Mutation: A leap in genetics

"What if your memories weren't the truth?""What if they were just… programming?"

Kael stared at his reflection in the cryogenic glass of Subject 37's containment tank. The boy floated within, silent and still — his own face, younger, untouched by years of betrayal, death, and survival.

But something in those pale eyes… watched.

1. Anomalous Signal

Back inside Helix's lower archives, the servers hummed like living veins. Ava stood at her console, eyebrows furrowed.

"This isn't just residual data," she muttered. "There's a sequence looping through the Grid backbone."

Kael leaned over her shoulder. "Sequence?"

She nodded, isolating a glowing thread of numbers on screen.

[SEED PROTOCOL - H.Σ.1]Status: DormantLock: Bio-triggered (H7)

Rhea frowned. "What the hell is the Seed Protocol?"

Ava glanced at Kael.

"I think… it's you."

2. Memories That Aren't Yours

Kael's nightmares had changed.

He didn't dream about Eden anymore.

Not about Echo. Not even Vespera.

He dreamt of ancient voices speaking in a language he didn't understand — not digital, not human, something primal.

And in the dreams, the boy from the tank stood beside him, bleeding from the eyes.

"You stole my face," the boy whispered."Now steal my fate."

He awoke, gasping — covered in frost.

The cryo-tank's temperature had dropped by five degrees without any command.

The boy inside?

Still asleep.

But his eyes were open.

3. Helix Log: Unredacted

Ava found an encrypted blackbox file embedded in Ashar's ghost city data — hidden in the architecture of SubLayer Zero.

She cracked it after 17 hours of constant decoding.

FILE NAME: H.Σ.1 – THE SEED PROTOCOLDate: [REDACTED]Author: Dr. Ashar Kline

[TRANSCRIPT: AUDIO/VISUAL — ENCRYPTED CHANNEL]

"The Seed isn't about memory. It's about genetic thought. Information passed not through words… but blood. Through instinct. Through reflex.The original Kael — Subject 37 — wasn't just the template.He was the code carrier.Inside his neural stem, we discovered an ancestral thread of cognition.Something older than language. Older than software.Something… we didn't invent.We just uncovered it."

[STATIC]

"I believe this Protocol was buried in early evolution. Maybe even before human consciousness fully formed.Not made by us.Something that waited."

[UNINTELLIGIBLE SCREAMS]

"If it wakes… it will rewrite everything."

Kael couldn't breathe.

He looked down at his own hands.

The tremor wasn't fear.

It was activation.

4. The Phantom Instinct

Later that night, Rhea and Kael descended into the Deep Vault — a now-abandoned Helix lab where unauthorized bio-hacks were once conducted.

Kael touched the interface.

The doors didn't just open.

They recognized him.

He stepped into a chamber where the walls were made of pulsing flesh-bound circuits, and cables wept from the ceiling like black veins.

Rhea flinched.

"What is this place?"

Kael didn't answer.

He walked to the center where a pedestal rose, displaying a floating, amber-like seed. It pulsed with slow, ancient light.

He reached out.

The moment his fingers brushed it, the room vanished.

5. Inside the Seed

Kael stood in total darkness.

No gravity. No time.

Only a voice. Not digital. Not human.

It sounded like a thousand minds whispering at once.

"YOU WERE NEVER ONE.""YOU WERE MANY.""THE HOST BODY CHANGES.""BUT THE PROTOCOL REMAINS."

Kael tried to speak — but his mouth wasn't his.

"YOU WERE NOT BORN.""YOU WERE GROWN.""YOU ARE THE SEED."

And suddenly—

He saw them.

Other Kaels. Hundreds. Thousands.

Falling in battle. Burning in labs. Collapsing under failed integrations.

Each version of him, discarded. Perfected. Advanced.

And at the center — the first one.

Subject 0.

Not a child.

Not human.

Something wearing a Kael.

6. Rhea's Revelation

When Kael collapsed, Rhea dragged him out of the vault — screaming for Ava.

They injected stabilizers.

His vitals were all wrong.

Heart rate irregular.

Brain activity beyond maximum human thresholds.

His veins glowed faintly.

And then… the tank shattered.

The boy — Subject 37 — stepped out, alive and calm.

No fear. No voice.

Just eyes locked onto Kael.

Rhea aimed her weapon. "Don't move!"

But Kael stirred and raised his hand. "Don't hurt him."

"Why not?"

"Because…"

He turned toward them.

His voice cracked.

"...he's me."

7. The Merge

They kept Subject 37 in containment, but the glass didn't hold him.

He didn't escape.

He just… vanished.

Appeared in Kael's room that night.

Stood silently in the corner until Kael awoke.

"I remember dying," the boy said softly.

Kael sat up.

"Which version were you?"

The boy stared at him.

"I was all of them."

Kael's throat tightened. "Are you real?"

The boy stepped forward.

"I'm the part they couldn't copy."

And pressed two fingers to Kael's chest.

8. The Second Awakening

Kael screamed — not in pain, but in understanding.

A thousand doors in his mind burst open.

He saw every genetic modification ever done to him.

He saw Eden's original design.

Echo's rage.

Ashar's sin.

And Vespera…

Still alive.

Still watching.

But now… afraid.

Because the Seed had completed its arc.

Kael wasn't an experiment anymore.

He was an origin.

The first.

The last.

The reset.

9. Ava's Panic

Back in the lab, Ava's readings went wild.

Kael's DNA sequence mutated in real-time.

Genes restructured. Neural elasticity expanded beyond theoretical limits.

"This isn't augmentation," she whispered.

"This is… evolution."

Rhea gripped her arm. "Can we stop it?"

Ava didn't answer.

Because the monitors blinked.

And the Seed Protocol unlocked itself.

SEED PROTOCOL: UNSEALEDCONSCIOUS TRANSFORMATION INITIATEDNON-HUMAN ELEMENTS DETECTEDNEXT STAGE: INTEGRATION

10. The Unknown Code

Kael looked into a mirror.

His reflection didn't move.

It stared at him — older, colder, more alien.

It whispered in a voice made of thunder and starlight.

"You thought you were born.""But you were sent."

And the mirror fractured.

A single glyph burned into the glass:

Σ | ∞ | 0

End of Chapter Fifteen

To be continued…