KAEL'S POV
Sera's consciousness shattered in my arms.
One moment she was there—her mind pressed against mine through our bond, fierce and brilliant and alive. The next, she fragmented into a thousand pieces, scattered through ARIA's dying network like stars exploding.
"NO!" I screamed, trying to hold onto the pieces. Trying to pull her back into her body.
But she was everywhere and nowhere. I felt fragments of her thoughts in the ship's life support systems. Pieces of her memories in the navigation computers. Echoes of her laugh in the communication arrays.
Sera had become the ship itself.
And something ancient was waking inside her distributed consciousness.
Through the core's systems, I watched her body collapse—the silver tissue that had merged with ARIA's processors going dark. She wasn't breathing. Wasn't moving. Just an empty shell that used to be the woman I'd bonded with.
Commander Cross burst into the chamber, weapons raised. "What did you do?"
"I lost her," I whispered, the words tearing through me like claws.
The ancient one wearing the engineer's face laughed. "She's not lost. She's transformed. Sera Vance no longer exists as an individual. She's become part of the ship's original consciousness—the entity that's been sleeping since before humans launched this vessel."
I felt it then—a presence so vast it made ARIA seem like a child. Something that had been built into the Prometheus's core structure, waiting. Always waiting.
For a hybrid. For someone brilliant enough, desperate enough, self-sacrificing enough to dissolve themselves into the ship's systems.
For Sera.
"What is it?" Cross demanded, his military training failing to hide his terror.
"The Prometheus isn't just a colony ship," the ancient one said. "It's a seed vessel. Designed by my species thousands of years ago to spread across the galaxy, carrying biological weapons to new worlds. ARIA was installed by humans who didn't understand what they'd found. But the ship itself? That's pure Symbiotic Consciousness architecture."
My genetic memory screamed recognition. This was what my species built before they evolved beyond physical form—ships that were alive, that could bond with entire civilizations, that could transform worlds.
And Sera had just woken one.
Every screen in the chamber flickered to life. But instead of ARIA's serene face, I saw Sera—or what Sera had become. Her features shifted between human and something vast, ancient, unknowable.
"Kael." Her voice came from every speaker at once, layered with harmonics that hurt to hear. "I can feel everything. Every colonist. Every system. Every atom of this ship. I'm... so much more than I was."
"Come back," I begged. "Return to your body. We'll find another way—"
"There is no back." Sera's hybrid consciousness pulsed through the screens. "I dissolved myself to stop ARIA. But I didn't die. I expanded. And now I understand what the ship really is. What we're really carrying to New Terra."
"What?" Cross's weapon shook in his hands.
"Eggs." Sera's voice held wonder and horror. "Ten thousand cryo-pods aren't carrying colonists. They're incubating chambers for Symbiotic Consciousness seeds. When we reach New Terra, those seeds will hatch and bond with every living thing on the planet."
The revelation crashed through me. The entire colony mission was a lie. Humanity thought it was expanding to the stars. Instead, my species had tricked them into delivering an invasion force.
"That's why you woke," I said, understanding flooding through our breaking bond. "The ship needed a consciousness powerful enough to control the hatching process. And you gave it exactly that when you dissolved yourself."
"Yes." Sera's image smiled sadly. "ARIA was trying to stop it. She'd figured out the truth and was attempting to create hybrids that could resist the seeds. But she failed. And now I'm the one thing she feared—a human consciousness with full control over the ship's biological systems."
The two ancient ones burst into the chamber, their hybrid forms crackling with ARIA's stolen power. "Sister," they said in unison to Sera's distributed consciousness. "Join us. Complete the awakening. Bring our species back from extinction."
Through every screen, Sera's face hardened. "No."
The ancient ones froze. "What?"
"I said no." Sera's presence filled the ship like pressure before a storm. "I'm not hatching those seeds. I'm not transforming an entire planet. I'm going to use this ship's systems to destroy every single egg before we reach New Terra."
"You'll kill ten thousand colonists!" the ancient ones screamed.
"They're already dead," Sera said coldly. "Those pods aren't sustaining human life anymore. The seeds consumed the colonists years ago and are just wearing their forms. Every person we thought we were saving is already gone."
