The sirens were deafening.
Ava Kane pressed her back against the cold steel wall, breath ragged as red warning lights strobed across the corridor.
Adrian pulled her behind a bulkhead as a team of armed soldiers ran past, shouting commands over the intercom.
"Contain Sector Five! Non-lethals only! Do not engage the enhanced!"
The phrase hit Ava like a bullet.
The enhanced.
They weren't even calling them people anymore.
Her hands shook. "They're shooting at them"
"They're trying not to," Adrian said grimly, checking the charge on his pulse rifle. "But it won't last."
They turned the corner. The floor trembled beneath their boots a deep vibration that made the air taste metallic. The containment chambers below were failing one by one, power surging through the complex like a living current.
"Where's Command?" Ava asked.
"Three levels up," Adrian replied. "But if you want answers, we go down."
She stared at him. "Down? That's where the outbreak started."
"Exactly. That's where they'll be trying to burn it out. If Lysandra's still running things, she'll have a failsafe ready."
Ava's pulse skipped. "You think she's alive?"
"I think she's like the virus she adapts."
He pulled open a maintenance hatch and motioned for her to follow. The ladder descended into a vertical shaft lined with cables and steam. The hum of power below grew louder with every step.
As Ava climbed down, flashes of memory tore through her , her father's face on the screen, the island burning, the serum crawling like light through her veins.
Legacy isn't just blood.
She had believed him. But now the world bled because of her.
They reached the sublevel a massive chamber humming with energy. Broken glass and twisted metal littered the floor. Dozens of pods lay shattered, their occupants gone.
"God" Ava whispered. "They're all"
"Gone," Adrian said softly. "Or worse."
A figure moved through the smoke ahead tall, thin, with the unmistakable poise of command.
Dr. Lysandra Vale.
Her hair was shorter now, streaked silver from the serum's toll. A containment pistol rested casually at her side.
She smiled when she saw them. "Ava. Adrian. My two favorite mistakes."
Ava's fists clenched. "You did this."
"No," Lysandra said coolly, stepping forward. "You did. You pressed the Pulse, remember? You made evolution inevitable."
Adrian leveled his rifle. "You're not in control anymore."
"Oh, I never wanted control," she said, her tone sharp and amused. "I wanted release. Humanity needed a reset, and you gave it to them. You should be thanking me."
"People are dying!" Ava snapped.
"People are changing," Lysandra corrected. "Do you know what happens when a species stops evolving? It goes extinct."
Ava took a step closer. "You're using my father's work to justify genocide."
"I'm using your father's dream to save what's left of us," Lysandra said. "You think the serum made you cursed? It made you necessary. You're proof that the merge can work mind, body, code."
She pointed toward the flickering monitors above. Images flashed cities under quarantine, riots, groups of mutated survivors glowing with that same faint blue light.
"They're calling it The ReGenesis War," Lysandra said. "Half the world wants to cure it. The other half wants to become it."
Adrian's voice was cold. "And you? Which side are you on?"
Lysandra smiled faintly. "The winning one."
Then she raised her pistol and fired.
Adrian moved fast, shoving Ava behind a console as the shot exploded into a burst of plasma. The blast scorched the wall inches from her head.
He returned fire, but Lysandra was already gone her form vanishing into the rising smoke.
"Damn it!" Adrian cursed. "She's heading for the core!"
They chased her through a maze of flickering corridors until the ground began to shake again. A deep mechanical roar filled the air.
Ava stumbled as lights went dark. "What's happening?"
Adrian's face hardened. "She's overloading the reactor."
The emergency lighting kicked in bathing everything in crimson. They reached the reactor control room just as Lysandra stood at the central console, her hand hovering over a biometric panel glowing blue.
"Don't," Ava pleaded. "You'll kill everyone!"
"Kill?" Lysandra laughed softly. "Oh, Ava. You still don't understand. I'm not ending the world I'm updating it."
Adrian fired the shot grazing her shoulder but she slammed her palm down on the console before he could stop her.
The core ignited.
A wave of energy rippled through the room, lifting them off their feet. Ava hit the ground hard, the world spinning in streaks of red and white.
When she looked up, the containment glass was gone.
And Lysandra was changing.
Her veins pulsed with radiant light. Her skin shimmered with the same strange pattern Ava had seen on her own blood months ago only magnified, perfected.
"She merged the serum with the core," Adrian said hoarsely, pulling Ava up. "She's turned herself into a conduit."
Ava stared as Lysandra rose slowly, her voice echoing through the chamber.
"You can't stop evolution, my dear. You are evolution."
Ava's chest burned the same light flaring beneath her skin.
Adrian grabbed her face, forcing her to focus. "Ava, listen to me. You can counter it."
"She's stronger"
"Not stronger," he said. "Just further gone. You're the balance. Your father built the serum's mirror into you. You can shut her down if you sync to the core."
Ava's heart pounded. "If I do that"
"You might not come back," Adrian finished. "I know."
She looked at Lysandra, at the world shattering around them.
At Adrian, eyes filled with something deeper than fear faith.
Ava nodded. "Then it ends here."
She stepped forward.
Lysandra's laughter turned to rage as Ava approached the core. The blue light between them clashed like storm and flame. The chamber trembled as their energies collided Ava's heartbeat syncing with the reactor's pulse.
Her vision blurred with white fire. She felt everything the code in her blood awakening, the strands of energy knitting into her DNA, the world's chaos flowing through her veins.
And then
silence.
A blinding flash swallowed the room.
When it faded, Lysandra was gone.
Ava stood at the center of the ruined core, barely breathing, her body glowing faintly in the dark.
Adrian reached her, catching her before she collapsed.
"It's over," he whispered.
Her voice was weak. "No it's beginning again."
Outside, dawn broke over a scarred world.
The first rays of sunlight struck the horizon where cities burned and new life began to stir.
In the distance, a child with silver eyes looked up at the rising sun and whispered her first word:
"Ava."