The bunker's emergency lights hummed to life with a hydraulic groan, bathing Kaito's raised hands in pulsating red. His veins pulsed like live wiring, tracing spiky silhouettes on rusty metal walls. All of the nerve endings in his skin shocked simultaneously - a living alarm system screaming *danger-move-fight* in raw bursts of electrochemical panic.
Lena's combat boots squealed on grated decking as she hurled herself at security monitors. "Kael didn't come alone," she panted, fingers jabbing at flickering screens. Six armored figures rappelled down the access shaft in perfect synchrony, their matte-black carapaces absorbing the stingy light. "Since when does Celestia have spec-ops?"
Seraphina's plasma pistol skidded across the console into Kaito's waiting hand. The weapon's biometric grip warmed to his hand instantly, its HUD casting ammunition levels directly onto his retina. "Phase-13 prototypes," she explained, her voice drained of all emotion. "They'll share your adaptive capacity but none of your. neurological resilience." Her violet eyes monitored the tremors in Kaito's hand detachedly. "You prepared for direct confrontation?"
The question prompted another cascade of memories:
—cold metal cuffs locked onto small wrists—
Kael's syringe glinting under operating room lights
a scream shattered glass beakers as mnemonics coursed through tiny veins—
Kaito surfaced with a gasp, the gun's handle molded to his crushing grip. "We have to go," he gritted, the taste of copper in his mouth. "They're driving us towards the east tunnel."
Lena braced herself in the door, photon gauntlets whining to active mode in a harmony whine. "Hold the fuck up." Gold energy rippled across her indignant face. "Why do those move like Kaito? Why do they have his goddamn face?"
The primary view gave back a close-up thermal image—the point prototype helmet visor cracked open to display recognizable sharp cheekbones, the same distinctive scar through the left eyebrow.
Seraphina's boot kicked the console in a burst of sparks. "Discarded epithelial cells. Aegis medbay blood samples. Even your damn haircuts." Her voice broke on the last syllable. "Kael's been collecting your bio waste for eight years."
The vault door groaned under a concentrated plasma blast, the strengthened alloys glowing orange at the edges.
The prototypes advanced in a kill-box formation, their motions replicating the same hunter-killer efficiency Kaito had experienced in jungle sims. Plasma rounds vaporized their improvised cover into molten slag before Lena's photon barrage knocked the advance team off their feet.
Observe. Adapt. Overcome.
Kaito's enhanced senses caught the nanosecond delay between the prototypes' neural commands and physical responses—a defect Kael had omitted from his cloned duplicates. The bounce of the tactical light off a prototype visor revealed the quantum entanglement streams connecting their armor to
There. The neural nexus point.
"Lena! Triple burst at mark seven!" he barked, firing coordinates through his synapses like cannon fire.
To her credit, she didn't blink. Golden photons pierced out in precise vectors, their wavelengths changing as they cut through Kaito's newly established energy shield. His extended hand seared violet-white plasma, not merely duplicating Lena's gift but amplifying it—extracting a harmonic resonance that made the prototypes' armor shriek in agony like sentient entities.
Seraphina's kinetic shield burst forth as she gazed at the transaction. "You're not altering anymore." Her voice barely broke the din. "You're creating new quantum states."
The other prototypes began Protocol Sigma—their chest plates bursting outward in a rain of monomolecular shrapnel.
Kaito's body reacted too late.
A piece of tungsten-carbide ripped through his thigh before mnemonics could activate appropriate shielding. He crashed against the server array, silver-speckled blood spurting in fractal bursts over exposed circuitry.
"Clear out!" Seraphina yanked him up, her kinetic shield deflecting the second barrage with electrifying power. Lena dragged them both toward the maintenance hatch, her photon gauntlets sparking as Kaito's destabilizing physiology disrupted their energy matrix.
Healing hurt more than the wound. Kaito's femur knitted under torn muscle with cracking sounds, the mnemonics rebuilding bone matrix in waves one could feel under his skin. But something was basically wrong—where his blood pooled, the steel grating dissolved into geometric patterns, atoms reforming on the quantum level.
Lena recoiled from the spreading reaction. "Jesus Christ, your blood's gnawing away at the fucking floor!"
"Assimilation cascade," Seraphina confirmed gritting her teeth. She ripped her sleeve to employ as a tourniquet, the fabric staining as it came into contact with Kaito's skin. "His cells are trying to assimilate the surroundings now. We have to—"
Kaito's head snapped up. Another signal ran through his augmented senses—a thumping thump-thump vibration resonating along the subframe of the bunker.
Phase-shifter. But different.
"East tunnel," he gasped. "The one Kael sent was altered."
Lena's gauntlets flashed irregularly. "How the hell can you—"
"I can hear its quantum signature."
The supported wall collapsed inward.
The resulting creature had no similar Phase-shifter profile on file.
Its metal hide rippled with half-formed faces—dozens of them, their mouths stretched into silent screams. Abortive experiments. Rejected attempts by Kael. Their agony was seared into the thing's atomic core.
Kaito's body acted on its own. His injured hand wrapped around Seraphina's wrist while the other wrapped around Lena's photon gauntlet.
Share the pattern.
The energy release that ensued would shortly be recorded by seismographs three districts distant. Raw adaptive energy in purple tentacles cored the photon matrix of Lena, compressing her wavelengths into coherent gamma-knife beams. The kinetic field blasted outward from Seraphina in a spherical wave of thunderous energy, her hair standing on end as the energy engaged with Kaito's mnemonics.
And Kaito himself was the bridge—a quantum bridge, a living one, between their abilities.
The phase-shifter's death scream killed all the monitors. When the dust had settled, there was nothing but a perfect sphere of silver where the creature had stood, its surface oscillating at a frequency that irritated their dental fillings.
Kael's laughter over the broken comm system: "Brilliant! Spontaneous quantum locking! With this info, we can finally—"
Lena's photon beam vaporized the console in a shower of sparks.
Silence fell like a guillotine.
Blood dripped from Kaito's nose in slow, silver-speckled drops. Seraphina extended her hand to him in a kind of wonder, her fingers lingering over his now-transparent skin. "The mnemonics are being integrated into your neural infrastructure," she whispered. "Before long, there will be no real distinction between you and them."
Lena kicked the humming silver ball. It didn't budge—not a single mark did her boot make on its flawless surface. "So what? He's turning into some kind of fucking demigod?" "No." Kaito's fingers curled up, light bending through his increasingly crystalline layers of skin. "I'm becoming exactly what they designed me to be." His voice acquired strange harmonics, as if many different voices spoke from his vocal cords. "The perfect weapon has no humanity to interfere with its intent." Up above, the Celestia Academy defense sirens began their wailing howl.