LILITH: GENESIS CODE
Chapter 2 – The Blood-Stained Cradle
ARC I: EMBERS OF NOCTRID
---
They ran without pause. Azren carried Rae on his back, half-conscious, her arms draped around his neck as he sprinted with ragged breaths. Overhead, ORDEN sirens howled like beasts scenting prey.
Then the sirens began to fade.
Moving away.
Azren stopped, cold relief washing over him. He glanced back at the alley where they had hidden. No one. He knew Vaen had done this—drawing the hunters in another direction. The man was a ghost from Azren's past, an unexpected savior who always appeared at the most desperate moments.
Azren and Rae continued until they reached a hidden place.
A secret underground chamber that had been Azren's laboratory and refuge for the past five years since his escape.
The room smelled of antiseptic and despair.
And now, of something newly born.
Azren sealed the rusted iron door, sliding three manual locks before switching on the dim emergency light. Yellow glow revealed what had been his home for five years: a stolen laboratory buried in Noctrid's underbelly.
A bloodstained operating table stood in the corner—his own dried blood from last month's emergency surgery when VELOS nearly caught him.
Shelves held artificial organs floating in glowing green fluid, vials of flickering nano-particles like dying stars, and data-cores storing forbidden code fragments.
The same code now running through the girl's body behind him.
On the walls hung obsessive anatomical sketches of Rae—every detail of the body he would create, every curve drawn with trembling hands during nights when longing for Red burned in his chest.
And now that creation stood naked in the center of the room, still wrapped in Azren's oversized coat. Dried VELOS blood matted her black hair, but her silver spiral eyes kept moving, observing everything with a disturbing curiosity.
The curiosity of a child.
Or of a predator learning to hunt.
"This... home?" Rae asked, her voice trembling between synthetic and organic.
"It's the best I have." Azren opened a metal cabinet, pulling out simple clothes—a white shirt and black pants once bought for lab use. "Put these on for now."
Rae took the clothes but didn't dress immediately. Instead, she ran her fingers over the fabric with unnatural sensitivity, as if reading invisible braille.
"Why do humans cover their bodies?"
A question she shouldn't have needed to ask. If she were truly human.
The words left Azren silent. He wasn't ready to explain morality, shame, or anything more complex.
"Because... temperature. Your body can get cold."
"I don't feel cold," Rae tilted her head. "My thermal regulation system is optimal."
Of course she knew exactly.
Azren had forgotten Rae wasn't an ordinary human. But he couldn't let her stay naked without feeling... disturbed in the wrong way.
"Just wear them, Rae."
There was command in his voice, but also pleading. And for some reason, the plea made Rae obey. She put on the shirt with stiff, unnatural movements—like following an unwritten manual for this situation. The loose pants made her look smaller, more fragile.
A dangerous illusion.
But her eyes remained the same. Too intelligent, too ancient for that innocent face.
"Azren," she said, sitting on the edge of the operating table, legs swinging like a child's. "Why did you create me?"
The question he had avoided answering for five years—even to himself.
"Are you hungry?" he asked instead.
"I don't know what hunger is."
"Thirsty?"
"I don't know what thirst is."
She hadn't yet learned need. Hadn't learned desire.
But she would. And that terrified him.
Azren looked at her. This was a problem he hadn't anticipated. Rae had an organic body, but did she need food? Did her system require nutrients like a human's?
He grabbed a bottle of water and offered it. "Try drinking this."
Rae took the bottle, studying it like an alien artifact. Clear water in transparent plastic—nothing special. But the way she looked at it—as if it held the secrets of the universe.
Then she drank mechanically. Azren watched her throat move as she swallowed.
"What does it taste like?"
Rae paused for a long time. Too long. Her spiral eyes turned slowly, processing a sensation her design might never have been meant to feel.
"Like... remembering something that never happened."
An answer that shouldn't have come from a newly awakened system.
Azren's skin prickled. There was philosophy in Rae's words that shouldn't exist in such fresh consciousness.
A hard knock at the door snapped him tense. He touched the hidden blade at his wrist, heart pounding. Had they found him? Or was it him?
A man's voice—heavy, with the accent of a former soldier. Azren recognized it: Vaen Thorne, a shadow from his past that bound him. A high-ranking defector who had betrayed Theon to save Azren from assassination. The man who lost everything the same night Azren lost his world.
Vaen entered hurriedly, staring at Rae with a mix of fear and awe. "You're insane, Azren. VELOS is tearing half of Noctrid apart looking for you two."
"She's alive," Azren said.
"Alive?" Vaen gave a bitter laugh. "That's a biological weapon."
A weapon that could love. And that was more dangerous than any other.
Rae looked at Vaen with innocent curiosity, head tilted like a bird studying a new species.
"Who is he, Azren?"
"My name is Vaen." Vaen stepped closer but kept distance. Something in the way he looked at Rae wasn't fear of a weapon.
It was guilt.
Recognition.
Azren noticed. "You've seen something like her before?"
Vaen didn't answer immediately. His eyes stayed on Rae, on the faint glow of biomechanical lines under her skin.
