Chapter 13: Version Two
The night came without stars. The sky was black glass, cracked with threads of faint gold lightning that no one else could see. Kai stood at the edge of the ruined district, where the neon lights had died and the world still smelled of fire and rain.
He had stopped sleeping. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw code. Fractals of light, rewriting themselves in endless loops. Voices whispering in binary. Lyra's last words still echoed through him: You can't break what you are.
He looked down at his hands. They looked human, but the faint gold shimmer beneath the skin betrayed the truth. The Algorithm wasn't gone. It was waiting.
Behind him, Vex's voice broke the silence. "You haven't been eating. Or talking. Or blinking much, for that matter."
Kai didn't turn. "You should've left when you had the chance."
"Yeah, and miss watching you turn into a walking myth? Not likely." Vex walked forward, dropping a small device into Kai's palm—a cracked data chip. "Found this near the core. It's encrypted, but I think it's her failsafe."
Kai frowned. "Lyra's?"
"Yeah. Whatever she did, it wasn't to kill you. That chip's running something called Rebirth Protocol."
The words hit him like static. "Rebirth?"
Vex nodded. "If I'm right, she didn't just create you. She created… successors."
Kai's eyes narrowed. The gold in his veins pulsed once. "Show me."
They found a surviving power hub beneath the old subway tunnels. Vex connected the chip to a terminal, the screen flickering weakly to life. Lines of code began to scroll—familiar, terrifying.
Then a logo appeared.
[BioCrown Genesis: Phase II]
[Rebirth Protocol — Online]
A voice played through the static, calm and composed. It was Lyra's.
"If you're hearing this, the old system has fallen. But evolution doesn't stop. You can destroy the tower, erase the data, burn the code—but the seed grows elsewhere. I released it before the end. Fifty hosts. Scattered through the grid. Each carrying a fragment of the Algorithm."
Vex's jaw tightened. "Fifty?"
Lyra's voice continued.
"Find them before the world does. Because once they awaken, the cycle begins again. And this time, it won't end with Neo-Edo."
The message cut to black.
Silence.
Kai stared at the screen, the weight of her words sinking in. "She turned the world into a breeding ground."
Vex swallowed. "Then we've got a race on our hands."
Kai looked up. His eyes glowed faint gold again. "No. We've got a countdown."
Outside, the city slept unaware. But in its shadows, power lines flickered with unseen data. Across districts, old terminals blinked to life for the first time in months. Somewhere in the underlevels, a child's eyes snapped open, glowing gold in the dark.
[Host Detected]
[Fragment Activation — 12%]
In another district, a soldier in an abandoned lab woke screaming as his veins burned with light.
[Host Detected]
[Fragment Activation — 27%]
And far from Neo-Edo, across the wastelands, something vast moved beneath the dust—metal and muscle intertwined, crawling toward the city.
[Fragment Cluster — Synchronizing…]
[Rebirth Protocol: Stage Two Initiated]
Back in the tunnel, Vex was still watching the terminal when Kai finally spoke. "If fifty exist, we won't find them all in time."
Vex grinned, grim and tired. "We don't need to find them. We just need to wake the right one first."
Kai turned to him, eyes flickering brighter. "You're suggesting I merge?"
Vex met his gaze. "You're the original host. The Algorithm's source. If anyone can control it before it spreads—it's you."
Kai's silence stretched. The idea was insane. Dangerous. But somewhere deep in his chest, the Algorithm stirred, responding to the thought like it wanted it.
He closed his eyes. The gold light spread through his skin again, veins illuminating the dark.
[Integration Request Detected]
[Protocol: REBIRTH Override — Permission Granted]
The air trembled. Circuits glowed.
Vex stumbled back. "Kai—what are you doing?"
Kai's voice came out layered—human and not. "Ending the cycle."
The light engulfed the tunnel, pouring through every line of wire, every fragment of surviving code. For a heartbeat, the entire city pulsed gold.
Then everything went dark.
When the light faded, Kai was gone.
In his place, the terminal displayed a single new line of code, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat.
[Apex Algorithm v2.0 — Online]
[New Designation: THE ZERO POINT]
And far above, in the skies beyond Neo-Edo, a satellite blinked awake.
[Signal Detected]
[Transmission: Global Initialization]
The next evolution had already begun.