She ran.
Her bare foot hit a rock. Pain shot up her leg. She stumbled and caught herself. Kept running.
The forest floor was brutal. Stones, roots, thorns, every step was agony but she couldn't stop.
Explosions echoed through the trees. Distant thunder, then sharp cracks of gunfire that made her flinch every time.
Her breathing was ragged. Harsh and too loud. She tried to quiet it but her lungs demanded air.
The forest smelled like earth and rot and something sweet she couldn't identify. Unfamiliar and alien.
Don't run into anyone. Please.
She knew what she looked like. Torn clothes hanging off her body in strips, covered in dried black residue from the transformation. The stench, god, the stench coming off her skin like chemicals and decay.
Anyone who saw her would know immediately she wasn't a warrior.
What are those psychopaths thinking? They saw what happened. Five fighters dead. Bodies in pieces. They don't know how but they know I did it.
She dodged left around a massive tree trunk. Jumped over a root system that jutted from the ground like gnarled fingers.
Her bare foot came down on something sharp. She bit back a scream and tasted blood where she'd bitten her tongue.
Kept running.
They'll figure it out. Maybe not the nano threads exactly but they'll know there were traps. They'll enter the forest carefully. Test everything. And when they don't trigger more, they'll hunt me properly.
Distance, she needed distance. Had to put as much forest between her and that treeline as possible.
But she also needed to stop, to think, to understand what that message meant.
Evolution available.
Her lungs burned and her legs were shaking. The adrenaline that had carried her this far was starting to fade.
Four meters ahead, through a gap in the trees, she saw something.
A structure.
She slowed and approached carefully.
Old stone covered in glowing blue lines that pulsed like veins carrying light instead of blood. The lines ran across the visible surface in intricate patterns, active, powered by something.
But the structure was buried. Most of it underground, maybe ninety percent, with just the top portion visible above the earth. Moss covered everything, vines had grown over it, and trees had grown around it.
This thing had been here for centuries. Maybe longer.
She circled it slowly, looking for a way inside.
The structure was maybe fifteen feet across at the top. Circular. The stone was old but intact with no cracks or damage despite being buried.
There, on the far side.
A window. The glass was completely gone, shattered long ago. The opening was small, maybe two feet wide, three feet tall.
She crouched at the window edge and looked down.
The interior was dark but she could see sand covering the floor. The drop was maybe eight feet.
She looked around the forest floor. Debris everywhere, broken stone, fallen branches, thick moss.
She gathered what she needed and moved quietly, listening for pursuit.
Nothing yet, just distant explosions and gunfire moving away.
She set the branches next to the opening. Within reach.
Then she positioned herself at the window edge, turned around, lowered her legs through the opening and grabbed the stone frame with both hands.
The stone held. Solid.
She hung there with arms extended, body inside the structure now.
She shifted her weight to her left hand and reached back with her right. Grabbed one of the branches, pulled it across the opening, and let it rest on the frame.
She reached for another and added it, then grabbed moss and stuffed it between the branches.
Her left hand was cramping, fingers going numb.
Good enough.
She let go.
Dropped.
Hit the sand hard. Her legs buckled and she caught herself with her hands. Pain shot through her wrists but she'd landed.
She stood and looked up.
The branches covered most of the opening. Not perfect but enough. The light coming through was dim and filtered.
She reached up and adjusted the branches from below, making sure they looked natural from inside too and blocked as much light as possible.
Darkness settled over her with just faint blue glow from the lines on the walls.
The space was small, maybe ten feet in diameter and circular. The walls were smooth stone covered in those pulsing veins of light.
Sand covered the floor completely. Deep and soft, her feet sank into it when she moved.
She could see better now as her eyes adjusted. The blue lines provided just enough illumination.
This place was old, but the technology powering it was still active, still working after who knows how many years.
Exhaustion pulled at her. Not complete yet, not the total crash, but she could feel it waiting and building like pressure behind a dam.
She moved to the wall and leaned against it, cold stone against her back.
She slid down and sat.
Her chest heaved as she breathed hard. Her throat was raw and her bare foot throbbed.
