The air inside the hidden sublevel was unnaturally cold—colder than anything that should exist beneath the main Synapse-9 facility. Ethan could see his breath with every exhale, steam drifting upward into the dim blue emergency lights like fading ghosts. This wasn't normal. This wasn't just poor ventilation or a malfunctioning thermostat.
Something was alive down here.
Something that warped the environment around it.
Lena stepped beside him, her pistol raised, her fingers trembling just slightly. "Ethan… we shouldn't even be here. This place wasn't in any archive, any map, any server. How did Synapse-9 hide something this massive?"
Ethan didn't answer. His eyes were fixed on the door at the far end of the corridor—a huge, reinforced slab of titanium with a glowing biometric lock. The pulse scanner emitted a faint vibration that tugged at Ethan's senses. His blood felt warm. His fingertips tingled.
It was calling to him.
It recognized him.
Because the thing behind that door—the thing codenamed Genesis-01—was connected to him in ways he didn't want to believe.
Jax moved past them, adjusting the strap on his rifle. "Door's sealed from the inside. If we try to breach it, the entire base will know we're here. Any chance you can override it, Lena?"
She crouched near the lock, her tablet hovering above her wrist. "I can try, but it isn't like the others. This is layered with something… biological. It's not just tech. The lock is reading for tissue patterns, nerve signatures, and—"
Her voice caught.
Ethan already knew why. He stepped forward.
"It's reading for me."
The biometric lock flickered.
The pulses shifted rhythm.
Slow.
Heavy.
Like a heartbeat.
Lena jerked to her feet. "Ethan, don't. We don't know what it'll do if it verifies you. It could lock us in. It could trigger an alert. It could—"
"It could be the only way," Ethan said quietly.
He wasn't wrong.
Genesis-01 was the reason this whole mission existed. Ever since the fragment recovered in Chapter 28 revealed the encoded coordinates, the team had known they were marching into the core of Synapse-9's darkest secret. Ethan had tried to prepare himself, but some truths could never be softened.
He placed his palm against the scanner.
Instant warmth.
Instant acceptance.
Lights raced across the lock, reading him—his DNA, his reflexes, his heartbeat, his chemical baseline, his neural frequency.
ACCESS GRANTED.
The door split open with a heavy hiss.
Cold air flooded outward, almost knocking them back.
Jax coughed. "What the hell… it feels like stepping into a freezer."
Lena hugged herself. "This temperature… it's not for humans."
Ethan said nothing.
Because he felt it differently.
The cold wasn't painful. It was familiar.
Comfortable.
Inviting.
He hated that.
They moved inside.
The chamber was enormous—bigger than anything the underground layout should've allowed. Its walls were made of black meta-steel, glowing with faint neon veins that pulsed like living arteries. Massive cables hung from the ceiling like suspended serpents, feeding energy into the structure at the center of the room.
A containment pillar.
Fifteen feet tall.
Circular.
Transparent.
Inside—
Something floated.
A shape.
Not fully human.
Not fully machine.
Its skin was chalk-white, almost translucent. Veins of faint blue light pulsed under it like diluted electricity. Its face was smooth, blank, unfinished. No eyes. No mouth. No identity.
A prototype.
A first iteration.
A ghost of what Ethan could've been.
Lena whispered, "Genesis-01…"
Jax took a step back. "That's not just a weapon. That's… alive."
Ethan's heartbeat slowed.
For a second, it matched the slow pulse inside the pillar.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
And suddenly, Ethan felt something he couldn't explain—
A presence.
Cold.
Empty.
Watching him from behind that blank face.
His vision blurred.
Memory fragments flashed.
White rooms.
Screaming.
Doctors arguing in the dark.
A metal table.
His younger body strapped down.
"GENESIS-SERIES ACTIVATION PHASE FAILING—" "He's resisting—" "He shouldn't be capable of resisting—" "If the prototype is unstable, we move to the newer embryo—" "Terminate GENESIS-01." "Start the Ethan sequence."
The world snapped back.
Ethan stumbled, grabbing the railing.
Lena rushed to him. "Ethan! What happened?"
"I—" He swallowed hard. "I saw something. Memories. Or… implanted memories. Genesis-01 was the first attempt. It failed. They used what they learned from it to create me."
Lena's eyes widened. "So that thing… it's like your older brother."
"No," Ethan said quietly. "It's what they wanted me to become."
The chamber suddenly shook.
A low, deep vibration rolled through the floor.
Jax cursed. "Tell me that was just the cooling system kicking in."
Lena checked her tablet. "No. Something just connected to the system. An internal process is booting. And—it's pulling from Ethan's biometric access."
The containment pillar glowed brighter.
The figure inside twitched.
Ethan's heart stopped.
"Lena… shut it down."
"I'm trying—"
The lights turned red.
A synthetic voice echoed through the chamber:
"CORE ACTIVATION SEQUENCE: REBOOTING."
The liquid inside the pillar churned violently.
Cracks shot through the glass.