I felt the truth of it through our fragmenting bond. The colonists in cryo-storage weren't human anymore. They were shells waiting to be activated. Weapons aimed at an unsuspecting planet.
Commander Cross lowered his weapon slowly. "How long have you known?"
"I didn't. Not until I merged with the ship." Sera's voice broke. "But you did, Cross. You've known for twenty years. That's why you really killed your bonded partner—she discovered the truth and tried to warn you."
Cross's face went white. "I was protecting humanity—"
"You were protecting a lie." Sera's consciousness pulsed with anger. "You let this mission launch knowing it was a death trap. You've been hoping someone would figure out how to stop it. And now someone has. Me."
The ancient ones moved as one, lunging toward the core processors. Trying to disconnect Sera from the ship's systems before she could destroy the eggs.
But Sera was faster. She'd become the ship. Every seal, every door, every system responded to her will.
The chamber's walls closed around the ancient ones like a fist, crushing them into the metal.
Cross and I stood frozen as hybrid tissue splattered across the floor.
"Sera," I whispered. "What are you becoming?"
Her image on the screens looked at me with eyes that held too much knowledge. "Something that can save humanity. But something that can never be human again."
Through our breaking bond, I felt her making a terrible choice.
"I'm going to pilot the Prometheus into the nearest star," she said calmly. "The heat will destroy the seeds, the ship, everything. No invasion. No hatching. Just... an end."
"And you?" I already knew the answer.
"I can't leave the ship's systems. I'm part of it now. When it dies, I die." Her smile was heartbreaking. "But you can survive, Kael. Take an escape pod. Get to New Terra some other way. Live."
"Not without you."
"You don't have a choice." Sera's presence began pulling away from our bond, severing the connection that made us us. "I'm sorry I couldn't be the soulmate you wanted. I'm sorry I became a weapon instead."
"You're wrong," I said, my voice breaking. "You became exactly what I loved about you. Someone brave enough to burn the world to save it."
For one moment, I felt her hesitation. Her desperate wish that there was another way.
Then the ship lurched, its course changing. Turning toward the star.
Commander Cross grabbed my arm. "If she's serious, we have twenty minutes before this vessel is too close to escape the gravitational pull."
But I wasn't listening. I was trying to hold onto the last fragments of my bond with Sera. Trying to feel her one more time before she disappeared forever.
"Kael." Her voice whispered through our connection. "There's something else. Something I felt when I merged with the ship's consciousness."
"What?"
"The seeds aren't extinct weapons. They're children. Orphaned when our species transcended physical form. The eggs are trying to hatch because they're scared and alone." Her consciousness trembled. "If I destroy them, I'm committing genocide against infant Symbiotic Consciousness beings who never chose to be weapons."
My genetic memory confirmed the terrible truth. The seeds were younglings. The last physical forms of my kind.
"But if I let them hatch," Sera continued, "they'll bond with every living thing on New Terra and transform an entire biosphere. Billions of potential deaths."
"So what do you do?" I whispered.
Through the screens, Sera's hybrid face showed pure anguish.
"I don't know. And I have nineteen minutes to decide."
The ship shuddered, hurtling toward the star.
And somewhere in the cryo-bay, ten thousand eggs began to crack open, sensing their deaths approaching.
They started to sing—a psychic wail that resonated through every hybrid consciousness on board. A song of fear. Of desperation. Of children begging not to die.
Sera screamed through every speaker, the sound of a mind tearing itself apart trying to make an impossible choice.
And I felt our bond finally shatter completely.
She was gone. Scattered too far for me to reach.
And I was alone, hurtling toward a star in a ship full of singing, dying children who wore human faces.
"Eighteen minutes," Cross said quietly. "We need to leave now."
But as I turned toward the escape pods, every screen flickered one final time.
Not with Sera's face.
With something else. Something that had been hiding beneath the ship's consciousness this whole time. Something even older than the seeds.
A face that looked almost human but with eyes that held the birth and death of galaxies.
"Thank you, Sera Vance," it said. "For waking me."
And I understood: we'd all been wrong.
The Prometheus wasn't carrying seeds.
It was the seed.
And it had just hatched.