A weeks had passed since the faint signal had disturbed the sanctuary of silence.
Lira had not left the laboratory floor since then.
The hallways no longer felt the same. Though the security systems hummed and the doors sealed with flawless precision, there was an invisible tremor in the air—as if the facility itself had caught wind of something foreign.
She didn't speak of it. She didn't need to.
Instead, she buried herself in work.
The laboratory had become a haven of flickering holo-screens, drifting data logs, and layered walls of Elian's handwriting plastered across lightboards. There was no warmth in the air, no one to offer a tired smile, no voice murmuring suggestions over her shoulder.
There was only her.
And Subject 0.
She stood barefoot on the grated steel floor, her silver eyes dimmed from exhaustion, strands of her snow-white hair clinging to her temples. In one hand, a data slate flickered, and in the other, a steaming cup of bitter black coffee—the fifth that day, though she hadn't kept count.
"Protocol sequence for synthesis doesn't align with bio-adaptive restructuring," she murmured. "Starduss residue converts too quickly—faster than... than what Dad accounted for…"
Her voice trailed off, caught between fatigue and focus. The word Dad echoed softly from her lips, and for a moment, she stood still, the emptiness settling around her like a second skin.
Across the room, Subject 0 floated within its cylindrical chamber—still and lifeless, yet not dead. A male figure, partially formed, suspended in a silver-gold nutrient solution that glowed faintly under the chamber's core lights.
It was a body built from desperation and hope. A being designed not as a continuation, but a beginning.
The 91% progress bar blinked like a taunt.
Every adjustment, every recalibration of the system's code, seemed to claw one fraction of a percentage higher—but the jump to perfection, to life, evaded her like smoke through fingers.
And yet she persisted.
She remembered the way Dr. Elian used to stand beside the chamber, tapping his fingers on the glass with a habitual rhythm, eyes half-closed as he imagined what might awaken within.
"This one won't just adapt," he'd whispered once. "He'll choose."
She had never understood that fully. Until now.
Because every decision she made—every formula she adjusted, every micro-cellular strain she reconstructed—was a choice. Her choice.
She wasn't just continuing his work anymore.
She was evolving it.
Her fingertips danced across the control console, calling up archived simulations.
"Sequence 0411... run diagnostic overlay. Adjust Starduss genome interaction coefficient from 0.63 to 0.67."
A soft chime confirmed the change.
On the screen, glowing strands of DNA rotated in real time. Red flags blinked where fusion points refused to stabilize, like two puzzle pieces almost—but not quite—locking into place.
Lira narrowed her eyes.
"I saw this once…" she whispered. Her gaze darted to one of the overhead boards where Elian had scribbled an old calculation in frustration. "Back when Dad tried to pair Subject 1997's synaptic frame with early Starduss samples…"
Her voice cracked as she recited the memory.
"That subject flatlined, but not because of rejection. It was because… the interface was too passive. Too… compliant."
She stepped back, her breath quickening.
"Subject 0 isn't supposed to comply. He's supposed to fight."
She rushed to another console, calling up the behavioral resistance protocols—old routines Elian had buried deep, deemed too volatile for testing. They had been rejected for making earlier subjects too unpredictable. But unpredictability was exactly what Subject 0 needed.
"Rewriting... introducing behavioral variance... instability threshold to 14.3%."
She hesitated.
Then hit Enter.
The chamber lights dimmed for a breath, and Subject 0's chamber let out a low mechanical hiss, as if exhaling.
From within the pod, something flickered.
Lira froze.
The fluid around Subject 0 shifted—not violently, but with the barest ripple, as if the body suspended inside had twitched.
She blinked the sweat from her eyes, adrenaline overtaking exhaustion. "Movement?" she whispered, rushing to the monitor.
Readouts spiked, then fell silent again. The ripple in the pod calmed. The chamber lights returned to normal.
No anomaly detected.
Just a fluke.
But Lira's heartbeat told her otherwise.
She hadn't imagined it.
He had moved.
Even just slightly.
She stepped closer to the chamber. Her reflection stared back—tired, pale, eyes rimmed with shadows—but behind her ghostlike image floated Subject 0, still and quiet, his form like a statue carved from stardust.
She rested her hand on the glass.
"You're almost here," she whispered. "You're almost real."
The next hours blurred.
Time became a smudge between testing sequences and faded journal pages. She moved like a ghost through the lab, drinking coffee that no longer touched her senses, blinking through tears she didn't feel forming.
Dad, she thought again. You said I would know what to do. But I don't. I'm trying. I'm trying so hard.
She walked to his old desk, untouched since the day he died. The lights above it were dimmer now, as if mourning.
Lira knelt and pulled out the drawer.
Inside lay a forgotten data drive—labeled in his shaky handwriting:
"In Case I'm Gone — For Her."
Her breath caught. She connected it to the console, heart hammering.
A holo-recording shimmered to life.
Elian's face appeared—older, wearier than even she remembered him in his last days. But his eyes still held that same soft warmth he reserved only for her.
"Lira," he said quietly. "If you're seeing this... then I've left you behind. I'm sorry."
She didn't breathe.
"You've always been brilliant. More than I ever imagined. And I know you're continuing my work, maybe even finishing it. But I need you to remember one thing…"
His image leaned closer.
"Subject 0 isn't just our next step. He's your beginning. You gave me a reason to keep fighting for the world, Lira. Maybe now, it's your turn to find what you want to protect."
The recording flickered, then continued.
"One last thing. If he starts to awaken… and you feel scared—remember, fear means you still have something left to lose. Don't run from it. Use it."
The image vanished.
The room was silent again.
Except for Lira's breathing—uneven, shaking.
She stood.
Walked back to Subject 0's pod.
And started again.
The facility lights flickered briefly at midnight.
Just one second.
A hiccup in the power grid.
Lira noticed it.
And so did something else.
Deep within the pod, behind closed eyes and dormant systems, something stirred.
A pulse.
Red.
Subtle.
Hungry.
Not from the facility.
Not from Lira.
Not even from the old systems Elian once feared.
It came from him.
Subject 0.
And for the first time since its creation, the chamber temperature fluctuated by 0.03 degrees.
Not enough for the system to notice.
But enough for something to begin.