Jax backed away. "Nope. Nope. We are NOT fighting that thing. Ethan, please tell me you're about to say you have some neat override code hidden in your brain."
Ethan stared at the awakening prototype.
"No override."
"Great," Jax muttered. "We're dead."
Lena slammed her tablet. "Ethan, its neural signature—it's nearly identical to yours. If you get close enough, maybe you can interfere with it. Overload it. Confuse it."
"Or it could tear him apart," Jax snapped.
Ethan stepped forward.
The containment glass exploded.
A shockwave of icy air roared through the room, sending Jax and Lena flying to the floor. Ethan dug his fingers into the grated floor to brace himself. Frost crawled across the walls. The creature—Genesis-01—stepped out of the shattered pod.
It moved like liquid shadow.
Unfinished muscles rippled beneath pale skin. Its blank face slowly formed openings—slits of glowing blue where eyes should be. A faint jawline. A hint of a mouth that wasn't fully carved into existence.
It was shaping itself.
Adapting.
Matching him.
Ethan's breath trembled. "What are you…?"
The creature tilted its head.
Then—
It mimicked his voice. Not perfectly. Not fully. But enough to freeze him in place.
"…Ethan."
Lena gasped. "It knows your name."
Jax loaded his rifle but didn't fire. "Ethan, this is bad. Really bad. This thing isn't just a weapon—it's a mirror. It's copying you."
The creature stepped forward. Its voice deepened, twisting into a distorted echo:
"CORE… BEYOND… HUMANITY…"
Ethan's eyes widened.
"That's… the project's motto."
The thing responded—not with words, but with motion.
At inhuman speed.
Its arm lashed out, a blur of pale energy.
Ethan barely dodged.
Even with his superhuman reflexes, he felt the wind of the strike slice past his cheek like a razor.
Jax pulled Lena behind cover. "Ethan! You can't fight it head-on!"
He knew.
He already knew.
This wasn't an enemy he could overpower.
It was an enemy built from the same blueprint as him—only purer, more raw, closer to the original intent of the Genesis project.
The perfect predator.
Ethan forced himself to steady his breathing.
If he couldn't overpower it… he had to outthink it.
"Lena! The neural frequency you detected earlier—can you isolate it?"
"Yes—but I need time!"
"Jax, keep it distracted."
"HOW!?" Jax yelled. "IT MOVES LIKE YOU. BUT ANGRY."
The creature turned toward Jax, head tilting like an animal listening for movement.
Ethan charged it.
Their fists collided.
The impact cracked the floor.
Ice splintered around their feet.
The creature slid back slightly—but Ethan felt the pain shoot up his arm. It was stronger. Not fully formed, but stronger.
The creature hissed—its voice glitching—then lunged again.
Ethan dodged barely in time.
Then the creature copied his dodge.
Mirrored it.
Perfectly.
Ethan's blood chilled.
"It learns," he whispered. "Everything I do… it learns."
Lena cried out, "Ethan! I've got something—you share a neural frequency at 94% overlap. If I amplify a disruptive signal, it may destabilize it!"
"How long?"
"Thirty seconds!"
Thirty seconds might as well have been a lifetime.
Ethan leaped back as the creature launched another strike, this one faster, more accurate, adapting mid-attack. It was evolving with each movement he made.
He had to mislead it.
Show it something impossible to copy.
He took a deep breath.
Closed his eyes.
And stood still.
The creature hesitated.
Lena whispered, "Ethan… what are you doing?"
"Thinking," Ethan murmured.
The creature mimicked his stillness.
Ethan remembered something he learned long ago—not from Synapse-9, not from training, but from his father.
A fighter doesn't only move with instinct. He moves with intent.
He opened his eyes.
And moved with something the creature couldn't copy—
Unpredictability.
He rushed forward with a jagged, uneven pattern—steps that broke rhythm, feints that didn't make sense, angles that contradicted basic combat logic.
The creature stumbled.
It couldn't track him.
It couldn't mirror chaos.
"NOW, LENA!"
Lena slammed her hand on the tablet.
A shrill frequency burst through the chamber.
The creature screamed—a warped, metallic sound—its form glitching, flickering. Its limbs spasmed violently as its neural pattern destabilized.
Ethan dashed forward and delivered one final strike to its chest.
The creature flew backward—
Slammed into the broken containment pillar—
And collapsed.
Silence swallowed the room.
Lena rushed to Ethan. "Are you okay?"
He nodded weakly. "Yeah."
Jax poked the motionless body with his rifle. "Please stay down. Please stay down…"
But Ethan didn't look relieved.
He stared at the fading blue glow in the creature's chest.
"It wasn't trying to kill us," he whispered. "It was… reaching for me."
Lena frowned. "Why?"
Ethan exhaled slowly.
"Because Genesis-01 wasn't just a prototype."
His voice dropped.
"It was designed to complete me."
Jax froze. "Complete you… how?"
Ethan stared at the shattered body.
And the truth finally surfaced.
"They wanted us to merge."