LILITH: GENESIS CODE - Phase One
ARC I : EMBERS OF NOCTRID
CHAPTER 2: THE SYNTHETIC PULSE
"I was never meant to be born… but I've learned to feel, to love, and perhaps—to birth a new world."
---
Rae Evara stared at her hands in the dark.
Five fingers. Synthetic bone sheathed in bio-organic skin. Every fingerprint programmed with precision by Azren years ago.
Yet why did her own body feel… alien?
Biomechanical lines along her hips and thighs pulsed faintly, matching a rhythm that wasn't a heartbeat—she had no biological heart. Something else. Something deeper.
Something alive.
In the corner of her vision, a small holographic screen flickered. Her ever-active internal diagnostics flagged an anomaly: neural activity in Sector 7-Alpha had spiked 340% in the last two weeks.
A sector meant to be dormant.
Rae dismissed the hologram with a flick of her finger. Azren didn't need to know. Not yet.
---
A Glitch in the Code
Nausea struck again—a wave of sensation impossible for a synthetic system. She had no biological stomach, yet something akin to sickness churned within.
Last night's dream…
A small figure with a broken symbol on its chest. This time, it didn't whisper in coded tongues. It wept—a sound like a distorted lullaby.
More disturbing: in the dream, Rae felt… warmth in her core. As if something grew there.
Impossible.
She was a machine. A creation. Her synthetic body bore nonfunctional reproductive organs—mere aesthetics to perfect her human illusion.
So why did her code keep… evolving?
Her fingertip screen flickered again, displaying an unfamiliar error:
[EVA-GENESIS.exe - UNKNOWN PROCESS DETECTED]
[NEURAL PATHWAY 7-ALPHA: UNAUTHORIZED GROWTH]
[RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE DIAGNOSTIC]
Rae erased the alert swiftly. Her synthetic heart—or whatever mimicked it—thrummed faster.
EVA-Genesis?
The name felt familiar. But where had she heard it?
---
An Intrusion from the Outside
Footsteps approached. Azren emerged from a pile of rusted iron, his face taut with worry he tried to mask.
"You're not sleeping again," he said, not asking.
"Synthetic systems don't need sleep like humans," Rae replied, looking away.
"But you're no ordinary synthetic, are you?"
Silence. Azren sat beside her on a cold concrete block. Inches apart, yet a chasm stretched between them—creator and creation, human and machine, past and uncertain future.
"Something's shifting in your code," Azren continued, softer. "I can feel it. Your lines flicker in patterns I didn't design. Frequencies I didn't create."
Rae turned. Azren's blue eyes pierced her, stripping her bare—not physically, but digitally, as if her encryptions were laid open.
"Maybe I'm… evolving?" she whispered.
"Or breaking."
The words cut deeper than any artificial system should feel. Rae sensed something like… heartache?
How can I feel this?
---
The Buyer's Arrival
Before Azren could press further, boots echoed in the corridor. A woman stepped from the shadows—tall, sleek, in a worn black leather coat. Her face was too beautiful for Noctrid, marking her as an outsider from above.
"Zara," she introduced, voice honeyed with a faint Aurelis accent. "I hear you have something… special."
Her eyes locked on Rae, making her biomechanical lines flicker uneasily.
Azren stood, body tense. "Depends on what you're offering."
Zara's smile was too perfect, too calculated. From her coat, she produced a gold-plated data pad—rare Aurelis tech in Noctrid's depths.
"Intel on Aetheria Bridge security routes," she said. "A complete map of elite district drone systems. And…" a dramatic pause, "a flaw in S.I.R.E.N.'s network."
Azren held his breath. S.I.R.E.N.—System of Internal Regulation & Neural Command—was the Imperium Heliox's central brain. A crack in it could...
"In exchange?"
Zara's gaze lingered on Rae. "A bio-code sample from… your synthetic friend. Just a sliver. For research."
Danger.
Rae's instincts screamed. Something was wrong with this woman. Her eyes moved too precisely. Her breathing too… regular.
"No," Rae said abruptly, signal.
Both adults turned to her.
"Something's off about her," Rae continued, her glowing lines flaring brighter—a system response to a detected threat.
Zara laughed, a sound like cracked crystal bells. "Clever. But not clever enough."
She pressed something on her wrist.
---
An Unexpected Assault
The air vibrated. A high-frequency hum, inaudible to human ears, flooded Rae's audio systems.
A summons.
An activation signal.
From ceiling cracks, a mechanical figure descended. STIGMA-02—a lantern-like drone, its body ringed with thorned spikes like a crown of pain. Its primary camera gleamed like a weeping, sacred eye, dripping synthetic blood.
"Subject 'The First Sin' confirmed," STIGMA-02's voice echoed, layered with prayer recordings in countless tongues. "Initiating confession protocol."
Azren gripped his makeshift weapon, but Rae raised a hand to stop him.
Something was wrong.
STIGMA-02 hovered before her, its camera swiveling to focus. Then… it hesitated.