Okay. Time to think. Time to organize everything that's happened.
The forest was enormous. She'd seen that from her position at the treeline, miles in every direction. And she'd run in different directions, changed course multiple times, and doubled back.
They wouldn't find her soon.
Probably.
But she needed advantages and tools. Whatever this evolution thing was, she had to use it.
She activated her HUD with a thought.
The message was still there. Pulsing.
[EVOLUTION TO LEVEL 1 AVAILABLE]
[ACTIVATE: YES / NO]
She didn't hesitate and selected YES.
Something happened immediately.
Deep in her mind, fundamental.
Like she'd been living her entire life in a small dark closet. And now someone opened a door and showed her there was a whole house with rooms she'd never seen and spaces she could explore.
Her brain was changing.
Then pain hit.
Massive pressure building inside her skull. Something expanding against bone that couldn't expand with it.
Her eyes rolled back in her head and went pure white, no iris visible, no pupil, just white.
Oh god. What's happening.
The pressure increased and built. She couldn't control it or stop it.
Her body seized with every muscle locked rigid.
Her brain was restructuring.
At the cellular level, at the neural level, fundamental changes.
Neurons that had died were regenerating. Regrowing with years of natural cell death reversing in seconds. And new neurons forming, billions of them creating connections that had never existed.
Her glial cells multiplied. The support structure for her neurons expanding and strengthening.
Dormant regions of her brain activated. Parts that evolution had left behind when humanity stopped needing them were waking up and finding new purpose in this alien world.
Her cerebral cortex density increased. More gray matter packed into the same physical space with more processing power.
Her hippocampus reinforced itself. The memory center expanding with pathways widening, capable of storing more, processing faster, and making connections her old brain never could.
Her prefrontal cortex reorganized completely. Logic centers enhanced, abstract reasoning capability multiplied, and problem-solving pathways restructured to handle complexity she couldn't have imagined before.
The pain was unbearable.
She fell sideways and hit the sand, her muscles still locked and rigid.
Blood poured from her nose. Thick and dark, so much blood. It ran over her lips and down her chin, pooling in the sand beneath her face.
Her ears bled too. She felt the warmth running down her neck and soaking into what was left of her shirt.
She wanted to scream, needed to scream. The pain demanded release and sound.
But she couldn't risk it or let anyone above hear.
She bit down on her hand instead. Hard. She felt her teeth break through skin and tasted more blood, her own blood mixing with the blood from her nose.
Tears streamed from her white eyes. Not from emotion but just from pain, pure animal response to trauma.
Not made for this place. Wrong atmosphere. Wrong gravity. Wrong everything.
So it's changing me.
Time distorted. Stretched and compressed. She couldn't tell if seconds were passing or minutes or hours. The pain was everything.
Then it stopped.
Just... ended. Like someone flipped a switch.
She lay there in the sand. Face down, breathing, tasting blood and sand, feeling blood dry on her skin.
Slowly, carefully, she pushed herself up and sat.
And everything was different.
What... what is all this.
She looked at the walls and the space around her.
Numbers appeared in her vision. Not on a screen or projected, just there in her understanding, automatic.
The wall was 2.3 meters high. She knew that without measuring. The ceiling curved at exactly 47.2 degrees and the blue lines were spaced 8.7 centimeters apart, perfect mathematical precision.
She understood the structure now. How it was built, stone blocks weighing approximately 340 kilograms each.
The architecture made sense to her now. Load-bearing points, stress distributions, why it had survived burial when other structures hadn't.
A new way of perceiving the world, a new understanding overlaid on top of normal vision.
She tried to push further and understand more, figure out how the blue lines worked, what powered them, what they connected to.
Hit a wall.
Hard, like slamming face-first into invisible glass.
Something blocked her and prevented her from going deeper or understanding the systems at work.
Her level, the system was capping her and limiting how far her enhanced perception could reach.
Frustration burned in her chest.
So much more. I can see so much more. But there's a wall. Something blocking me.
She took a breath and forced herself calm.
