Her eyes opened.
Pain hit first, sharp like something was drilling into her skull from the inside. She tried to focus but everything blurred into shapes and colors bleeding into each other. Trees maybe, or sky.
Then the screen appeared.
Blue light floated right in front of her face with text scrolling across it showing symbols she'd never seen before: geometric shapes that curved back on themselves and lines that connected in patterns that made her head hurt worse just looking at them.
She blinked but the screen stayed, moving with her when she turned her head and remaining three feet in front of her face no matter where she looked.
What is this.
She tried to sit up but her right arm buckled, weak and numb like it had fallen asleep but worse. Her legs felt like dead weight. She looked down at them and something felt off. The skin looked too pale and too smooth.
She managed to push herself up with her left arm and leaned back against something. The ground under her was soft, wet moss.
Bodies.
Three of them, no, five scattered across the clearing. Men in white armor with blood pooled under them, dark and thick. Some of them were missing pieces, a torso in one place and legs in another.
Her breathing got faster, short and quick.
Where am I?
She looked at her hands, turned them over and checked her arms. She found no injuries or blood, but the numbness was still there in her right arm and both legs, like they belonged to someone else.
The blue screen kept showing text with different symbols now, scrolling and updating. She couldn't read any of it.
Who am I?
The question came naturally. She waited for an answer, a name, something, but nothing came. Just blank space where memories should be.
But she knew other things. She knew what trees were and what blood meant. She knew the bodies on the ground were dead and that death was permanent. She knew the armor looked old and ceremonial.
She knew she didn't belong here.
Movement caught her eye, something white and smooth. She turned her head.
A spider stood ten feet away, massive at half her size and pure machine. White metal plating covered its body, polished smooth. Eight legs with joints that moved too fluidly made no sound.
The body was cylindrical. Sleek, with blue lines of light pulsing across the surface in slow rhythm.
Four optical sensors on its head glowed faint blue. Each one tracked independently. One focused on her face.
It had no organic parts, just white metal and blue light. Clean and advanced.
It was watching her.
She froze and didn't breathe.
The spider moved closer in silence. Its legs made no sound on the moss. It stopped three feet away and lowered its head.
Blue light swept over her body from top to bottom. The light was warm and she felt it on her skin.
The spider turned and walked toward something behind her. She twisted to look.
She saw wreckage with metal twisted and bent, scarlet in color but scorched black in places. Some pieces were still smoking.
A ship. That's a ship.
The spider climbed into the wreckage. It disappeared inside. She heard clicking and scraping metal.
She looked at the blue screen again but still couldn't read it. The symbols meant nothing.
But she understood the concept of an interface, a display, technology. She knew what those were even if she didn't know where she'd learned them.
The spider emerged from the wreckage and approached her again.
The spider stopped in front of her. One of its front legs lifted fast and before she could react, a sharp point pressed against her temple, then pierced.
She screamed.
Fire, that's what it felt like. Fire pouring into her skull, not burning but filling. Her head felt like it was expanding, stretched too tight. Information flooded in: words, sounds, grammar structures, syntax, and conjugations.
Languages. Multiple languages. Flowing in like water through a cracked dam.
Voskaran, Theldric, Morvesh, Kalteen. Names appeared with each one along with regions and dialects. She understood them all now and could speak and read them like she'd known them her entire life.
The spider pulled the needle out.
She gasped and fell forward, catching herself with both hands.
More information came, but not languages this time. Images and memories that weren't hers.
She saw herself lying on the ground with an arm missing, both legs gone, blood everywhere, and metal sticking out of her chest.
She saw the spider emerge from underground and saw the small spiders swarm over her body. She watched them build bone, muscle, and skin layer by layer. She saw them pull the metal from her chest and replace it with something else, something tiny and blue.
The spider had saved her and rebuilt her.
That's why her arm felt numb. Why her legs felt like they weren't hers.
Because they weren't hers originally.
The spider backed away and turned toward the white structure it had come from, a rectangular opening in the ground. It climbed inside and the structure sank. In five seconds it was gone with just moss and stone where it had been.
She sat there, breathing and trying to process.
The screen was still in front of her.
