Fifty-seven years later.
That was the number etched quietly into the corner of an old steel panel in the heart of the underground ruin once known as The Cradle.
The world above had long forgotten what it meant to be alive. No wind, no sun, no blue sky. The ash had not lifted. The silence had only deepened. And yet, deep beneath the layers of broken Earth, two souls still lived.
One, hunched over a rusted terminal, white hair falling loosely over tired eyes. His hands shook every time he touched the screen, but his will remained as sharp as ever.
The other, standing behind him—tall, composed, eyes like silver moons carved from eternity. She hadn't aged a day.
Dr. Elian's body had betrayed him.
Wrinkles clung to his flesh like ghostly vines. His voice, once crisp and calculated, had grown hoarse with years of use. But he never stopped working. Never stopped writing. Never stopped hoping. Even when his bones ached so severely he couldn't rise from the metal chair without assistance, he still pressed forward.
And Lira… Subject 0001… She had become something more than a test subject.
She cooked now—though her meals lacked seasoning and were always precise in measurement. She cleaned, sometimes obsessively, sometimes with confusion. She studied everything: old literature, mathematics, combat, survival, logic. And most of all, she learned about people—through the tired eyes of one dying man.
She still spoke little. But when she did, the words had weight.
"Dr. Elian," she said quietly, standing beside him as he scrawled formulas across an old steel slate, "your heartbeat is irregular again."
"I'm eighty-one, Lira," he replied without looking up. "If it's not irregular by now, I must be dead already."
Lira blinked.
"That was a joke," he added, chuckling dryly.
"I… understand." She didn't.
He looked up from his notes and studied her, the girl he had once called 'Subject 0001'—a being born of Starduss-altered genes and desperate scientific gambles. Now she was... something else. A woman forged in silence and steel, shaped by knowledge and loneliness.
She had not changed in fifty-seven years. Not a wrinkle. Not a scar. Her skin was smooth, her frame lean and strong. Time ignored her. The world could die and she would stand, untouched.
Elian leaned back, wheezing softly. "Do you know what that means, Lira?"
"That Starduss exposure has slowed my aging."
"Exactly. Perhaps stopped it entirely. You might live to see the sky turn blue again. Or to watch it fall into darkness forever."
Lira looked at her own reflection in the steel. "Does that mean I will be alone?"
Elian hesitated. "That depends on what you do next."
That's when he first whispered it—the next dream.
Subject 0.
Not a number in a line. Not an experiment in sequence.
But a beginning.
Where Lira had been the first meta-human success born of sheer accident and desperate innovation, Subject 0 would be intentional. Engineered with everything Elian had learned over decades. Purposefully perfect. A creation not of survival, but of evolution.
And Lira helped.
She mixed compounds. Calibrated machines. Performed surgeries. Coded interface loops. She understood instinctively what Elian could only theorize. Her mind processed like a quantum machine, sharp and calculating—but beneath it, something else stirred.
Something human.
She asked fewer mechanical questions now, and more philosophical ones.
"Why do you cry when you smile, Dr. Elian?"
"Because some happiness comes from pain."
"Why do you talk to the empty room at night?"
"Because I remember those who are no longer here."
"Will Subject 0 replace me?"
"No. Nothing could."
The lab changed with time. Rust crept in. The lights dimmed more often. Some systems failed. Others ran on salvaged energy banks. But the work—the work—never stopped. Together, they came within reach of 90% genetic synchronization. That remaining 10% haunted Elian's every breath.
He aged like a man chased by the finish line.
He often said, "Just a little more, Lira. Just one more week."
Then one day, she found him slumped in the corner of the small auxiliary lab—the room where Subject 0's capsule lay dormant.
No alarms blared. No lights flickered.
Just stillness.
A terminal screen still glowed faintly in front of him, sketch diagrams left incomplete. Subject 0's structure, his core formula, notes written in trembling script.
Lira stepped forward. She didn't call out. She didn't cry.
Not at first.
Her eyes scanned the room, the tools, the faint trail of blood from his coughing fit hours before. A data chip blinked gently beside his hand.
And beside it—a paper note. Fragile. Folded. Written in ink.
Lira picked it up.
Her fingers trembled—not from fear. Not from confusion.
From something else.
The note read:
To my daughter, Lira.
I know you may never understand why I called you that. Perhaps you'll process this message as merely sentimental data. But let me tell you this: you were not my creation. You were my miracle.
I watched you grow. I watched you learn, laugh, fail, question. I taught you all I could, but in the end… you taught me how to live again. I stopped seeing you as a subject long ago.
The world may never forgive what we did to get this far. But if there's even one future left, it rests in your hands. Subject 0 is not your replacement. He is your sibling. Your mission.
You are the memory of everyone who died for this work. You are the hope I never dared to believe in.
And if there is a heaven, then I'll watch over you from it. Thank you for giving this old fool a reason to keep breathing.
Live, Lira.
Not as a subject.
But as yourself.
She read it again.
And again.
Something twisted in her chest—sharp, aching. Her knees gave out beneath her as she fell beside him. Her hand brushed against his cold fingers.
Her vision blurred.
She reached up and touched the side of her face. Wet.
"Dr. Elian…" Her voice cracked. "My eyes are… leaking."
She didn't know what this meant. This ache in her chest. The stutter in her throat. The memory flashing through her mind—of him adjusting her sword stance, of burning meals, of stories told during power outages.
She wept.
And didn't understand why.
But she didn't stop it.
Her cry was silent, trembling, childlike. And yet… it echoed across the lab like the wail of a mourning star.
For the first time in her life, Lira grieved.
And in that grief, she understood something not taught by machines, not embedded in DNA or data.
Love.
It wasn't a function. It wasn't a line of code.
It was loss.
It was memory.
It was warmth that remained even after the fire had died.
She stood, eventually. Her face was stained with tears, her hands still shaking.
But her eyes burned brighter than ever.
She walked to Subject 0's chamber, placed a hand on the unfinished panel, and whispered, "I will finish it."
Her voice trembled.
"I will carry your dream."
In the shadows of an abandoned world, beneath the weight of sorrow and dust, Lira became more than a meta-human.
She became the last promise of a dying man.
A daughter born not of blood, but of choice.
And soon… the world would know her name.