The air was too quiet.
Kael awoke not in pain, but in silence. The kind that didn't feel empty — it felt programmed.
The walls around him pulsed white. Organic. Breathing. The scent of sterile earth and synthetic moss filled his nostrils.
He tried to move.
He couldn't.
Metal bindings looped his wrists, ankles, and forehead to a tilted glass slab — suspended vertically. Not chains.
Vines.
But not natural. Biosteel — coded to pulse with his heartbeat.
And across the chamber, she waited.
A girl in white.
Barefoot.
Eyes silver, with a slow orbiting glow.
Not Vespera. Not Rhea.
Someone worse.
"Hello, Kael."
She spoke gently. Her voice, soft like wind over the ocean, had weight. It settled into his bones like memory.
He tried to speak, but his throat only made static.
"You've been corrupted," she said, as if reading a weather report. "But not beyond correction."
Kael's vision swam. "Who…?"
She stepped forward.
"I'm Eden."
"And I'm here to end everything."
The Eden Protocol
Rhea stood over Kael's body three hours earlier, surrounded by what was left of the Uncoded resistance.
The facility shook above them.
"You activated what?" she asked Ashar, who had miraculously survived the Echo explosion, his right eye sparking with blue flame.
He said nothing. Just handed her a hard drive.
The words burned across the screen:
EDEN PROTOCOL: THE FINAL SEQUENCESTATUS: AWAKENEDOBJECTIVE: DESTRUCTIVE SANCTIFICATION
It wasn't a failsafe.
It was a reset button.
Rhea looked up.
"Where is she now?"
Ashar's face was grave. "She's gone to find the virus."
"Vespera?"
Ashar shook his head.
"No."
He looked toward the dark horizon.
"She's gone to find Kael."
Between Two Fires
Kael coughed as Eden touched his chest — a gentle press of her palm, but the reaction was violent.
White static spread from her fingers, crawling across his ribcage. His skin boiled.
"There's too much of her in you," Eden said, almost apologetically. "And to purge her... I'll need to burn you."
Kael gritted his teeth. "Do it."
She paused.
Surprised.
"You're not resisting?"
"Why bother?" he said bitterly. "Vespera's already rewriting me."
"No," Eden said. "She's abandoned you. She's moved into the grid entirely now. You're just... a severed limb."
Kael looked up, pain in his eyes. "Then why keep me alive?"
Her answer chilled him.
"Because you're the seed."
Rhea's Reckoning
Meanwhile, Rhea broke into Helix's central biocrypt lab with Ava and the remaining Uncoded soldiers.
The atmosphere was thick — corrupted data swam in the air like spores. Every screen showed fragments of Kael's brain activity.
Not just his.
Echo's too.
They were merging.
Ava pointed at the monitor. "If Eden finds them mid-convergence, she won't separate them. She'll wipe both."
"Not if I get there first," Rhea said, grabbing a pulse gun and a neural anchor from the tech rack.
"She'll kill you."
Rhea strapped the gear on.
"Not before I kill her."
Eden's Truth
In the sterile chamber, Kael began to see flashes — Eden's memories leaking into him.
He saw children grown in soil.
Embryos fed code through roots.
An entire experiment designed before Helix.
Eden was no defense mechanism.
She was the original signal.
"Vespera was the corruption," Eden said. "I was the counter-code. The ark. The first clean line of genetic scripture."
Kael gasped. "Then why are you trying to kill me?"
Eden stepped back, her face unreadable.
"Because every system must be purged before rebirth."
"And you, Kael, are not the first seed to rot."
Rhea vs. Eden
The wall to the sanctum burst inward.
Rhea rolled through the breach, eyes locked on Eden.
Eden didn't flinch.
"You shouldn't be here," she said.
"I'm always where Kael is," Rhea snapped. "And I'm not letting you touch him again."
Rhea raised the pulse gun.
Eden raised her hand.
Time froze for a fraction of a second.
Then the lights exploded.
The Fight for the Seed
Eden moved like light, every motion fluid, unnatural.
But Rhea was faster than expected — enhanced with fragments of Helix tech stolen years ago. She ducked under a wave of kinetic energy, spun, and fired the disruptor at Kael's bindings.
The vines shattered.
Kael collapsed.
Eden screamed — not in pain, but in data distortion. Her voice bent the air.
"You interrupted the protocol!"
Kael staggered to his feet. "You're not here to save the world. You're here to erase it."
"Better to erase the sickness than let it spread," Eden hissed.
"And what about the cure?" Rhea yelled.
Eden's expression darkened.
"There is no cure."
Echo Returns
Suddenly, the chamber shuddered.
A new figure emerged through the smoke of the blast.
It was Echo.
Burned. Scarred. But alive.
No longer silent.
"You activated Eden," he said coldly, his voice more human than before.
Kael stared. "You should be dead."
"I was. Until she reactivated the sequence."
He pointed to Eden.
"She didn't wake alone. She woke me too."
Eden's eyes widened. "You're not part of this."
"No," Echo said. "But I know what I am now."
He looked at Kael.
"I'm what's left when you fail."
Then at Eden.
"And I'm what kills you when you overreach."
The Triangle Breaks
The chamber became a warzone.
Kael and Echo fought side by side — mirror images, swinging like dancers of death, their blows in perfect counter to Eden's pure energy strikes.
Rhea stabilized the outer barrier, redirecting Eden's corruptive field outward — giving Kael moments to breathe.
But Eden was unrelenting.
She struck Echo through a wall.
She pinned Kael to the ground.
She raised her palm to burn him.
"You were the seed," she whispered.
"But I am the soil."
Kael's Last Trick
In the last second, Kael reached into his chest pocket and pulled out a neural anchor — Rhea's failsafe.
He slammed it against Eden's neck.
A surge of feedback burst through the room like thunder.
Eden's eyes rolled back. Her scream short-circuited the walls.
She collapsed.
Smoke rose.
Kael coughed, falling beside her.
Echo limped toward them.
"She's not dead," he said.
Rhea ran in. "But she's weakened."
Kael looked at Echo.
"She said I was the seed."
Echo nodded grimly.
"You are. That's why she can't kill you outright."
Kael swallowed hard.
"Then what happens when the seed takes root?"
End of Chapter Ten
To be continued...