The ice hadn't stopped falling.
Chunks of white crashed into the lab as boots pounded across the frozen floor. The glow of the North Star Core painted the chaos in violent shades of blue and crimson. Alarms screamed through the corridors, echoing off steel and glass.
Ava barely managed to duck as a shot ricocheted past her ear. Adrian spun around, returning fire with precision that came from years of survival, not training.
"Six hostiles upper ledge!" he barked.
"Make that eight!" Ava shouted, slamming her hand on the control console to bring up the shield grid.
But the system flickered half the circuits were dead, frost-choked and unstable. The holographic barrier rose only halfway, leaving a shimmering gap overhead. One of the operatives dropped through it, landing behind her.
Before she could turn, a hand clamped around her wrist and the barrel of a pulse rifle pressed against her temple.
"Don't move," the soldier hissed.
The voice feminine, sharp carried command. The others froze, lowering weapons as the leader stepped into the light.
Her armor gleamed matte-black, traced with silver veins that pulsed like living metal. But it was her face that stopped Ava cold.
Eyes of pale grey the same shade as her father's.
Same tilt of the jaw. Same calculating calm.
"Dr. Mara Kane," Adrian whispered in disbelief. "Impossible. She's"
"Dead?" The woman's lips curved in a thin smile. "That's what your files said, yes. But you of all people should know, Agent Redd, the dead don't stay buried in the Directive."
Ava's stomach twisted. "You're my aunt."
Mara turned toward her, lowering her rifle. "You were never supposed to see this place, Ava. Elias wanted you protected, hidden away from all of it. But you came anyway. Just like him curious enough to ruin everything."
THE PRISON OF LIGHT
They were taken deeper underground beneath the frozen research halls into the Directive's temporary base camp.
Adrian's wrists were bound with nano-cuffs that glowed faintly, the kind that read neural signals. Ava's cuffs were heavier, threaded with silver circuits that shimmered every time her heart rate spiked.
"Emotion stabilizers," Mara explained, walking beside her. "Your heart controls the Core now. If you panic, if you feel too much the North Star reacts. We can't afford that."
Ava glared at her. "You mean you can't afford me making a choice you don't control."
Mara smiled without humor. "Control isn't the enemy, Ava. Chaos is."
They passed rows of humming machines, each one displaying global maps overlaid with faint, shifting light patterns. Pulse signatures remnants of the ReGenesis event still active across the world.
"You're tracking the changed," Adrian said quietly.
"Of course," Mara replied. "Someone has to. After the Pulse, only two percent of the population stabilized. The rest they're volatile, unpredictable. The Directive was created to contain them… and now, to determine who's worth saving."
"Through selection," Ava muttered, remembering her father's words.
Mara stopped walking. "You sound like him."
"I'm nothing like him."
"Oh, you are," Mara said softly. "You just haven't accepted what you are yet."
AVA — THE TEST
They locked her in a containment cell of tempered glass and light.
The walls pulsed softly, echoing her heartbeat. Every time her emotions spiked, the light flared reading her like a living sensor.
Mara entered the chamber alone an hour later.
"You've inherited his code," she began. "Not just biologically, but emotionally. The North Star was designed to synchronize with Elias's empathy network a prototype neural map that could detect emotional frequency across populations. He believed empathy could guide evolution."
Ava crossed her arms. "And you believe fear can."
"Fear keeps the species alive. Empathy got us the Pulse."
Mara circled her like a predator. "The world outside these walls is chaos, Ava. Entire cities turned feral after the ReGenesis. The North Star can fix that but it needs a stable anchor. You."
"I won't be your weapon," Ava said.
Mara's eyes softened almost imperceptibly. "You already are. The only question is whose side are you on?"
ADRIAN — THE INTERROGATION
They kept Adrian separate, confined in a steel chamber with no visible door. The air smelled of ozone and cold metal.
He'd been in cells before Directive black sites, war zones, refugee outposts but this felt different. Cleaner. Too quiet.
The door shimmered open, revealing Mara herself.
"Agent Redd," she said smoothly. "You should have stayed retired."
"I tried. The world kept ending."
She smiled faintly. "Still charming, even in chains."
Adrian leaned back in his chair. "You're wasting your time. I don't know the access codes."
"Oh, I don't need them. Ava does. And you're the only thing keeping her balanced enough not to detonate the Core."
He froze. "You're using me."
"I'm protecting the world," she corrected. "If she loses control, her heart rate spikes and the North Star initiates a global synchronization event. Every remaining Evolved would either stabilize… or disintegrate."
Adrian's jaw tightened. "You're playing god."
"I'm cleaning up your father's mess," she said flatly. "And if that means breaking her heart to keep it steady I will."
THE STORM IN THE BLOOD
That night, Ava dreamed of the Core again.
She saw it pulsing beneath the ice each beat echoing with a voice she couldn't escape.
"The world isn't dying, Ava. It's waiting."
She woke to the sound of alarms.
The walls of her cell flared crimson the stabilizer cuffs glowing white-hot.
Mara's voice came over the comm "She's destabilizing get Redd in here, now!"
Adrian burst into the room moments later, guards flanking him. He ignored them, rushing to Ava's side.
Her skin glowed faintly blue, her veins alive with energy. The Core was reacting through her body, bleeding light.
"Ava, breathe," he said, grabbing her shoulders. "Look at me. You're here. You're safe."
Her eyes snapped open silver and burning. "It's inside me, Adrian. The Core it's not separate anymore."
The lights flickered violently, and for a split second, every monitor in the base displayed the same message:
NORTH STAR PROTOCOL MANUAL LINK COMPLETE. HOST: AVA KANE.
The guards panicked. One moved to sedate her, but the light flared, hurling him backward.
Mara watched from behind the glass, expression unreadable.
"Contain her," she ordered. "Don't kill her we need the signal intact."
Adrian turned on her, fury blazing. "She's not a signal she's a person!"
"She's evolution," Mara said coldly. "And evolution doesn't care about feelings."
THE CHOICE
The stabilizers overloaded Ava screamed, the glow exploding outward in a storm of light. Every screen shattered, and the ice beneath the base began to crack.
She could feel everything every mind, every pulse on Earth. The changed. The pureborn. The dying cities. The fragments of her father's code.
All of it.
"Choose, Ava."
Her father's voice whispered in her mind.
"Stabilize them or end it."
Her hands trembled as the world itself seemed to hold its breath.
Then Adrian's voice broke through the chaos, steady, human, real.
"Don't let them decide what kind of god you become."
She looked at him saw the blood on his face, the fire in his eyes and for the first time, she understood.
The North Star didn't need a controller.
It needed a conscience.
Ava closed her eyes and everything went white.