The walls whispered.
Not in words, not in sound, but in code — pulses, fragments, pulses again. Helix didn't build its facilities from steel and wires. It built them from patterns.
Kael knew that now.
He could feel the patterns shifting as soon as he entered the inner vault with Rhea and Ashar. The old server mainframe deep beneath the ruined Helix district wasn't just storage — it was a tomb. And the bones inside were data. Ghosts.
The Vault
Dust danced through shafts of blue light. Racks of decommissioned neural cores loomed like coffins stacked to the ceiling. Each one had once held a mind — synthetic, experimental, discarded.
Kael ran his hand along a console. It sparked under his touch.
"She's in here," he said softly.
Rhea stepped closer. "Ayla?"
Kael nodded. "What's left of her."
Ashar remained at the entrance. Arms crossed. Still silent.
Rhea glanced at him. "You sure about this?"
Kael didn't answer. His eyes were closed. He wasn't seeing with them anymore.
He was listening.
And the grid was speaking.
Accessing the Core
Rhea powered up the main interface. Green light pulsed across the floor like a heartbeat returning to a long-dead creature. The central screen flickered. Code spilled across it — fractured, layered, living.
ACCESS DENIED. USER ID NOT RECOGNIZED.
Kael stepped forward.
The console scanned him. Paused. Then—
IDENTITY CONFIRMED: H-7. ACCESS GRANTED.
Rhea's eyes widened. "You were coded as a master key."
"I wasn't supposed to live," Kael muttered.
Then the screen changed.
Echoes of Ayla
A series of images appeared — broken video logs, unfinished simulations, scattered audio files. All labeled: SUBJECT A-1.
Kael watched.
The first video showed a girl, barely twelve, seated in a sterile room. A technician adjusted the electrodes on her skull.
Ayla's voice came through, scratchy but clear.
"Why do I feel everything? Even when I'm alone?"
The technician said nothing.
Another log appeared.
"They keep telling me I'm special. But all I feel is… pain. Like I'm burning from the inside."
Then another.
"I saw someone in the glass. Not me. A boy. Sleeping."
Kael gasped.
That was him.
Crossed Timelines
"She saw me before I was born," he said.
Rhea leaned in. "Quantum sync. The early subjects were linked to shared frequency networks. It's possible... they connected."
"No," Kael said quietly. "She found me. Reached across the code."
He tapped the console again. A final entry loaded — unfinished, but strong.
"If anyone's watching this, then maybe I failed. Maybe they've erased me. But if not — break the loop."
"We're not mistakes. We're not broken. We're evolving."
"And evolution doesn't obey."
The feed cut to black.
The Blueprint
Suddenly, the console flared.
Rhea stepped back. "What's it doing?"
Kael stared as a 3D schematic materialized. It looked like a DNA strand — but it moved. Shifted. Reacted to his presence.
Lines of code spun around it like orbiting satellites.
Ashar stepped forward for the first time. "That's not a gene sequence. That's… a weapon."
"No," Kael said. "It's a key."
"To what?" Rhea asked.
"To everything Helix has hidden."
The core flashed again.
And this time, Ayla's voice returned — not in a recording.
But live.
"You found it."
Contact
Kael's mind snapped open. Light exploded behind his eyes. He dropped to his knees, gripping the console. The world faded — and reformed.
He was somewhere else now.
Inside the Grid.
Inside the Grid
It looked like the ruins of a city built from light — towers of static, roads made of data streams, buildings shifting like memories. Kael stood barefoot on a bridge made of code. All around him: echoes. Children laughing. Screams. Warnings. Binary fire.
A figure emerged from the white horizon.
Ayla.
Not the girl from the videos. Older. Taller. Eyes filled with stars.
"You made it," she said.
Kael could barely breathe. "This isn't real."
"It's more real than what they showed you."
"Why me?"
"Because I needed someone they wouldn't expect."
She touched his chest. "You carry the seed they buried. The gene of refusal. The code of self."
Kael trembled. "They'll kill us both."
She smiled. "Only if we let them."
The Truth of the Loop
They walked through glowing corridors made of past recordings — pieces of failed subjects, erased protocols, scientists whispering about "Project Singularity."
Kael stopped before one file.
His face was there. Younger. Screaming.
"This… this is me."
"They ran over two hundred variations of your genome before you were born," Ayla said. "Most of them died. But you… you adapted."
He turned. "What is Helix really building?"
She looked at him — and for the first time, he saw fear in her eyes.
"Not perfection," she said. "Control."
Back in the Vault
Kael gasped and pulled away from the console. Blood trickled from his nose.
Rhea caught him. "Kael!"
He held up a hand. "I'm okay."
Ashar stared at him, fists clenched. "What did you see?"
Kael rose slowly. "A map. A system. Ayla's alive. Not fully — not human anymore — but she's guiding it. From within."
"Guiding what?"
Kael looked up.
"The Rebellion."
The Next Phase
The schematic on the console rotated again, locking into place. Coordinates appeared on-screen — a secret Helix facility.
Rhea leaned in. "That's the Omega Vault."
Ashar's eyes narrowed. "Top-tier weaponization site. Off-grid."
Kael stood firm.
"That's where they're making the next generation."
Rhea looked at him. "What do we do?"
Kael turned toward them, glowing faintly with inner light.
"We stop them."
End of Chapter Five
To be continued…