Part 1: Ashlight Wake
The air inside the outpost was thick with rot and heat. Fluorescent lights stuttered and buzzed overhead, flickering across walls soaked in coagulating blood. The floor was a tapestry of shattered glass, scorched cables, and human debris. Something that had once been a soldier twitched in the corner, leaking pink foam from a neck twisted the wrong way. A combat drone sparked and whined quietly from where it had been lodged into the wall like a crucifixion.
Kairo stood at the center of it all.
He was hunched, breathing slowly, his right shoulder gaped open—not wounded, but changing. Muscle slid over itself like worms in water. Veins pulsed with blue biolight. A patch of bone tore free from beneath his skin and curved, reshaping into something between blade and claw.
His back spasmed. He dropped to one knee. His spine arched violently, like something inside was trying to tear its way out.
He didn't scream.
He shoved his hand into his own side, bit down hard on the ruined edge of a metal desk, and waited for the tremor to pass.
[BIO-STABILITY: 27%]
[MUTATION EVENT: LUMBAR FISSION - ACTIVE]
[WARNING: CORE NEURAL BRIDGE STRAIN]
Kairo grunted. Blood seeped from his ears. He spat some out. It hissed on contact with the ground.
His left eye dimmed, then went black, pupil stretching sideways into something reptilian. The other burned brighter.
In the ripples of agony, she came back again.
Sera.
Her face. Twelve years old. Smiling through a cracked visor. Holding a cheap toy drone they'd stolen from a convoy.
"You're not just a weapon, Kai. You're my brother."
He remembered her voice. Her hand in his. The moment they pulled him from the sedation tank, skin blistered, eyes blind. She was crying.
That was the last thing he remembered before they dragged her away.
He looked down at his right hand. It had split into three hooked digits, bone jointed and steaming at the tips.
"Not just a weapon," he said, voice a hollow whisper scraped raw from his throat.
Then stood.
Behind him, something slipped from the ceiling, a half dissolved Paragon researcher, still alive but no longer whole. It made a wet gurgling noise.
Kairo turned, stepped over it, and walked out.
Each step left a print of boiling blood.
The desert beyond the compound crackled under his presence. The air warped slightly around him. In the distance, clouds began to turn a sick shade of violet.
The earth knew what was coming.
He didn't stop to hide. He didn't run.
He walked forward. Toward the next horror.
Toward the only thing left that might be like him.