"I worked with similar technology once," he said finally, voice heavy with unspoken weight.
"For ORDEN. Before I realized what I was helping create."
Something in Rae's presence unsettled him—like standing near a predator in disguise. "And you... what are you, exactly?"
"I am Rae." Simple answer, but the way she said it made Vaen step back. "I am Azren's child."
"Child." Not "creation." Not "experiment."
Child.
"Vaen," Azren interrupted before it grew more awkward. "Why are you here?"
"ORDEN activated Protocol Seven. They're deploying VESPA-DEUS to scan every mind in Noctrid. Anyone who's ever thought about you or... her... will be executed on the spot."
Azren paled. VESPA-DEUS—nano-drones that read brainwaves and injected subtle hallucinogenic viruses directly into the nervous system. Lethal propaganda that turned minds into weapons.
And they were coming for Rae.
"How much time do we have?"
"Maybe an hour. Maybe less." Vaen glanced at the lab equipment around them. "This place won't be safe much longer. They have new tech—scanners that detect unique bio-signatures. Signatures like..."
His eyes locked on Rae, who now stood from the table. The biomechanical lines on her body glowed faintly in the dim light, like living circuits under skin.
"Like hers."
Rae walked toward Vaen with movements too smooth, too perfect. "You're afraid of me."
"I'm afraid of what you can do."
"I haven't done anything to you."
"Not yet." Vaen swallowed. "But I saw how you killed those VELOS earlier. No emotion. No pain. Just... efficiency."
Beautiful efficiency.
Terrifying efficiency.
Rae considered this seriously, her spiral eyes turning slowly like a machine processing complex data.
"Should I have felt pain when I killed them?"
The question hung in the air like a curse.
Vaen looked at Azren with eyes that said: This is what you created?
"VELOS are machines," Azren finally answered, voice not entirely certain. "They're not human. Killing them to protect yourself... it's not wrong."
"And if I have to kill humans to protect you?" Rae asked with innocent curiosity. "Is that wrong?"
Azren couldn't answer.
Because he feared his own answer.
And he feared Rae's.
A humming sound from above shattered the tense silence. VESPA-DEUS. They had arrived.
"We have to leave. Now." Vaen drew his plasma pistol. "I know a safe place, but—"
Suddenly Rae froze in place. Her spiral eyes spun rapidly, and the biomechanical lines on her body glowed brighter. As if receiving a signal from outside.
Or from within.
"There's something above," she whispered, her voice changing—more resonant, like two people speaking at once. "Like a mother's voice. She's calling me."
Azren's heart stopped. He recognized the signature propaganda. The divine envoy of ORDEN, her face on every screen, her voice in every speaker. A woman too beautiful for ordinary humans, speaking of God's love with eyes that never loved anything. Nivra Helian. And now that voice was entering Rae's head directly.
"Don't listen to her, Rae. She's not—"
"But she's beautiful, Azren. And her voice... makes me want to..."
Rae didn't finish, but her gaze darkened. Something hungry stirred there. Something that wanted to emerge and play.
Something that wanted Nivra Helian.
Vaen backed away slowly, gripping his weapon tighter. "Azren. We need to go. Now."
But Azren couldn't let go of Rae. The girl trembled in his arms, fighting the voices in her head. And for the first time, Azren realized: the sin wasn't creating a monster.
The sin was loving it too much to destroy it.
Above them, the hum of VESPA-DEUS grew louder. And on propaganda screens scattered across Noctrid, Nivra Helian's face smiled with perfection too flawless for any human.
"Come back to me, lost child," her voice whispered through cracked speakers. "Come back to the true light."
But Rae, in Azren's warm, desperate embrace, whispered back with a voice too mature for her face:
"I don't want the light. I want Azren."
And somehow, those words sounded more like a threat than a declaration of love.
Like a promise that would turn the world to ash.
That night, while Rae and Azren slept in separate corners of the lab,
Vaen sat awake with his weapon across his lap.
He no longer slept if he could avoid it.
Because every time his eyes closed, he saw the faces.
Targets. Collateral. Those "processed" by his unit.
Target 271: Male, 43, social sciences professor.
Method: VESPA-DEUS deployment, standard protocol.
Result: Suicide within 72 hours. Efficiency: Optimal.
Vaen's hands trembled.
Five years since he defected. Five years trying to forget.
But the numbers never left:
Target 1 to 847.
Eight hundred forty-seven lives he helped destroy
with a weapon that left no physical scars.
Only madness.
Only death that looked like choice.
He glanced at Rae sleeping.
The girl—the being—was the antithesis of what he had created.
VESPA-DEUS shattered minds.
Rae... she was a mind given a body.
Perhaps this was redemption.
Or perhaps just another way to fail.
Vaen didn't know.
What he did know: if anyone tried to use psychological weapons on Rae,
they'd have to go through his corpse first.
Because he had seen enough shattered minds for one lifetime.
---
[END OF CHAPTER 2]
To be continued in Chapter 3: Ashes of Red (Flashback I)