Rows of D-Class personnel lined the far side of the lab, each strapped down, prepped, and hooked into vital-monitoring rigs. Above every bed, holographic screens hummed and flickered—live displays showing their genetic codes shifting, warping, rewriting themselves as the viral X-Gene injections infiltrated their cells. The whole room pulsed with a quiet mechanical heartbeat, the soft beeping of machines tracking dozens of unstable transformations at once.
I walked past one such screen.
SUBJECT D-5412Mutation: UnknownX-Gene Activation: 27%Predicted Phenotype: Volatile
Another step.
SUBJECT D-8751Mutation: DegenerativeX-Gene Activation: 62%Predicted Phenotype: Non-Viable
A third.
SUBJECT D-1134Mutation: StableX-Gene Activation: 94%Predicted Phenotype: Spatial Distortion (Low-Level)
Useful. That one might live long enough for testing.
I exhaled slowly, running a hand through my hair as I moved deeper through the genetic wing. The past few hours had been peaceful—well, as peaceful as anything ever gets inside Site-999. Spending time with my daughter always reset my mind, even if her existence demanded a level of paranoia that made the other O5s grind their teeth.
Twelve years old now… hard to believe. She looked so small sitting on my shoulders earlier today, giggling as she tried—and failed—to bend the shape of a nearby soda can with her restricted powers. The bracelet around her wrist glittered in the light: cute, pink, harmless-looking, yet layered with more technological sophistication than most reality-anchors.
A level 4 reality bender without suppressors would have every single Overseer screaming to put her into a permanent induced coma. They tried too. I still remember the meeting. But with Rick Prime's brain fused with mine—and all the terrifying innovation that came with it—I built something better. A limiter. A cage she could wear without suffering. A set of invisible walls between her and the universe.
She got freedom.The other Overseers got safety.A compromise.
And I… I got to keep my daughter awake, alive, and smiling.
But the moment our hangout ended, the moment I kissed her forehead and sent her off with a trusted escort, I had to go right back to work.
The X-Gene Project waited for no one.
I stepped into the central genetics chamber, its circular floor surrounded by tanks of mutagenic solution, vivariums filled with biological samples, and sterile pods containing rejected genetic sequences. At the far end stood the man I placed in charge—the one person in the Foundation who could take this project further than I ever could.
Orochimaru.
He looked up, his amusement obvious even behind the clinical mask.
"Ah… you've returned," he said, voice smooth as venom. "Your D-Class harvesting team has been efficient today. Thirty-two new candidates, nine early awakenings, three spontaneous combustions. A productive morning."
"Three?" I asked, arching an eyebrow. "That's lower than usual."
"Yes," he replied, eyes gleaming. "I've begun stabilizing the injection medium. They still die, of course, but they die beautifully."
I resisted the urge to sigh. Orochimaru's definition of beautiful and mine were not remotely aligned—but his results were unmatched.
He gestured toward a set of holo-panels.
"These," he said, "are the mutations that survived preliminary analysis."
One screen showed a D-Class with rapidly thickening bone density—an early-stage low-tier Colossus-like mutation. Useless for offense but potentially useful for shock troops.
Another displayed a subject developing electro-neuronal discharge abilities—weak, unstable, but potentially developable into a low-level EMP generation gene.
A third shimmered with something far more promising: an early manifestation of biochemical detection, essentially a biological lie detector with short-range extrasensory perception.
"Perfect," I murmured. "Exactly the sort of thing the others will accept."
Orochimaru smirked. "Low-tier, controllable, not threatening to your paranoid council of demigods."
"We're not paranoid," I answered automatically.
He just stared at me.
"…Okay. Maybe a little."
I walked along the central railing, watching as robotic arms inserted the next round of X-Gene viral doses into D-Class veins. Some screamed. Some prayed. Some accepted their fate with hollow eyes.
It didn't matter.
We needed powers.We needed options.And we needed to make damn sure none of those powers ever threatened us.
With the minds I'd absorbed, with Rick Prime's genius permanently woven into my neural architecture, I could do so much more than manage grunt-level genetic roulette. I had bigger tasks ahead—dimensional research, temporal stability, antimemetic counter-development…
This project was too routine for me now.
Orochimaru, though?He thrived in this environment.He loved it.
And, more importantly, he was the best geneticist across countless universes.
Leaving the project in his hands was the right call.
He turned back to me."You're leaving then?"
"Yeah," I replied. "No point in me hovering. You know the rules—no Omega-level mutations, no uncontainable abilities, no mental invasion powers, nothing that could challenge an O5. We keep our subordinates strong enough to be useful, never strong enough to betray us."
Orochimaru chuckled softly."Oh, trust me. I wouldn't dream of giving anyone a power that could threaten you. That would be… inconvenient. For both of us."
I nodded. "Good. Keep logging everything. Anything promising gets catalogued and sent for replication. Anything useless—"
"Incinerated," he finished. "As always."
I took one last glance at the rows of writhing, mutating D-Class. The screams, the convulsions, the flashes of new abilities sparking uncontrollably across their skin.
The Foundation didn't run on paperwork and ideology.
It ran on secrets.On power.On experimentation that no other organization on Earth—or any universe—would dare attempt.
And I was one of the minds shaping it all.
I tapped the holo-panel to log my departure.
"Send me updates every three hours," I told him.
"Of course," Orochimaru purred. "Try not to overwork that magnificent brain of yours."
I smirked."Too late."
I turned and walked out of the genetics chamber, leaving Orochimaru to his playground of mutations and screaming subjects, already shifting my focus toward the next grand project awaiting my attention.
Because in the Foundation—especially under our rule—there was always another layer of power to unlock.