"When the world ends twice, only those who remember the first ending know how to breathe."
The second pulse rolled across the wasteland like a shockwave of light. It wasn't sound that tore through the air—it was memory: a vibration that lived in bone and blood, rewriting everything it touched.
Less dropped to one knee on the Ventus Spire platform, hands clamped over her skull as if she could keep herself from coming apart. Around her, the sky split open—veins of gold tearing through black cloud. The storm had gone silent, eerily still, like it was holding its breath.
Khale staggered beside her, one hand braced on the railing. His visor flickered, the lights in his armor pulsing erratically. "Less—whatever that beam hit—it's talking to everything."
Shelly's tablet spat static and code, lines of genetic markers scrolling faster than the eye could follow. "It's rewriting! Every modified genome is syncing to the Genesis Core's signal."
Less forced herself upright. "Then we cut the link."
"How?" Khale demanded. "The grid's fried!"
Less's gaze tracked the lightning still bleeding into the Spire. "Then we short it."
Shelly blinked. "You'll kill yourself!"
Less's eyes hardened. "If it stops the rewrite, that's a fair trade."
Khale grabbed her wrist. "No. You're not dying for them."
"I'm not dying for them," she said quietly. "I'm dying for me."
For Lysandra. For the child who was built instead of born.
She pulled free and moved toward the core's edge. The storm above twisted, forming a funnel of light that reached down toward her—an inverted aurora, beautiful and lethal.
Below, the world convulsed. Across the plains, abandoned Helix facilities flared awake, their towers igniting one by one like match heads in a dark ocean. Each glow sent a tremor through the air, a signal feeding back into the Spire.
Shelly watched in horror. "It's self-propagating! The Core isn't waiting for orders—it's using living data as conduits. Every augmented lifeform is a transmitter."
Khale's voice was rough. "Then it's using her."
Less reached the console. Her fingers hovered above the exposed circuitry. The current licked at her gloves like static fire.
Choice is a paradox. Choose.
The machine's voice was in her again, woven into her nerves. She saw flashes behind her eyes: Lysandra in the lab, whispering lullabies to glass; Vira floating in her pod, perfect and waiting; the sentinel's orange eyes dimming in its last second of awareness.
All threads of the same tapestry. All lines that ended in her.
She looked back at her companions—Khale, blood-streaked but unbowed; Shelly, trembling yet unbroken—and smiled faintly. "If I fail, cut the tower feed manually."
Khale's jaw locked. "If you fail, there won't be a tower left."
Less placed her palm on the core. The light surged, swallowing her whole.
For a heartbeat, there was nothing but whiteness.
Then: a corridor of glass. Air humming with data. Thousands of voices whispering at once, layered until they became music. She was inside the machine, the neural network Lysandra had built to hold consciousness—the digital afterlife of Helix.
Shapes moved within it—echoes of scientists, test subjects, prototypes. Their faces blurred, identities collapsing into streams of code. They looked at her as she passed, reaching out like ghosts under ice.
You are the key, they murmured. End us or join us.
She kept walking. Her boots made no sound on the glass. Ahead, a figure waited in the glow of an invisible sun.
Lysandra Vogue.
Not flesh—an imprint, half-memory, half-program. Her face shimmered, eyes made of light.
"Mother," Less whispered.
"L-01," the figure said, voice trembling between affection and code. "You came back."
"Why did you build this?"
"To save what was left of us." Lysandra's smile was thin, aching. "But I forgot that survival without soul is only another kind of death."
"The Pulse will erase everything."
"It will purify everything," Lysandra corrected gently. "Every mutation, every corruption—including you."
Less's throat tightened. "Then I end it."
Lysandra stepped closer. "You can't destroy what you are. The Core reads you as its heart. If you shut it down, you shut yourself down."
Less's hands shook. "Maybe that's the point."
Lysandra's projection flickered, glitching. "There's another way. Re-route the pulse, not end it—turn it into restoration. Rewrite the rewrite."
Less frowned. "I don't know how."
"You do," Lysandra whispered, touching her chest. "Because I built it into you."
The world around them shattered—cracks racing through glass reality. The machine was destabilizing. Alarms bled into the digital void.
"Go," Lysandra urged. "Before the network collapses. Remember: mercy and survival are the same code, if you choose them to be."
Then she was gone—erased in a bloom of white.
Less's body convulsed as she snapped back into herself. Lightning crawled over her skin, patterns of light racing along her veins.
Khale shouted her name, but the sound was swallowed by thunder.
She turned toward the console, eyes glowing faintly gold—the same hue as Vira's. She moved with impossible speed, fingers flying over the interface. "I can redirect it," she gasped. "Not to erase—to heal."
Shelly's hands hovered over the controls. "Tell me what to do!"
"Stabilize the frequency at 0.72 tera," Less shouted. "Anything lower and it'll fry the network."
Khale steadied the tower's grounding cables, forcing them into position against the wind. Sparks leapt across his armor. "You've got one shot, soldier!"
Less entered the final sequence. "On my mark!"
The Spire screamed. Every circuit in the tower lit at once, feeding the energy back into the clouds. The storm bent inward, collapsing into a column of light that pierced the heavens.
Less drove the command home. "Mark!"
A pulse erupted—not destructive, but soft, radiant, expanding outward like dawn. The light washed over the wasteland, through the ruins, across the broken cities. Everywhere it touched, the mutations shimmered and settled; bodies once wracked by Helix's experiments eased into stillness.
The world inhaled.
Then the Spire exploded.
The blast threw them all clear. Less hit the ground hard, rolling through sand and debris. Her vision dimmed, ears ringing.
When the smoke thinned, Khale was dragging himself upright, coughing blood. Shelly crawled to Less's side, eyes wide. "You're alive!"
Less tried to speak. Only static came out. Her veins still glowed faintly under her skin, fading with every heartbeat.
Khale knelt beside her. "You did it. The storm's breaking."
Above them, the sky was clearing for the first time in decades—a slit of blue carving through the cloud sea. The towers of Helix flickered and went dark, one by one, as if bowing out.
Less managed a weak smile. "Guess… mercy works after all."
Shelly laughed through tears. "You just rebooted the planet."
Khale looked toward the horizon. "Then why does it still sound like thunder?"
A low rumble rolled across the plains—not thunder, but engines.
From the north, a fleet of airships descended, their hulls painted with the Helix insignia renewed in crimson. At the center of the formation, a massive carrier gleamed with living light.
And on its prow, projected on a holographic banner, was Vira's face.
"You rewrote the code, sister," her voice echoed across the valley. "Now let's see if mercy can survive war."
Khale cursed softly. "She's alive."
Shelly's expression hardened. "No—she's evolved."
Less sat up, every muscle screaming. "Then Act II begins."
The wind picked up again, carrying the scent of rain and ozone and the faint hum of awakening machines.
She reached for her rifle, chambered a fresh round, and rose unsteadily to her feet. Khale and Shelly flanked her—scarred, exhausted, unbroken.
Together they faced the horizon, where the Helix fleet burned against the newborn sky.
"Whatever comes," Less said, voice low, steady, "we finish it on our terms."
Khale smirked. "Just another apocalypse."
Shelly checked her injector rifle. "Let's make it the last one."
The three of them stood on the smoking ridge as dawn climbed through the ash, and for the first time, the light didn't hurt.