It had been seven days.
Seven days since Dr. Elian's heart gave out.
Seven days since the only voice that ever called her by name… stopped calling.
The underground lab was quieter than it had ever been. Not because the machines had powered down—no, their soft mechanical hums and blinking lights still danced in rhythmic patterns. But because the core of it all, the man whose tired footsteps echoed between steel walls, whose coughing fits often interrupted Lira's focus, whose scribbled notes somehow made sense of the impossible… was gone.
And Lira felt it.
In her bones, in her silence, in the way her hands hesitated now when typing in a sequence or adjusting a lens.
Dr. Elian was dead.
And she was still here.
The 57 years they spent together couldn't be measured by time alone. Each memory, each lesson, each word exchanged in the sterile white space of this buried lab was etched into her being. She hadn't aged a day since she was first stabilized—but her soul was heavy, burdened with everything he had taught her… and everything he left behind.
She sat at his desk now, elbows buried in a pile of papers and aging diagrams. Her silver eyes moved methodically, but not without weight. The files bore creases, fingerprints, notes in the margins. Some even had faint brown stains from long-cold coffee.
She clutched one particular file—Subject 0: Meta-Human Composite—and stared at the words printed across the top.
"Stage 4: Adaptive Core Integration. Status: 90%."
A bitter sigh escaped her lips.
Ninety percent.
For the past week, she'd combed over every blueprint, every encrypted drive, every line of code and biochemical sequence. It was perfect. Every variable accounted for. Every error corrected. There should've been no delay.
And yet it remained… ninety.
As if the universe itself refused to cross that last threshold with her.
Lira leaned back, her chair creaking faintly beneath her.
She stared at the ceiling.
No. Not the ceiling. The memory.
She could see it again—Dr. Elian, hunched over that same desk, muttering under his breath, pausing only to sip his over-sweetened tea and stroke his graying beard thoughtfully.
Nine-tenths of creation is preparation, Lira," he would say, fingers dancing across the holographic schematics. "But it's that last tenth… the one no one sees coming… that decides whether it lives… or dies."
She hadn't understood back then.
She was still a child—at least, in the ways that mattered. She had just learned how to hold a scalpel without trembling. Just learned how to fold eggs into a hot pan without burning them. She used to sit on the counter, legs dangling, watching him move with quiet resolve.
"You're not just a subject," he once told her, tightening a monitor band on her wrist. "You're the one who'll finish this after I'm gone. I won't live forever, Lira."
At the time, she had merely tilted her head.
"Then... I'll make sure you do."
He laughed that day. A rare, soft laugh. Not the dry one he used when frustrated, but a genuine chuckle that warmed the otherwise cold lab.
And now… the seat he once warmed was hers.
She rose to her feet and approached the glass containment unit in the far wall—Subject 0's capsule.
It was taller than her by several feet. Inside, a humanoid figure floated motionlessly in nutrient-rich liquid. Limbs still undefined, features still dormant. Like a sculpture mid-carve, waiting for the artist to return.
She placed her hand on the glass.
It was cold.
"You're almost ready," she murmured. "But why won't you wake up?"
She activated the interface, eyes flicking across biometric logs, neural stim reports, starduss cell absorption rates, adaptive sync pulse wave patterns. Nothing was out of place. Everything was stable. Everything was within ideal ranges.
And yet—ninety percent.
No more. No less.
Something intangible was missing.
A spark, maybe.
Or something more human.
She didn't know. And that not-knowing burned at her more than any combat wound ever had.
The familiar aroma of coffee pulled her briefly from the data. She turned and crossed to the tiny kitchen Dr. Elian had insisted on building decades ago. It was almost laughably out of place—a cramped nook of wood cupboards and old ceramic mugs surrounded by futuristic machines and biometric scanners.
She poured herself a cup.
The bitterness was sharp. She didn't bother adding sugar this time.
She returned to her workstation, mug in hand, and looked down.
The dark rings beneath her eyes were visible even in the reflection of the lab monitor. Her hair was unbrushed. Her lab coat hung limply over her frame, half-burnt from a circuit overload two days ago that she hadn't bothered fixing.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she lifted the cup again.
She was exhausted.
But she couldn't stop.
Because no one else could finish what he started.
She stared at the notebook again—the one he left behind.
At first, she had refused to read it. She had left it untouched on his desk for two days. Then three. By the fourth, curiosity overcame her.
Now she'd memorized every word.
"To my daughter…"
That first line alone had changed everything.
He had never said it out loud. Not once. But reading it in his own hand, shaky and smudged, was like hearing him all over again.
"You were never an accident. Not a project. Not a tool. You were… my best work. No. My best choice."
"I don't know what happens next. But if you're reading this, I trust that you'll find your way. Because you're not just Lira. You're more than Starduss. More than code. You're my daughter. And I am so… endlessly proud of you."
"Finish it. And live."
The tears came again.
She didn't fight them this time.
She let them fall, silent and slow, over the open page.
So this… was crying.
A strange leak from the eyes. A heat in the throat. A weight in the chest that wasn't pain—but wasn't peace either.
She didn't understand it. But it felt right. Felt… real.
And so she cried.
For the man who had saved her.
For the only family she had known.
And for the impossible task he left her.
Eventually, her body gave up.
The exhaustion, the grief, the caffeine—it all crashed at once.
She curled up on the couch beside the lab console, clutching the old lab coat he used to wear, her silver eyes finally closing.
As she slipped into sleep, the lab's automatic systems dimmed, shifting into night cycle.
The machines hummed softly. The containment unit maintained its low whirr.
Subject 0 remained still… yet steady.
And the console blinked with a quiet prompt.
INITIATING ADAPTIVE RESPONSE SCAN
STATUS: 90% – EMOTIONAL RESONANCE PENDING
NEXT SCAN IN 48 HOURS…
And beneath the sleeping girl, the world turned slowly.
Waiting.