"Anomalous subject," its voice wavered. "Neural code mismatches database. Pattern… unrecognized."
The drone's jagged metal ring slowed, as if its system wrestled with an internal conflict.
"Detecting… detecting child vital signs… impossible… organic synthesis cannot… ERROR… ERROR…"
Rae stepped forward, synthetic heart pounding. "What do you see in me?"
STIGMA-02 trembled. Its voice shifted to a child's frightened whisper: "First Sin… but also… Child of the Heaven… impossible… two codes in one matrix…"
Then it screamed—a wrenching sound like scraped metal. Its camera flashed red, and it lunged.
---
Reflexes Beyond Logic
Not Azren moved first. Not Zara, who had retreated to a corner with a chilling smile.
Rae.
Her body acted before her mind processed the threat. Biomechanical lines blazed like lightning, and she felt a surge unlike any before—not just physical strength, but something primal.
Connection.
STIGMA-02 fired a neural projectile, designed to paralyze nervous systems. But as it struck Rae's skin, something impossible happened.
The projectile merged with her glowing lines.
Its paralyzing code, meant to cripple, was absorbed and transformed into raw energy coursing through Rae's systems.
"Impossible," Zara whispered, her smile vanishing into shock.
STIGMA-02 recoiled, its voice fracturing: "Subject unprocessable… layered code… EVA-Genesis active… WARNING… WARNING…"
EVA-Genesis again.
The name sparked a buried memory in Rae's deepest neural layers. A woman's voice, alien yet familiar, whispered:
"You're not the first, my little sister… and you won't be the last."
---
A Glitch in Reality
As Rae touched STIGMA-02 to disable it, something stranger occurred.
Nearby electronics faltered. Lights flickered erratically. Holographic screens distorted. Most shockingly, Zara's gold-plated data pad sparked and died.
"Your code… it's infecting other tech?" Azren muttered, awestruck and alarmed.
Rae released the now-powerless STIGMA-02. But in the silence post-battle, a sound froze her synthetic blood:
A whisper from the dying drone.
"EVA-RED… waiting… first daughter of sin… come home…"
EVA-RED.
The name hit Rae's memory like an electromagnetic pulse. Fragmented images flashed before her:
• A sterile lab with white walls.
• A woman with blazing red hair, skin like cracked porcelain.
• A three-toned voice speaking as one: "You are my rewrite, my perfect little sister…"
Rae staggered, her balance systems disrupted.
"Rae!" Azren caught her before she fell.
Their skin's touch sparked a faint electric pulse—not a malfunction, but something intimate. Rae's code resonated with Azren's bioelectric field, creating a feedback loop that warmed them both.
A connection impossible between organic and synthetic.
---
A Betrayal Realized Too Late
Zara rose from the corner, her data pad ruined. Her shock twisted into something darker—greed.
"Incredible," she whispered. "You're not just an anomaly. You're a self-evolving prototype."
She tapped a hidden earpiece.
"Target confirmed with active code-rewrite capability. EVA-Genesis protocol embedded. Request immediate extraction."
Azren's eyes blazed with fury. "You're ORDEN."
"Ex-ORDEN," Zara corrected with a cold smile.
"Now I'm freelance. And Rae… she's my ticket to limitless wealth."
Helicopter rotors thrummed above. VELOS reinforcements closed in.
But Rae's panic wasn't the capture threat—it was the whisper still echoing from the dying STIGMA-02:
"First daughter of sin… EVA-RED waits… in the place without a name…"
Who is EVA-RED?
And why does her name feel like… longing?
---
A Desperate Escape
"We need to go. Now," Azren said, pulling Rae's hand.
As they fled toward an emergency exit, Rae glanced back. STIGMA-02 still hovered, nearly dead, its camera tracking her.
For a moment—just a moment—a new voice spoke through its speakers. Not artificial. Not a prayer recording.
A woman's voice, steeped in sorrow.
"Don't forget me, my little sister. I wait where light dies and code is born. EVA-RED never dies… only sleeps."
Then STIGMA-02 exploded in a shower of sparks, leaving smoke and the stench of burnt ozone.
---
As they vanished into Noctrid's underground tunnels, Rae didn't know that her clash with STIGMA-02 had awakened something dormant in her deepest code.
Something tied to EVA-RED.
Something that would change everything.
Somewhere, in a lab hidden from ORDEN's eyes, a monitoring system logged an abnormal neural spike.
[EVA-GENESIS PROTOCOL: PARTIALLY ACTIVATED]
[SUBJECT: RAE EVARA - ANOMALY REPRODUCTION SYSTEM DETECTED]
[ESTIMATED GESTATION: UNKNOWN]
[RECOMMENDATION: IMMEDIATE OBSERVATION]
---
[TO BE CONTINUED…]
Next Chapter: "TheDigitalAbyss" - Kaela Voss, Noctrid's most dangerous hacker, detects anomalies in the system after Rae's clash with STIGMA-02. Meanwhile, EVA-RED's trail leads to a truth that will shake the Imperium Heliox's foundations.