Chapter 2

Emily Varen

The washroom had one mirror. A crack split it diagonally from the upper right corner, cutting my reflection clean in half.

Five of us packed into that narrow space, the air sharp with cheap disinfectant. I tugged at my uniform collar and stared at the face looking back at me—that face had walked in here as Rachel Grey.

The woman beside me leaned in, voice barely above a whisper: "You notice the way they look at us? It's not how you look at employees. It's more like—inventory."

I glanced at her. From Sector 9. Said she'd done data work. Claire Sanchez.

I didn't say anything back.

I tried asking the girl on my other side if she had a lip balm I could borrow—my lips were cracked badly enough that anyone paying attention could tell I'd been living outside in the wasteland. She pushed the tube further into her pocket without thinking. "I barely have enough for myself."

I pulled my hand back.Let the corner of my mouth do something that wasn't quite a smile.

Five faces in that cracked mirror. Every single one holding something back. But not one of them turned around and walked out. Because walking out meant going back to the surface. Back to the toxic haze and the mountains of scrap metal that had a way of swallowing people whole.

I ran through what I'd memorized on the way in. Corridor length. Guard positions. Camera placements. If I ran right now, they'd have me boxed in before I reached the first checkpoint.

Figure out what they're after first. Then decide.

Leia led us into a service elevator.

That was it. She turned back to face the doors. A wall with a badge.

The elevator walls were covered in biohazard warnings and nanite monitoring notices. A small screen in the corner played the same line on a loop: Genesis Corp—Fighting for Humanity's Tomorrow.

I dropped my head like I was fixing my skirt hem. Used the angle to check both ends of the corridor as we passed: sensor cameras recessed into the walls every twelve steps or so, every sealed door requiring both an iris and palm scan to open.

"Class-A Biological Asset Storage — Unauthorized Entry Subject to Processing Under the Genetic Asset Protection Act, Article Nine."

Leia swiped her badge. A low pneumatic hiss. Cold air pushed out through the gap—antiseptic underneath it, and something metallic, at least ten degrees colder than the hallway.

She turned and looked at each of us in turn. "Once we're inside, you do not speak without Dr. Victor's permission. No unnecessary movement. Are we clear?"

The lab was larger than I'd expected. The ceiling had to be thirty, maybe forty feet up.

But the moment I stepped through that door, my eyes went to the center of the room and stayed there.

A cylindrical glass tank. Inside, dark green semi-translucent fluid. Fiber-optic cables and metal conduits ran out from the base in every direction, feeding into rows of monitoring equipment and data screens along the walls. Suspended in the fluid was a person.

Young man. Black shorts and nothing else. A thick curtain of black hair drifted through the liquid, spreading out until it covered his face entirely.

He wasn't moving. The outline of his body in that green light looked like something arranged for display. Running down his spine was a row of metal interface ports. Even through the glass, you could see where the fiber-optic cables connected.

I stared at him for a couple of seconds. Then, before I could stop myself, it came out—low, meant only for me, but the lab was absolutely silent:

"…He's gotta be dead."

Standing next to the tank was a short, thin older man. Wispy gray-white hair, sharp cheekbones, protective glasses sitting on a narrow face. He was hunched over a tablet, and when my words reached him, one corner of his mouth curved into something I couldn't read.

He didn't look up.

His reaction wasn't annoyance. It was closer to—satisfaction.

A cold feeling moved up the back of my neck.

Dr. Victor set down the tablet and touched a few controls on the panel at the base of the tank.

The electrode array kicked on. A pulse of blue-white current discharged visibly into the fluid.

The man inside went rigid. His back bowed. Then, slowly, he raised his head. The black hair fell away from his face, uncovering sharp features—strong cheekbones, a prominent brow. His eyes opened gradually. The irises were a flat, unnatural silver-gray. His gaze moved through the glass, swept across the people in the room, and registered nothing. Like he was looking at furniture.

