The shaft was narrow, barely lit, and steep as hell.
Aika grunted as she gripped the cable with bare hands, sliding down into the bowels of the Valtherion blacksite. Sparks rained from fractured conduits above—security lockdowns flickering offline, one by one. The escape route Selene mapped out was buried beneath layers of corrupted research.
"Keep going," Selene called from below, her voice calm despite the chaos. "Sublevel V is sealed. They won't expect us there."
"Why the hell not?" Aika muttered. "Because it's a horror show?"
Selene smirked faintly in the gloom. "Something like that."
By the time they reached the platform, Aika's new body was humming—sweatless, pulsing with bioelectric charge. Every movement felt like it was being processed, enhanced. The nanofiber suit she wore responded to her thought-patterns, adjusting tightness, temperature, even distribution of kinetic force.
You're not just flesh anymore, a voice echoed faintly in her neural implant.
You are splice. Weapon. Reborn from Earth into something… better.
She growled to shut it up.
Sublevel V: Neural Armor Research Vault
The sealed door required Aika's palm. Her genome—stitched together by Selene's work—unlocked every threshold in the lab. Inside, the temperature dropped. Servers lined the walls, humming like bees. In the center stood a cradle—a massive mechanical shell curled into dormant fetal posture.
A mech.
Or something more.
"This is AEON-13," Selene said, eyes reflecting its violet energy core. "Prototype fusion-frame. Never field-tested. You're the only one with matching neural resonance."
Aika's breath caught. The design was sleek but dense—muscular limbs, jointed armor, deep grooves of energy channels leading to a spine-like core. The cockpit wasn't separate—it was the mech. There was no seat.
"You want me to pilot this?" Aika asked.
"No. I want you to merge with it."
Selene stepped forward, holding a neural interface crown—thin metallic tendrils already pulsing. "Bio-sync starts at cortical layer. The suit maps your motor cortex, hijacks your body schema, and feeds back through sensory loops. It'll feel like it's your real body. Just... amplified."
Aika hesitated. "Is this... safe?"
Selene chuckled. "What part of this place looks safe?"
As the crown settled on her head, Aika screamed.
Not from pain—but expansion.
Memories surged—battles she hadn't fought, movements she'd never trained. The system loaded old warpilot routines—reflex maps, mech martial codes, target recognition.
In seconds, she was standing in the mech. No. As the mech.
Muscles coiled with reinforced servos. Her breath synced with fusion turbines. Thought became motion—she imagined turning her wrist, and a gauntleted fist flexed beside her, razor-slick and humming.
"Synaptic map complete. Pilot identity: Aika Solaris. Splice-Class Omega."
"Combat interface: unlocked."
"Sexual response: locked for now."
That last line made her flinch.
"You built sex into this thing?" she shouted, half-laughing.
"It was designed for Splice-Class assets," Selene said from the console. "Pleasure neural overrides. You can weaponize arousal—turn it into an energy spike, a defense cascade, even an emotional disruption field."
Aika blinked. "You serious?"
"Extremely."
A clang echoed through the complex—floodgates above them crashing open. Multiple heat signatures swarmed the levels above. Selene spun to her terminal, fingers flying.
"We don't have time. I'm uploading your neural thresholds to external storage. But you need to buy me three minutes."
Aika turned to the nearest corridor, now flooded in red.
Her new body—inside AEON-13—moved like thought. She didn't even step so much as flow. Her speed burst past biological limits. A downward punch cracked floor panels. Armor shattered. One guard's plasma rifle melted under the mech's EMP flare.
She saw trajectories before enemies moved—predictive motion data displayed instinctively, like a sixth sense.
When one guard lunged with a gravity lance, Aika caught it, twisted, and slammed it through the bulkhead wall. She roared—mechanized, powerful, godlike.
It didn't feel alien anymore.
It felt like her.
Moments Later
Selene sprinted to her side, carrying a glowing drive.
"Got the neural seed data," she said. "We can use it to rewrite your backups if we ever need to reset your body."
Aika powered down the fusion turbines. "Then let's get the hell out."
They moved toward the lower hangar bay—but stopped cold.
A figure stood in the exit.
Cloaked in grey armor, one arm cybernetic, a plasma pistol drawn. Short hair. Violet HUD eye. Voice low and unmistakably weary:
"Didn't expect a splice freak to look that good in a mech."
Aika raised her fists. "Who the hell are you?"
The woman didn't aim her gun.
"I'm Rin Kestrel. You just stole the prototype mech I spent two years trying to break into. And unless you want my boot in your spine, you're going to tell me why."
Selene stepped forward, arms raised.
"She's not your enemy."
Rin looked Aika over—eye lingering a little too long on her armored hips.
"You sure? Because I've seen Valtherion build horrors in that frame."
Aika took a step forward. Her voice, half-machine, half-heartbeat, answered:
"I'm not one of them. I was. But now I'm me."