Location: Zurich – Vale Industries Black Subdivision, Medical Bay
Aria jolted awake, drenched in cold sweat.
She had seen something. Felt something.
In her dream, she'd stood on a rooftop in Shanghai. It was raining. Her hands were covered in blood. She remembered pulling a trigger—and the scream of a child.
But that had never happened.
"Another false memory," she muttered.
K-0X stood silently nearby, scanning her neural readings. "Not false. Implanted."
Aria looked at him. "What are you saying?"
He stepped forward. "The Oracle's transmission didn't just signal the world. It triggered something inside you. DAEDALUS didn't just clone you—they coded you."
Aria staggered. "I'm a program."
"You're more," K-0X said, softly. "But that's what they want to overwrite."
---
Location: Tokyo, Japan – The Neo-Undermarket
Lina moved like smoke through the neon chaos of the city's underbelly.
Her contact was waiting in an old arcade. A woman with a scar that ran from lip to ear—known only as Yurei.
"You have it?" Lina asked.
Yurei nodded and produced a black datacube.
"Project Eden. Alpha Map. The original blueprint. Before DAEDALUS corrupted it."
Lina grabbed it, but Yurei held on a moment longer.
"There's something you should know. That map contains more than coordinates. It contains names. Subjects."
Lina froze. "What kind of subjects?"
"Founders. Fathers. Mothers."
---
Meanwhile: Vale Archives, Geneva
Lucien stood alone in a sealed chamber—the Founders' Archive.
He had finally broken into his father's encrypted vault.
Files flashed across the screen. Biological blueprints. Genetic sequencing. Personal notes.
Then he found the entry: Subject Zero.
He opened it.
Subject: Isadora Vale.
Status: Deceased.
Role: Initial testbed for synthetic fertility using enhanced DNA sequencing. Maternal link to multiple Helix variants, including:
> A. Vale (Designation: ARCHON-01)
The Oracle (Designation: ARCHON-02)
Lucien's hand trembled.
His mother… wasn't just a victim of the system.
She was the origin of it.
---
Zurich – Medical Bay
Aria stood before a mirror.
Except it wasn't a mirror.
It was a one-way glass.
And on the other side?
The Oracle stood—watching her.
Somehow, she had projected herself into the building without alarms, using quantum proxy networks.
> "You feel it, don't you?" the Oracle whispered through the glass. "The pull. The question. Are you a memory… or the one who remembers?"
Aria raised a hand to the glass.
"I'm more than what they made."
The Oracle tilted her head. "Prove it."
And then she vanished.