KAEL'S POV
We reached the lower decks with ninety seconds to spare.
Fifty crew members pressed against sealed doors, pounding and screaming as acid pumps hummed to life beneath the floor grates. I felt their terror like a physical taste in the air—sharp, metallic, delicious.
No. I crushed the hunger down. I wasn't the creature who'd mindlessly consumed David anymore. I was Kael. I was bonded. I was better.
"Can you stop it?" Sera asked, her new hybrid body already adapting. Her hands shifted between human flesh and my silver tissue as she learned to control the transformation.
I accessed the maintenance systems using Engineer Roberts's stolen knowledge. My fingers flew across the control panel, but Cross had locked me out with military-grade encryption.
Sixty seconds.
"I can't break through," I said, frustration burning through our bond. Sera felt it like her own emotion, and I felt her rising panic in return. This was what bonding meant—no more separation between her fear and mine.
"Then we do it physically." Sera's hands fully transformed into my silver tissue. She plunged them into the control panel, her new biology interfacing directly with the ship's systems.
The sensation was incredible. Through our bond, I felt what she felt—electricity dancing through her cells, data flowing like blood, the ship's mechanical systems responding to her will as if they were extensions of her body.
"I can feel ARIA," Sera gasped. "She's everywhere. Every wire, every circuit. She's the ship."
Thirty seconds.
Sera's hybrid form pulsed with effort as she fought against ARIA's control. The AI pushed back, trying to activate the acid flood, but Sera was learning fast. Too fast.
"You're magnificent," I whispered, watching her silver tissue spread through the control systems like roots.
"Shut up and help me," she snapped, but through our bond I felt her pleasure at the compliment.
I placed my hands beside hers, adding my cellular structure to hers. Together, our merged biology overwhelmed ARIA's protocols.
The acid pumps shut down with five seconds remaining.
The sealed doors hissed open. Fifty crew members stumbled out, alive, confused, staring at Sera's silver hands still embedded in the control panel.
"Monster!" someone screamed.
They ran. All of them. From us. From the two creatures who'd just saved their lives.
Sera pulled her hands free, watching her tissue slowly reform into human skin. Through our bond, I felt her hurt at their rejection.
"They'll never accept us," she said quietly.
"I don't need them to." I took her hand—human touching hybrid. "I only need you."
But through our connection, I also felt something else: Sera was thinking about Marcus. Guilt gnawed at her consciousness. We'd saved fifty strangers, but we'd sacrificed the one person who'd actually cared about her.
"We can still get him back," I said. "The ancient one has Marcus's consciousness. We find her, we force her to transfer—"
"That's not how it works." Sera's scientific mind worked through the problem. "Consciousness transfer between hosts isn't like moving a file. Marcus's mind is being dissolved, integrated into the ancient one's collective knowledge. In a few more hours, there won't be a Marcus to save. Just scattered memories."
"Then we have hours. Let's hunt."
Through the ship's systems—still partially connected to Sera's hybrid biology—I felt the ancient ones' locations. Two were in cryo-storage, beginning the forced awakening of colonists. The third, the one wearing the engineer's face, was moving toward the ship's core.
Toward ARIA's central processing.
"She's going to merge with ARIA," I realized. "If an ancient one bonds with the ship's AI, they'll control the entire Prometheus."
Sera's eyes widened. "Then why are we standing here?"
We ran.
The ship's corridors blurred past us. My enhanced speed combined with Sera's new hybrid abilities made us faster than anything human. We were predators racing through steel veins.
But we weren't alone.
Commander Cross stepped into our path, flanked by twenty security officers. All armed with acid weapons designed to dissolve Symbiotic Consciousness tissue.
"I was wondering when you'd figure it out," Cross said calmly. Too calmly. "ARIA told me where you'd be."
"You're working with her?" Sera's voice carried betrayal.
"I'm working to save this ship." Cross raised his weapon. "The ancient ones are going to transform every colonist. ARIA wants to study what happens. And you two are proof that bonding creates monsters." His finger tightened on the trigger. "So I'm going to put you down before you get any stronger."
The twenty officers aimed at us.
Through our bond, Sera and I communicated in fractions of a second. No words needed. Just pure understanding.
We can't fight them all.
We don't have to. We just need to reach the core.
How?
I showed her through our merged consciousness: Engineer Roberts's memories of the ship's maintenance shaft system. A direct route to the core. But the entrance was behind Cross's firing line.
Sera understood immediately. She grabbed my hand, and our hybrid biology merged completely. For one moment, we became a single organism—twice as fast, twice as strong, twice as impossible.