[OBSERVE DISPLAY AND SPEAK THE PHRASE "INITIATE EVOLUTION"]
She read it inside her head three times but didn't understand what it meant.
Evolution. What...
She looked around the clearing. Really looked this time.
The wreckage was massive. A crater surrounded it. Trees had been ripped from the ground. The earth was scorched black in a perfect circle. Glass covered parts of the ground, smooth and clear.
She'd fallen from space in that ship and crashed here.
The bodies in white armor, the spider, the reconstruction.
This isn't Earth.
She didn't know how she knew that, but she knew it the same way she knew what trees were. It was fundamental and undeniable.
She turned to look at what she'd been leaning against.
White skin stretched smooth over something massive. She followed the curve up and up, a torso with ribs bigger than her entire body and arms that stretched thirty feet. There was no head, just a stump where the neck should be. Blue liquid had dried around it in thick pools.
Oh god.
She scrambled away. Her legs barely worked but she dragged herself forward on her arms. Three feet, then five. Her heart hammered.
What is that. What the hell is that.
A giant, a dead giant. She'd been leaning against it this whole time.
She'd been leaning against a corpse. A massive, headless corpse.
Her stomach lurched. She turned and vomited but nothing came up except bile. Her throat burned.
Then she heard voices.
They were distant but getting closer.
She looked toward the sound.
People running through the trees, fast, too fast for normal humans. Dressed in black tactical gear. Fifteen of them, maybe more. Hard to tell from this distance.
They were running from something.
Small white shapes chased them, skittering across the ground. She squinted. Spiders, like the one that had rebuilt her but smaller. Dozens of them.
One of the soldiers stumbled and a spider jumped, landing on his neck. The man reached up, trying to pull it off. The spider's legs wrapped around his throat, then it was gone, just absorbed into his skin. A black mark appeared where it had been, a ring around his neck.
The man kept running.
Fifteen people in black clothing, not armor like the bodies beside her. These looked modern and tactical with matching symbols on their shoulders, possibly soldiers or mercenaries.
More spiders jumped. More black marks appeared on the other soldiers. Some of them were screaming. Others just ran.
The group was heading straight toward her.
She tried to stand but her legs wouldn't cooperate. The numbness was fading but they still felt disconnected. She got one foot under her, then the other, and pushed up.
Her knees buckled. She fell back down.
The soldiers were close now, fifty meters away, then forty.
One of them pointed at her. Shouted something in a language she now understood.
"There! The Giant's body!"
They changed direction and headed straight for her.
She looked at the screen. The instruction was still there.
[INSTRUCTION: OBSERVE DISPLAY AND SPEAK THE PHRASE "INITIATE EVOLUTION"]
She didn't know what would happen if she said it or if she should.
The soldiers reached the clearing and stopped twenty feet away, breathing hard. Some of them were bleeding while others had burn marks on their armor.
They stared at her.
She stared back.
Then movement to her left. Another figure stepped out from behind a tree, a woman in black gear same as the others, but she'd come from a different direction. A gun pointed at the woman's head.
"Don't move," the woman said.
The woman on the ground froze.
The rest of the soldiers approached, fanned out, and surrounded her. One of them, taller than the others, walked forward. He was male, probably the leader, with old scars across his face.
"Who are you with?" His voice was rough and low. "What house? What faction?"
"I don't... what?" The words came out shaky. "I just woke up. I don't know who I am. I don't know where... look, I need help, okay? I don't know what's happening."
His eyes narrowed. "You're alone? No unit? No banner?"
"I don't... I don't understand what you're asking."
The leader's eyes moved past her, scanned the clearing, and stopped on the bodies in white armor.
"Aelir Eye Church," he said quietly. One of the other soldiers moved closer, young and maybe twenty. "Church warriors."
The leader looked back at her. "Who killed them?"
"I don't know. I didn't... I wasn't..." She gestured helplessly at the bodies. "I don't know what happened. I'm not... I didn't do this."
"Search for the core," the leader said.
Three soldiers moved immediately and started searching the wreckage, the bodies, and the ground.
One of them, a woman with short hair, approached the leader. "Sir. The dome... it sealed. Completely. And the spiders activated. I think... I think the core was used somehow. Integrated."
