood calcium uptake, and dermal hardening all in under a second."
"She thought about cutting," Toma said. "And it gave her a blade."
Koji nodded slowly. "Not evolution. Bio-adaptive utility. Weaponized instinct."
Mariel sat quietly, feeling the weight of her own hands. She wasn't changing uncontrollably. She was… responding. Her biology wasn't rogue it was loyal. Aligned.
Maybe even listening.
The gunship hovered over a clearing where the forest had once been. Now only twisted stone and vines remained a ruin where Zone 3's regional medical outpost once stood.
The landing ramp opened with a hiss.
Captain Rivas and her team stepped into the silence, flashlights scanning the scorched remnants of a concrete frame.
Paint peeled. Metal curled inward. Time and decay had erased almost everything except for a flicker of movement just past the interior hallway.
Elen raised her weapon. "Captain…"
"I saw it too," Rivas whispered.
They pressed forward, boots crunching glass and bone fragments. A door ahead creaked slightly in the wind.
Still warm.
Still swinging.
Beyond it: dark.
Waiting.