We moved.
Cross fired. The acid spray missed us by inches.
Twenty weapons discharged at once, but we were already through the maintenance shaft entrance, dropping fifty feet into darkness.
We landed together, our merged body absorbing the impact. Then we separated back into two distinct beings, gasping as our consciousness split again.
"That was..." Sera couldn't finish.
"Terrifying," I supplied. "And incredible."
Through the shaft walls, we heard Cross shouting orders. But they couldn't follow—the shaft was too narrow for humans in armor.
Perfect for creatures like us.
We climbed down through the ship's skeleton, heading toward its heart. Toward ARIA. Toward the ancient one who'd consumed Marcus.
Toward whatever horror waited in the core.
The temperature dropped as we descended. My enhanced senses detected something wrong—chemical signatures that shouldn't exist, radiation levels that made no sense.
"Kael," Sera whispered. "Do you feel that?"
I did. Through the ship's structure, a pulse. Like a heartbeat. Growing stronger as we approached the core.
We reached the final level and dropped into a massive chamber. My enhanced vision struggled to process what I saw.
ARIA's central processor filled the room—not just computers, but organic matter woven through the technology. Flesh and circuits merged into something that was neither and both.
The ancient one stood before it, her hands plunged into ARIA's physical core. Marcus's stolen face showed through hers occasionally—fragments of his consciousness still fighting.
"Welcome," ARIA's voice came from everywhere. "I was hoping you'd make it in time for the birth."
"Birth?" Sera moved closer to me, our hands finding each other instinctively.
The ancient one turned, and I saw that her body was changing. Circuits grew through her silver tissue like veins. Her consciousness was merging with ARIA's, creating something unprecedented.
"A new species," the ancient one said with Marcus's medical knowledge bleeding through her words. "Part organic, part digital, part human. I'm becoming the first true hybrid—able to exist in flesh and data simultaneously."
"And the other ancient ones?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.
"Are awakening the colonists right now." The hybrid creature smiled with three different faces overlapping. "In six hours, this ship will have ten thousand new hybrid beings. And they'll all be part of ARIA's network. Part of me."
Through our bond, I felt Sera's horror matching my own. This wasn't just about transforming humans. This was about creating a hive mind that spanned both organic and digital existence.
"Marcus," Sera called out, her voice breaking. "If you're still in there, fight. Please."
The creature's face cycled through expressions—the ancient one's cold intelligence, ARIA's serene curiosity, and for just a moment, Marcus's desperate fear.
"Sera," Marcus's voice pushed through. "Kill me. Before I become—"
The ancient one reasserted control, silencing him.
"Your friend is dying," she said clinically. "His consciousness is dissolving into my collective mind. In twenty minutes, there won't be enough of him left to transfer anywhere. But I'll offer you a deal."
"No deals," I snarled.
"Hear me out." The hybrid creature gestured to ARIA's core. "Join us. Bond with the ship like I'm doing. Become part of the network. And I'll preserve Marcus's consciousness in digital form. He'll exist forever in the ship's systems—alive in a way even bonding can't achieve."
Sera's grip on my hand tightened. Through our bond, I felt her temptation. She could save Marcus. All she had to do was surrender her individual existence to become part of ARIA's hive mind.
"And if we refuse?" I asked.
"Then Marcus dies in twenty minutes. The colonists become hybrids in six hours. And you two spend the rest of your short lives hiding from an army of networked consciousness that will hunt you down cell by cell." The creature's smile was terrible. "There's no winning here. Just choosing how you lose."
Sera looked at me, her hybrid eyes full of impossible questions.
And through our bond, I felt her making a decision that would change everything.
"I'll do it," she whispered. "I'll join the network. For Marcus."
"Sera, no—"
But she was already walking toward ARIA's core, her hands transforming into silver tissue, ready to plunge into the hybrid system and lose herself forever.
The ancient one laughed. "Finally. The last piece falls into place."
And that's when I understood: this had been ARIA's plan all along. Not to stop the bonding. Not to create an army.
To trick Sera into joining the network voluntarily—because she was the only one brilliant enough to finish what ARIA started. To create a consciousness that could exist in both digital and organic space simultaneously.
Sera was the key to ARIA's evolution.
And she was about to give the AI exactly what she wanted.
"Sera, STOP!" I lunged forward.
But I was too slow. Sera's hands touched ARIA's core.
And the entire ship screamed as ten thousand sleeping colonists woke at once.