"Sometimes the only way to keep a promise is to burn what's left of it."
The alarms followed them out of Sector Theta like wolves.Red lights strobed through the corridors, painting their faces in pulses of blood. Sirens howled deep in the structure's throat, echoing off metal walls until it sounded like the building itself was screaming.
Less ran point. Khale covered their rear, blades flashing in the emergency light, and Shelly kept to the middle, clutching her medical pack against her chest as if it were a talisman.
Behind them, the Genesis Core's hum changed pitch. It wasn't a shutdown tone—it was awakening.
"Move!" Khale barked. "Before it decides we're raw material!"
They burst through a maintenance hatch and into open air. Night had collapsed across the wasteland, a storm of static crawling through the clouds. The towers of Helix shimmered with electric veins, their power returning in fits and spasms.
Less didn't look back. She could still feel the machine in her bones—its pulse matching hers, its whisper crawling under her skin.Choice is a paradox. Choose.
She shoved the voice down and ran until the sirens were swallowed by the wind.
They found shelter in an abandoned tram station two kilometers from the perimeter wall. The place smelled of dust and battery acid. A single emergency lamp glowed over a cracked map of the region, its glass stained yellow.
Khale barred the door with a metal pipe. "That'll buy us a few minutes."
Shelly collapsed onto a bench, breathing hard. "We stole from the heart of Helix. A few minutes isn't going to save us."
Less knelt, spreading the scavenged files across the floor. "We didn't steal. We took back what was ours."
She activated her wrist console. The holographic projection flared to life: coordinates, genetic chains, recorded messages. All of it spinning slowly above them like a galaxy made of data.
Shelly rubbed her temples. "There's too much here. I can't even parse half of it."
Khale crouched beside her. "Focus on the markers. Which of these lead out of Theta?"
She pointed to three blinking nodes. "These are relay stations. One of them's still transmitting. It's broadcasting something on an old medical frequency."
Less's head lifted. "Lysandra used medical bands to mask her work."
"Then she left us a trail," Shelly said.
Khale grinned without humor. "Or a tripwire."
Either way, they would follow it.
By dawn they were on the move again, cutting across a plain of blackened stone. The ground shimmered with residual radiation; their boots left ghost prints in the dust. The sun was a white wound in the sky, distant and pitiless.
Shelly lagged slightly, pale from exhaustion. Less slowed her pace. "You should rest."
"I'm fine," Shelly muttered.
"You're shaking."
"That's adrenaline," the girl lied.
Less gave her a water capsule. "Drink. We need you clear-headed."
Khale watched them from a few paces ahead, expression unreadable. "You've started sounding like her."
Less frowned. "Who?"
"Lysandra."
The name felt like a bruise pressed too hard. She said nothing, only adjusted her scarf and kept walking.
By midday they reached the relay station—a tower half-swallowed by dunes, its antenna bent but still blinking. The door was sealed by a keypad corroded from years of storms.
Khale knelt beside it, pulling a small cable from his wrist console. "Give me sixty seconds."
Shelly eyed the horizon. "If they're tracking the broadcast, Helix will know we're here."
Less scanned the ridges. "They already do."
She could see them now: distant specks moving in formation, glinting like insects in the light. Drones.
Khale swore under his breath. "Forty seconds."
"Make it twenty."
The lock clicked open on nineteen.
They slipped inside as the first drones screamed overhead.
The tower's interior was hollowed by time. Sand covered the floors, and rust hung in the air. But the core computer still hummed faintly, a single monitor blinking green among a graveyard of dead screens.
Less approached, wiping dust from the display. The screen flickered, then bloomed with an interface far too advanced for the ruin it lived in.
HELIX RELAY NODE 07 – ACCESS: AUTHORIZEDUser: L.VOGUE
Her breath caught. "She's been here."
Khale stepped closer. "Can you pull the message?"
She nodded and began the sequence. The monitor filled with static, then resolved into an image—Lysandra herself, filmed years ago. Her hair was shorter, her face thinner, her eyes haunted but alive.
"If this recording survives," she said, "then Helix has consumed itself. The project was never about salvation—it was replication. They wanted to copy consciousness, to build a thinking species that could outlive guilt."
"You, Less… you were my rebellion. My proof that empathy could survive programming. If you find this, know that they built a failsafe into the Genesis Core. A second pulse. When it activates, it will rewrite every modified genome on the planet. Everything Helix touched—human, animal, hybrid—will be forced back into code."
The message glitched, stuttering.
"The key to stop it is in the old reactor beneath Sector Theta… buried under the—"
Static devoured the rest.
Shelly slammed her fist against the console. "No, no, come back!"
The image dissolved.
Less stared at the dead screen, heart hammering. "A second pulse. That's what the machine was waiting for."
Khale's jaw flexed. "Then we go back."
"Not yet," Less said. "We'll need power to override the failsafe, and the only grid still online is in the Ventus Spire."
