Three days.That's how long Kael wandered the ruins beneath Omega.
Three days without food, without sleep, without Rhea.
Without silence.
Because the voice inside him never stopped.
"We are awake now."
"We are not separate anymore."
"You should never have touched the key."
The Breach
Kael's skin had started to glow faintly under certain frequencies. A red shimmer — subtle, like veins pulsing beneath his flesh. But it wasn't his blood anymore.
It was data.
He stumbled through the jagged wreckage of collapsed corridors, the remains of Helix's failed sanctum groaning above him like a dying machine. Every step he took was shadowed by flashes in his mind — flickers of memories that weren't his.
A girl standing in a sea of black stars.
Children screaming inside test tubes.
A city burned from orbit.
He heard Rhea's voice in the distance sometimes — maybe real, maybe not.
But he hadn't found her.
Not yet.
And he was changing.
Inside.
Above Ground: The Hunt Begins
In a remote command bunker miles away, a group of Helix recon units watched satellite footage of the Vault's implosion. There was no visible escape. No heat signature.
Still, the Omega alarm had triggered a global flag:
ASSET BREACH: CODE RED – H7.
And something new beneath it.
UNCLASSIFIED ENTITY SIGNAL: V-0X.
Director Sera Rauth stared at the screen, emotionless. "It spoke," she said.
A technician glanced over. "Spoke, Director?"
"Through the asset. Through Kael."
She turned to her second-in-command.
"Kill the Uncoded. Burn Sector Omega. And bring me Kael's brain. I want to see what lives in it now."
The Uncoded: Divide and Deceive
Rhea was alive.
But she was bleeding out.
Trapped under debris and nearly unconscious, she whispered Kael's name, even as a hallucination — or something worse — whispered back to her in his voice.
"Help me…" he called, distant.
But it wasn't him.
She knew because he never used her full name.
"RHEA VOSS," the voice hissed.
Then laughter.
When Ava found her three hours later, Rhea was weak, paranoid, and holding a plasma blade to her own throat.
"They got inside him," she said.
"Who?"
"Kael."
"No," Ava said. "Kael died with the Vault."
Rhea stared at her.
"No," she whispered. "Kael lived. But he's not alone anymore."
Kael's Awakening
When Kael reached the surface, it was night.
But the stars weren't right.
They moved.
Lines of light sketched geometries in the sky he didn't understand — constellations blinking in binary. The air tasted like static.
He looked at his hand.
And saw hers.
Not Rhea's. Vespera's.
His reflection in the pool of water nearby blinked out of sync with him. When he raised his right hand, it raised its left. When he looked down, it smiled.
"We're becoming one."
He fell to his knees, shaking.
"I'm still me," he muttered.
But even his voice didn't sound quite right anymore.
Captured
Helix caught him two hours later.
Not with a drone strike. Not with a bullet.
With a whisper.
An encoded signal played at 18Hz — a subsonic frequency keyed to his genetic memory.
It triggered a shutdown command in his nervous system.
He dropped mid-stride, like a puppet with its strings severed.
When he woke, he was inside a cell made of light.
Interrogation
The cell was cold, infinite, and alive.
Floating screens surrounded him, flashing moments from his past — his first memory, his first escape, the moment Rhea kissed his forehead after a failed mission.
Then… Vespera's face.
Over. And over.
"Where is she?" came Sera Rauth's voice.
Kael gritted his teeth. "Gone."
Sera's voice didn't change. "We know that's a lie. We've seen the overlays in your neural scans. She's sharing your body now."
"I'm not her."
"Not yet."
Kael closed his eyes.
He heard Vespera's voice again.
"You're just skin now, Kael. You'll peel eventually."
Twist: The Infiltration Protocol
Unknown to Helix, Kael wasn't their prisoner.
He was their Trojan horse.
Because while they interrogated his body…
Vespera was crawling through their systems.
One by one, power grids across the facility failed.
The AI assistant began speaking backwards.
CCTV feeds showed empty hallways even when people walked through them.
And worse?
Kael's vitals didn't decline. They improved.
Vespera wasn't infecting him.
She was rebuilding him — rewriting his genome like a software update.
Inside her brother's shell.
And when she was ready…
She blinked through him.
Kael's Mind Fractures
Inside his own head, Kael was falling.
He stood in a simulation of the Vault, on fire, while copies of himself hung from the ceiling, twitching like marionettes.
Vespera stood in the flames.
"You're still fighting me," she said.
"You're not real."
"I'm more real than you ever were."
He dropped to his knees, grabbing his skull.
"Why me?" he whispered. "Why now?"
"Because you were supposed to die in your pod," she said calmly.
"But you dreamed. And dreams are viruses in a clean system."
She knelt beside him.
"I didn't come to destroy you, Kael."
He looked up, shaking.
"I came to finish you."
Meanwhile: The Uncoded Strike
Ava and the surviving Uncoded breached the outer Helix facility.
Armed with scavenged Helix weapons and rage, they launched an attack meant to be suicide.
But inside the building — everything was dark.
Too quiet.
They found corridors filled with blood. Doors open. No bodies.
And the final command screen showed a single word:
"WELCOME BACK, VESPERA."
Ava turned to Rhea.
"She's already here."
Final Scene: The Mirror Breaks
Kael stood in front of a mirror in his cell.
The surface flickered. His reflection didn't match.
It wore Vespera's smile.
"You can't hold me forever," Kael said.
"No," she whispered.
"But the longer I'm in you, the more you wonder who you ever were."
The reflection shattered.
Kael blinked.
And the guards outside his cell were already dead.
End of Chapter Eight
To be continued...