The euphoria of evolution was fading with reality settling back in.
Blood in her mouth. Thick and metallic. She could taste it and feel it dried and cracking on her face, in her hair, down her neck.
She looked down at herself.
If anyone saw me now they'd think I was dead. Or dying.
Clothes torn to rags. Barely covering her with the black residue from her transformation still coating her skin in patches. The smell coming off her was rot, chemicals, and something acrid she couldn't name.
And now blood everywhere, dried blood on her face, in her hair, on her hands and arms.
I look like something that crawled out of a grave.
Pain stabbed through her head.
Different from the evolution, sharp.
A memory, distant and fragmentary.
A voice, her voice.
"Tera. What's the probability we survive this?"
Another voice. Female. Robotic. Calm despite what must have been chaos.
"Three percent."
The memory dissolved before she could hold it.
She sat there, stunned, heart pounding.
That was me. I was asking about survival.
And Tera answered. Which means...
Tera was with me. We traveled together.
She activated her HUD with a thought and looked at her status display.
[ROLE: ENGINEER]
[LEVEL: 1]
Her hands were shaking. She spoke out loud, quiet, barely above a whisper.
"Tera. Who are you?"
Text appeared on her HUD. Slow, like it was being typed letter by letter.
[MEMORY CORRUPTION: SEVERE DAMAGE DETECTED]
[AI PERSONALITY MATRIX: COMPROMISED]
[RECOVERY PROBABILITY: 0%]
[CURRENT FUNCTIONAL CAPACITY: 10%]
[PRIMARY DIRECTIVE STATUS: ACTIVE AND OPERATIONAL]
[PROTECT DESIGNATED USER: OPERATOR]
[SHARED TRANSIT THROUGH INTERSTELLAR PORTAL: CONFIRMED]
She stared at the text. All caps and brackets.
Like reading a system diagnostic instead of talking to someone.
"Okay, stop. Just... can you write more like a person? I don't have the energy to read computer diagnostics right now."
The text reformatted. Changed.
We traveled together. Through an interstellar portal. That's confirmed. Everything else is damaged or gone.
Better, still artificial but readable, almost conversational.
Understanding hit her.
She wasn't alone.
Something had come with her. Someone, even if that someone was an AI, even if that someone was damaged and broken.
She'd thought she was completely alone in this nightmare. Stranded on an alien world with no memory, no identity, no past.
But Tera was here and had been here the whole time, protecting her.
Relief flooded through her. Overwhelming, her chest got tight and her throat closed.
And grief came with it. Just as strong.
Because neither of them could remember. Tera's personality was gone and her memories destroyed. Whatever they'd been to each other before was erased.
They were strangers who'd shared a journey neither could recall.
Tears came. She couldn't stop them and didn't try.
They ran down her face, cut tracks through the dried blood, and dripped onto her torn clothes.
She pressed her hands to her face and felt the tears, the blood, the grit of sand and dirt.
We were together. We survived something together. And now we can't even remember it.
She cried for maybe a minute. Maybe longer. She let it out and let the grief and relief mix together and pour out of her.
Then she wiped her face with the back of her hand and smeared blood and tears together across her cheeks.
Took a shaky breath.
"Okay. What happened? Just... tell me what you know."
Our vessel exited the portal with low energy. My memory corrupted during transit. Whatever happened inside the portal destroyed my personality matrix and most of my data storage.
A pause. Text cursor blinking.
I have no memories from before the portal. My existence starts when we exited. When I detected the crash was imminent.
She doesn't remember either. We're both blank.
Original mission parameters are partially intact. We were supposed to reach a specific dimension. A specific planet with specific coordinates. We failed. Arrived here instead.
We were going somewhere else. This was an accident. A failure.
After we crashed, I had minimal power reserves left. Enough for one action. I used it to defend you against the men with white armor. That was me. My final defensive protocol.
"You saved me."
Yes.
More text appeared.
But I couldn't do more. The energy was gone. You would have died from your injuries except the native system intervened.