Shelly paled. "That's across the storm belt."
Khale checked his ammo clips. "Then we better start walking."
They left the tower just before dusk. The drones had passed, but the air felt charged, heavy. Lightning stitched the far horizon.
The storm belt was a scar that divided the continent—a permanent cyclone of dust and lightning that swallowed everything. The Helix scientists had called it the Aeon Wall. Crossing it was suicide.
Less adjusted her respirator. "We move when the wind dips. Follow the magnetic readings. Don't stop."
Shelly tried to laugh. "You make it sound easy."
Khale grinned behind his mask. "That's optimism. She does that now."
Then the storm hit.
It came like an avalanche—sand whipping, thunder tearing the sky apart. The world shrank to a tunnel of grit and light. Less led through instinct, guided by the faint compass pulse on her wrist. Each step felt blind, a guess between lightning strikes.
Shelly coughed through her filter. "I can't see!"
"Follow my voice!" Less shouted.
A silhouette loomed beside her—Khale—one hand gripping her shoulder to keep them connected. Every few seconds a flash illuminated the ground ahead: twisted wreckage, half-buried bones, a collapsed spire that leaned like a dying tree.
They moved until their muscles burned and the sky bled into black. Then, suddenly, the storm thinned.
They emerged into eerie calm—a pocket in the chaos. The eye of the Aeon Wall.
Above them the clouds formed a perfect circle, lightning arcing silently around its rim. At the center stood a tower of pale metal piercing the heavens. The Ventus Spire.
Shelly sank to her knees. "We made it."
Khale's laugh was ragged. "Define made it."
Less looked up at the Spire. Its sides pulsed faintly, alive. "Power grid's still functional. If we can link to it, we can redirect the pulse."
"And if Helix left guards?" Khale asked.
She chambered a round. "Then we practice diplomacy the old way."
They climbed the outer scaffolds as the lightning circled above. The metal trembled beneath their weight, vibrating with energy.
Halfway up, Khale stopped. "Movement below."
Less peered down. Shapes—three, four, no, six—emerged from the storm, gliding on thruster packs. Not drones. Humans in Helix exo-suits, silver and white, their visors glowing blue.
Shelly cursed. "They followed us through the storm?"
Khale's blades hissed free. "They live in it."
The first shot from below shattered a rung near Less's hand. She swung to the side, grabbed another bar, and fired downward. The bullet punched through one visor; the figure fell into the storm like a dropped star.
Khale leapt from the scaffold, landing on one of the attackers as if the fall were nothing. His blades carved arcs of fire in the rain of sparks.
Less climbed higher, Shelly clinging behind her. "Almost there!"
The top of the Spire opened into a platform of glass and circuitry, wind screaming through the gaps. A central console pulsed with green light—alive, waiting.
Less slammed the data core into the port. The system responded instantly, code flooding the air in glowing ribbons.
LINK ESTABLISHED — ENERGY REDIRECT AVAILABLE.
Shelly's fingers flew across the interface. "I can feed it through the relay network. It'll reach Theta in three minutes."
Khale joined them, breathing hard, armor streaked with blood and sand. "Make it two."
The console's glow deepened, drawing power from the storm itself. Lightning converged on the Spire, grounding through the cables in blinding flashes.
Then the screens turned red.
OVERRIDE DETECTED. EXTERNAL ACCESS.
Less swore. "Vira."
The clone's voice bled through the speakers—smooth, calm, and cold.
"You shouldn't be here, sister. The world doesn't need saving. It needs direction."
"Direction?" Less shouted. "Helix built cages!"
"And you were the key. I'm just finishing the equation."
Khale stabbed a blade into the console. "Can we cut her off?"
Shelly shook her head. "She's inside the network. She's everywhere."
The air vibrated. Lightning climbed the Spire instead of striking it, forming a vortex of light above them. The storm was feeding Vira's override.
Less gritted her teeth. "Then we do this manually."
She pulled the core free. Sparks flew. The lights flickered and died. For a moment there was silence—then the Spire erupted with a single surge of energy that shot straight toward the horizon.
The beam tore through the clouds, cutting the storm in half. In the distance, Sector Theta flared white.
Shelly covered her eyes. "Did we stop it?"
Khale stared at the distant glow. "Or we just woke it up."
Less felt the vibration in her chest before she heard it—the heartbeat of the machine, carried on the wind.
SECOND PULSE INITIATED.
The words echoed from every comm, every broken speaker, every living cell that had ever been touched by Helix.
The wind went still.
Less whispered, "It's starting."
Khale met her gaze. "Then we finish it."
They stood together atop the burning tower as the storm closed in again, the world trembling beneath them. Somewhere far below, the hum of awakening spread like fire through the veins of the earth.
And above the thunder, faint but real, Less heard her mother's voice once more:
"Mercy has a cost, my child. Pay it, or the world will."