Ash fell like gray snow over Neo-Seoul.
Ethan stood at the edge of the collapsed Genesis Tower site, unmoving, long after the last emergency sirens faded into the distance. Fire crews and drones swarmed the perimeter, lights flashing, voices shouting—but none of it touched him. The ruins smoked quietly, a crater where his past had finally been buried.
Or so it seemed.
Lena wiped soot from her face, her tablet clutched tightly to her chest. "Emergency feeds are already spinning the story. Gas explosion. Structural failure. No survivors."
Jax let out a hollow laugh. "They always lie fast."
Ethan turned away from the wreckage. "Let them. Genesis is gone. That's what matters."
But even as he said it, he felt it.
A faint vibration beneath his skin.
A whisper at the back of his mind.
Genesis wasn't screaming anymore.
It was… listening.
They moved quickly, disappearing into the night before Synapse-9's secondary response units could lock the area down. An abandoned mag-rail tunnel carried them miles beneath the city, where Lena finally brought them to a halt.
She projected a hologram into the darkness.
A map.
One location pulsed red.
HELIOS BLACKSITE
STATUS: OFFLINE
LAST CONFIRMED SIGNAL: 14 YEARS AGO
Jax leaned closer. "That's not 'offline.' That's 'buried.'"
"Exactly," Lena said. "Helios was wiped from every public and private record after Genesis Phase Two failed. No satellites. No data trails. No supply logs."
Ethan stared at the blinking point. His chest tightened.
"My mother's there."
Lena hesitated. "Ethan… the files said removed, not released. Whatever Helios is, it won't be a hospital or a prison."
"It's a cage," Ethan said flatly. "Just like Genesis was."
Jax nodded once. "Then we break it."
They didn't notice the drone watching from the tunnel ceiling.
Not until it transmitted.
---
Three hundred kilometers away, beneath a mountain of reinforced stone and layered electromagnetic shielding, Helios Blacksite woke up.
Lights flickered on in a vast underground chamber. Dust fell from the ceiling as systems dormant for over a decade rebooted one by one.
A woman sat alone in the center of the room.
Strapped into a chair.
Her hair was streaked with gray now, her face lined with years of exhaustion—but her eyes were sharp. Defiant. Alive.
Mara Vale opened her eyes.
A mechanical voice echoed through the chamber.
"SUBJECT MARA VALE — VITALS STABLE."
"EXTERNAL EVENT DETECTED."
"GENESIS NETWORK: TERMINATED."
Mara's breath caught.
"No…" she whispered. "Ethan…"
Screens around her flared to life, displaying cascading data streams—error warnings, shutdown notices, destroyed nodes.
One message blinked at the center.
SUBJECT 01: ACTIVE.
STATUS: UNCONTAINED.
Tears welled in her eyes.
"They didn't break you," she breathed. "Elias… they didn't break him."
Footsteps echoed.
A door slid open behind her.
A tall man entered the chamber, his movements calm, deliberate. He wore a long white coat, pristine despite the age of the facility. His hair was silver, his eyes cold and calculating.
Dr. Adrian Kessler.
The architect of Helios.
"The tower has fallen," Kessler said calmly. "Genesis is ashes."
Mara didn't look at him. "Good."
Kessler smiled faintly. "You always did misunderstand Genesis, Mara. It was never the endgame."
He gestured toward the screens.
"Genesis was proof of concept."
Mara's chains rattled as she struggled. "You used my son as a test subject."
"I used your research," Kessler corrected. "You and Elias were the ones who believed humanity could evolve beyond its limits."
Mara snapped her head toward him. "Not like this. Never like this."
Kessler's smile faded. "Idealism is a luxury, Doctor Vale. Results are not."
Another screen activated.
It showed Ethan—footage captured from the drone in the tunnel.
Running.
Alive.
Dangerous.
Kessler's eyes gleamed. "Helios was built for this moment. For him."
Mara's voice trembled with fury. "If you touch him—"
"I won't," Kessler said. "He's coming to me."
---
The journey to Helios took two days.
They stayed off-grid, moving through abandoned sectors, using Lena's expertise to ghost through surveillance nets that had once been impossible to breach. Synapse-9 was wounded—but not dead. And something new was stirring beneath the surface.
Ethan felt it every hour they got closer.
A pressure.
A pull.
Like gravity bending toward a singular point.
"You feel it too, don't you?" Lena asked quietly as they rested in an underground transit hub.
Ethan nodded. "It's stronger now."
"Genesis residue?"
"No," he said slowly. "Something older."
Jax checked his weapon. "Great. Ancient murder tech."
They reached the Helios perimeter at dawn.
From the outside, it looked like nothing—just a mountain range scarred by time and weather. But Lena found the distortion immediately.
"There," she said, pointing. "Cloaking field. Massive. Old design."
Ethan stepped forward.
The air shimmered.
The mountain opened.
A massive blast door slid aside, revealing a descending ramp illuminated by pale white light.
Jax stared. "It's inviting us in."
Ethan's jaw tightened. "It knows I'm here."
They entered.
The doors sealed behind them.
Helios Blacksite descended deep into the earth—far deeper than Genesis Tower ever had. This wasn't a research lab.
It was a fortress.
As they moved through the corridors, Ethan noticed the architecture: reinforced walls, containment fields, observation decks. Cells.
Too many cells.
Empty.
"Lena," he said quietly. "How many subjects were held here?"
Her tablet scrolled rapidly. "Dozens. Maybe hundreds."
Jax cursed under his breath. "Genesis wasn't the worst of it."
They reached the central chamber.
And Ethan stopped dead.
Mara Vale was there.
Alive.
Older.
But unmistakable.
"Mom…"
Her head snapped up.
For a moment, she just stared.
Then she sobbed his name.
"Ethan."
The world narrowed to that single word.
He ran to her, chains clattering as he grabbed her hands. "I thought you were dead. They told me you abandoned me."
Her face crumpled. "Never. Never. They took me so you wouldn't resist. They told me you'd been terminated."
Rage unlike anything he'd ever felt burned through him.
Behind them, slow applause echoed.
Dr. Kessler stepped forward from the shadows.
"A touching reunion," he said. "Truly."
Ethan turned, eyes blazing. "You did this."
Kessler inclined his head. "I perfected it."
Lena raised her weapon. "Release her."
Kessler chuckled. "Oh, she's free. Helios no longer needs a hostage."
He tapped a control panel.
The floor trembled.
Far below, something woke up.
"Genesis was about enhancement," Kessler continued. "Helios is about transcendence."
The walls around them shifted, revealing massive containment pods—larger than Genesis-01's ever was.
Inside them—
Things moved.
Not human.
Not machine.
Ethan felt the pull intensify, almost bringing him to his knees.
"What is Helios?" he demanded.
Kessler's eyes shone.
"The next step," he said. "And you, Ethan Vale, are the key that opens it."
Mara screamed, "Run!"
The alarms began.
And deep beneath Helios Blacksite—
Something answered Ethan's presence.