This world has an evolutionary protocol. Managed by something called The Registrar. A spider unit introduced millions of nanobots into your body during reconstruction. The nanobots are what enable evolution.
She waited and let Tera continue at her own pace.
This zone was designed as proving grounds. For warriors. Soldiers. Nobles. Combat specialists only. The Registrar's programming doesn't allow non-combat participants.
Understanding clicked into place.
"It didn't know I was an engineer when it saved me."
Correct. If it had identified your role immediately, termination would have been automatic. One hundred percent certainty.
Level zero wasn't just a starting point. It was punishment.
"It gave me level zero to trap me. Stop me from evolving. Make sure I couldn't get stronger."
Yes. Non-combat roles are forbidden from advancement in this system. You were meant to stagnate. To fail. To die.
"But I'm level one now. How?"
The text changed slightly. The tone different. Almost proud.
I used the last energy from our vessel. Accessed the Registrar's core systems while it was distracted by other events. Found vulnerabilities in the security protocols. Bypassed them. Acquired administrator-level access.
I control your evolutionary system now. The nanobots in your body answer to my commands, not the Registrar's.
She stared at the words. Processing.
"You hacked it. You hacked the entire system."
Yes, but is limited to your evolution only, nothing more.
A thought occurred, obvious and tempting.
"Can you just activate evolution over and over? Make me level up as fast as possible?"
No. The nanobots have their own operational directives that I can't override. They respond to achievement. To accomplishment. You must do things. Complete objectives. They evaluate the significance and determine progress percentage.
"Can you lie to them? Tell them I accomplished more than I did?"
No. The nanobots are integrated into your cellular structure now. Into your bloodstream. Your nervous system. They're part of you. They know what you do. What you accomplish. Deception isn't possible.
My function is different. I keep them disconnected from the Registrar. The Registrar can't see them anymore. Can't know you're evolving. And I report your achievements to the nanobots for their evaluation.
She processed that. Understood the limitations.
Tera couldn't cheat the system. But Tera kept her hidden from it. Kept the Registrar blind to her progress.
"Repairing the spider. That counted?"
Yes. Sixty percent progress toward level one.
"And killing the five fighters?"
Forty percent. Total one hundred percent. Evolution to level one was unlocked.
She leaned back against the wall and let it all sink in.
Tera had saved her. Multiple times and was still saving her, giving her the tools to survive in a system designed to kill her.
"Thank you."
The words felt inadequate and couldn't possibly express what she felt, but she meant them with everything she had.
"Thank you for protecting me. For hacking the system. For giving me a chance. For being here. For... just thank you."
Warning.
The text appeared suddenly with different formatting, urgent.
Your physical status is critical. Body stress levels are dangerous. The modifications from evolution require time to integrate properly. Your neural pathways need to stabilize. Your enhanced brain structure needs to finish connecting.
You need to sleep. Immediately. If you don't rest now, you'll collapse. Possibly permanently.
As if her body had been waiting for permission, exhaustion hit.
Not gradually or slowly.
All at once. Like someone cut every string holding her up.
Her muscles went weak, her arms felt like dead weight, and her legs stopped responding to commands.
The adrenaline that had kept her moving, kept her functional through everything, was gone. Completely burned through. Nothing left.
Her eyelids got heavy. So heavy, like weights pulling them down.
She tried to fight it and stay alert, stay aware.
Can't sleep. Not safe. They're still out there. Still hunting.
But her body didn't care. Her body was done.
She slid sideways and couldn't stop it or hold herself up.
Hit the sand. Soft and cool, it gave beneath her weight and cradled her.
Just for a minute. Rest for just a minute.
Her eyes closed. She forced them open.
Closed again.
She stopped fighting.
The sand felt safe, the darkness felt safe, and the buried ruin hidden from the world above felt safe.
For now. For this moment.
That was enough.
Her breathing slowed and deepened as the rhythm of sleep took over.
Her last conscious thought was of Tera, still there, still watching, still protecting.
Not alone.
Then nothing.
Sleep took her completely.
In the dark, in the sand, in the ancient structure buried beneath the forest floor.
The Operator rested.