The leader's jaw tightened. He looked at the woman on the ground, raised his gun, and pointed it at her face.
"Where's the core?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." Her voice cracked. "I don't... please, I don't know anything."
He stared at her for five seconds. Then lowered the gun slightly.
"Kill her," he said in a flat, matter-of-fact tone. "We don't have time. Other groups will be here soon." He gestured to the wreckage. "Take anything useful. Move fast."
The woman with the gun pressed it against her temple.
The woman on the ground closed her eyes.
Then she heard a sound.
It was loud and piercing, an alarm that echoed across the entire clearing. She opened her eyes.
Text appeared in the air, massive and floating thirty feet above them. White letters against the blue sky.
[EVOLUTIONARY SELECTION: INITIATED]
[VIOLENCE PROHIBITED DURING SYNCHRONIZATION]
[NON-COMPLIANCE IS FATAL]
The leader's hand went up. "Stop! Don't shoot!"
But the woman with the gun had already started pulling the trigger.
The black mark on her neck moved like liquid, spreading fast across her skin and covering her face and arms. In two seconds she was coated in it.
She dropped the gun. Clawed at her throat. Made a sound like choking.
Then she fell.
The liquid receded and disappeared back into the mark on her neck. The woman lay on the ground with eyes open, staring at nothing.
Dead.
The leader ran to her. He dropped to his knees. "Mira!" He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. "Mira, no, come on..."
There was no response.
He looked up at the sky. At the massive text still floating there.
[EVOLUTIONARY SELECTION: INITIATED]
[ALL PARTICIPANTS MUST COMPLY WITHIN DESIGNATED TIME FRAME]
[NON-COMPLIANCE IS FATAL]
The woman on the ground reached up and touched her neck, feeling the mark there. It was smooth and seamless, not a collar but more like a tattoo that had become part of her skin.
The blue screen in front of her face was still there. Still showing the same instruction.
She looked at the soldiers. They were all touching their necks now, looking at each other with scared expressions.
Blue screens appeared in front of each of them. They all reacted at once. Some stumbled backward. Others just stared.
"What the..." one soldier said, reaching toward his face.
"You see it too?"
"Can't see yours. Just mine."
"The woman realized each person could only see their own screen, private and individual.
The massive text in the sky changed.
[INITIATING EVOLUTIONARY SELECTION IN 5 MINUTES]
[OBSERVE YOUR DISPLAY]
[SPEAK THE DESIGNATED PHRASE]
[FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN TERMINATION]
The woman on the ground looked at her screen, then at the soldiers around her, the bodies, and the Giant's corpse behind her.
This wasn't a choice. Not really.
She looked at the screen. Focused on the text.
"Initiate Evolution," she said.
Green liquid poured from the mark on her neck. She felt it enter her veins, cold at first, then hot, then burning.
Text appeared on her screen.
[ANALYZING POTENTIAL]
[ANALYZING KNOWLEDGE]
[ANALYZING EXPERIENCE]
[ANALYZING PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES]
[ANALYZING INTELLIGENCE]
A progress bar appeared. 0%.
[WARNING: FOREIGN PHYSIOLOGY DETECTED]
[WARNING: NON-NATIVE BIOLOGY]
[ERROR: COMBAT SPECIALIZATION UNAVAILABLE] [ADJUSTING PARAMETERS...]
[ASSIGNMENT: NON-COMBATANT CLASS]
[INITIATING PLANETARY ADAPTATION PROTOCOL]
The pain hit.
Not pain, agony. Her body convulsed. Every muscle locked. She couldn't scream. Couldn't breathe. Her throat closed.
Something was happening inside her. Deep inside her organs and bones.
Thick black liquid covered her skin and the smell hit the clearing, rotten and putrid decay.
Several soldiers gagged. One turned and vomited.
The woman's back arched and her mouth opened. Blood poured out, dark and thick, then something solid. She vomited it onto the moss.
A kidney, decomposing. It hit the ground and started to dissolve, blackened and falling apart.
More followed. Her body purging what didn't belong as it rebuilt itself for this world.
The bar moved. 5%. 10%.
The soldiers stared, frozen.
"What the fuck," one whispered.
