The snowstorm had subsided. Only smoke and silence lingered over the Siberian ruins.
The Eden Core, now no larger than a pebble, pulsed softly in Aria's palm. Once the keystone of a thousand covert wars, now dormant, its energy whispered not of destruction—but rebirth.
Aria sat quietly, a new weight in her chest. She wasn't just human anymore.
Not Oracle.
Not experiment.
Something… between.
Lucien adjusted the blood-stained bandage around his ribs, eyes never leaving her. "You okay?"
"No," Aria replied truthfully. "But I will be."
---
Elsewhere…
A shadow moved through a chamber of glass and fire.
Monitors flickered to life across a panoramic wall. Each screen displayed a Vault—Tokyo, Berlin, Lagos, Jakarta.
An old man in a crimson coat stepped forward, eyes glowing with golden circuitry. He stared into the heart of the screen showing the Siberian Vault—now offline.
"They've activated her," he said.
Behind him, a woman dressed in obsidian armor emerged. Her skin gleamed like polished metal, her voice sharp as a blade. "The Eden Core has fused with Subject Zero."
The man turned. "Then it's time we wake the others. The age of the Helix Empire is not over."
---
Back with Aria and the Team
K-0X sat reassembled by Lina, occasionally twitching as the reboot cycles finished.
Lina had barely spoken since her betrayal. Guilt wrapped her like chains. But Aria… Aria had never looked at her with hate.
"We'll need to move fast," K-0X finally said. "The Helix Echoes will have detected the Vault breach. Their retrieval units will be on route."
Aria rose, her silhouette outlined by the dim glow of the core. "Then we get ahead of them. We find the other Vaults first."
Lucien raised an eyebrow. "We don't even know where they are."
"Yes, we do," Aria said quietly. "She showed me everything before she… broke. The next one is in New Delhi. But it's not a Vault. It's… a prison."
"A prison for what?" Lina asked.
Aria met her gaze.
"For the first hybrid. The original Helix prototype. The one that survived all their tests. The one even the Oracle feared."
K-0X froze. "Project Eidolon."
Lucien swore. "That's not a retrieval. That's a rescue mission."
Aria closed her hand over the core, her voice calm.
"No. It's a warning."
---
Meanwhile, in New Delhi
Deep beneath the city, in a facility long erased from maps, a containment chamber hissed.
A single figure sat chained at its center.
Eyes closed.
Breathing slow.
And then—
They opened.
Amber. Glowing. Ancient.
"She's awake."