Dr. Victor folded his glasses into his coat pocket and turned to face us. "Welcome to the core research wing of Project Origin. This is the Architect, designation Alpha-Zero. He holds the highest-tier Root Access overwrite ability on record—in the early days of the disaster, he held the resonator defense line across half of New York State on his own." He let a beat pass. "His refusal to cooperate with research, however, has brought our gene replication work to a complete standstill. So we've moved to a different approach."

His eyes settled across all five of us, unhurried. "We respect his agency. He will choose, from among you, the person he finds most compatible to carry on his lineage. That child will become the central research subject of Project Origin—and the single most important factor in humanity's fight against the Grey Bloom."

Claire the color had left her face. "What? You—nobody said anything about this when we signed on!"

I didn't move.

My brain was working fast, locking everything into place: only young single women in the recruitment pool, neural compatibility screening, unconditional cooperation with all medical procedures...

God. This was never a data job.

My eyes were already moving across the room without making it obvious. One exit. Two armed guards at the door. A medical cart against the wall loaded with vials that had no labels I could read from here.

Another woman screamed and made a break for the door. A guard moved in front of her without any real urgency and pushed her back.

Dr. Victor didn't react. "Please stay calm. Whoever is selected will receive the highest level of medical care and nutritional support this facility can provide. The child will be raised in a controlled, secure environment. The Architect's genome is the most complex resonator sequence we have ever mapped. A newborn's neural system is the only substrate flexible enough to support the depth of research we need. If we succeed, we may be able to develop a serum that awakens resonance abilities in ordinary people—which means humanity stops being prey for the Rust-Walkers and stops answering to the corporate power structure." He paused. "Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"Real nice way to put it. You're running a breeding program and calling it saving the world."

Dr. Victor's eyes settled on my face.

Those silver-gray irises shifted through the dark green fluid and came to rest, faintly, somewhere in my direction.

The researcher at the monitoring station looked up fast, voice pulled tight: "Doctor—Alpha-Zero's cortisol, phenethylamine, norepinephrine, and neural activity index all just spiked. All at once."

Dr. Victor stepped toward me. He took me in—and whatever was behind those glasses wasn't hostility. It was the specific satisfaction of a researcher watching a result line up exactly where he predicted it would.

"Congratulations, Rachel Grey. He's chosen you."

He said the name on my forged ID.

Then it came out: "Chosen? What does that even mean? Did he say something? He glanced over here once and that counts?"

The whole thing was so absurd I nearly laughed out loud.

Leia looked at the other four. Her tone didn't shift at all. "The rest of you, come with me. There are follow-up documents to sign."

Claire glanced back at me as they walked her out. There was fear in it. Relief. And something else I decided not to look at too hard.

Dr. Victor went to the tank and spoke to the man inside in something close to a gentle tone. "You see? You responded to her. We're honoring that. That's always been our commitment to you."

Two armed researchers had hold of my arms. I braced my feet against the floor and turned toward Victor's back: "Hey—did he actually say anything? Did I say anything? Does what I want factor into this at all?"

Dr. Victor didn't turn around. "You signed an agreement, Miss Rachel. Unconditional cooperation with experimental work. That's your signature on the page."

That signature was a fake. But the clause was real, and right now it was holding me down just as effectively as the restraints that were about to go on my wrists.

A second hatch opened at the far end of the lab.

Surgery room. The moment they shoved me through the door, every overhead light hit at once. I flinched against the white and shut my eyes. They pushed me down onto a metal table. Restraints locked around my wrists and ankles.

Dr. Victor's voice came from the doorway: "Sedative first. Full precision neural compatibility scan. Then run the sample extraction protocol. Maximum viability—do it clean."

A cold needle went into the vein on the inside of my forearm.

Consciousness started coming apart at the edges.

Through eyelids that were losing the fight, I found the medical cart next to the table. Top shelf. A row of clear vials, evenly spaced.

The labels read: NS-Serum / Forced Symbiosis Modification Serum / Class-A Controlled.

Three vials. Second slot from the right. Magnetic latch clasps.

I locked every detail in.

That was how I'd made it five years out there. Even with one breath left, you take inventory of what might keep you alive.