They'd seen bodies torn apart, men burned alive, torture, executions, all of it. But this was different: organs coming out of someone's mouth, still warm and still recognizable.
The smell got worse. Black liquid pooled under her. The stench was overwhelming, death, rot, chemicals mixing with organic matter.
15%. 20%.
Her vision went completely dark as something deep inside her changed.
"Sir, we can't... we can't do this," one of them said with voice shaking.
The leader watched the woman writhe. Watched organs spill from her mouth.
What is she?" he said quietly, not to anyone in particular, just out loud.
25%. 30%.
The woman coughed, then managed to make a sound, broken and wet.
"Please..." The word barely came out. "Kill me... please..."
One of the younger soldiers stepped forward with his hand on his pistol.
"Don't," the leader said.
"Sir, she's... look at her. We can't just..."
"You saw what happened to Mira. We can't help her. The system won't let us."
The young soldier's hand stayed on his pistol. His jaw tightened. Then he stepped back.
The woman screamed. A sound that didn't belong in a human throat.
The massive text in the sky updated.
[TIME REMAINING: 3 MINUTES]
The leader looked at his own screen. Read the instruction again.
"Initiate Evolution," he said.
Green liquid spread from his neck through his veins, which glowed faint green under his skin.
There was no pain or convulsions. The mark just faded and dissolved. The liquid spread and disappeared.
He stood there waiting. Nothing happened.
His two officers stepped forward and said the words. The same thing happened with green liquid but no pain. The marks dissolved.
They looked at each other. Then at the woman still convulsing on the ground.
"Why is it different for her?" one officer asked.
The leader shook his head. "I don't know."
35%. 40%.
More black liquid seeped from her pores. Her fingernails fell off. New ones grew underneath.
[TIME REMAINING: 2 MINUTES]
"Do it," the leader said to the rest. "Now."
Three soldiers stepped forward and activated it. There was no pain, just green liquid that spread and then nothing.
The others stayed back. Eight of them stayed back, watching the woman, smelling the rot, seeing the organs.
"I'm not doing that," one said.
The leader's hand went to his pistol but stopped. The warning in the sky was still there about violence being prohibited.
"Listen to me," he said in a low, dangerous voice. "When we leave this place, when the barrier drops, I will remember who followed orders and who didn't. I will remember every face and every name." He stared at them. "Your families are in the capital. Your wives and children. Think about that."
[TIME REMAINING: 1 MINUTE]
Four more soldiers activated it, moving fast and scared. The green liquid spread and the marks dissolved without pain.
Four remained, frozen in place.
45%. 50%.
"Please..." she gasped. "Please... stop... kill me..."
One of the soldiers looked away. His hands were shaking.
55%. 60%.
[TIME REMAINING: 30 SECONDS]
"Please," one of the four soldiers said. "Please, sir, I'll do it. Just—"
"Then do it."
He did. The green liquid spread and the mark dissolved. He stood there, shaking.
Another followed. Then a third.
One left.
[TIME REMAINING: 10 SECONDS]
The last soldier looked at the woman, the black liquid, and the dissolved organs.
"I can't," he whispered. "I can't, I'm sorry, I can't..."
[5... 4... 3... 2... 1...]
[TIME EXPIRED]
The mark on his neck activated and black liquid spread, covering him completely. He didn't scream, just fell dead before he hit the ground.
70%. 75%.
The woman's convulsions slowed. The black liquid stopped seeping. The organs stopped coming.
80%. 85%.
Her breathing steadied, ragged and wet, but steady.
90%. 95%.
The pain started to fade into something bearable rather than overwhelming.
100%.
[EVOLUTIONARY SELECTION: COMPLETE]
[ROLE ASSIGNED: ENGINEER]
[SPECIALIZATION: NON-COMBATANT]
[LEVEL: 0]
[NOTE: PLANETARY ADAPTATION SUCCESSFUL]
The green liquid in her veins faded. The mark on her neck was gone, leaving just smooth skin.
She lay there in a pool of black liquid and dissolved organs, breathing and alive.
They stood in a circle, staring at her and the carnage around her.
The leader walked over. He looked down at her, at the black liquid, at the organs scattered on the ground.
"Who is this woman?" he said.