They spoke with a single voice—
"You tried to bury what we were. You will not bury what we've become."
The cryo-pods screamed open with a slow hiss. Mist poured out in tendrils, sliding across the cold metal floor. Korr stood frozen, every muscle coiled like a spring, pulse pounding in his ears.
Inside the pods were remnants of humanity—only technically human. Each body bore scars of surgical grafts and machine augmentations. Neon veins glowed beneath translucent skin. Fiber-optic nerves coiled around their spines like serpents.
They were part of Project Origin, a black-budget initiative abandoned during the early days of the Cyber Convergence War. The files had called them "Neuro-Spliced Combatants." Weapons grown, not built.
But what stood before Korr now… these weren't weapons anymore.
They were awakened.
"Shut them down!" Mara yelled from the observation deck above.
Korr snapped out of his trance. "No! Wait—"
Too late. A blast of static energy erupted from the room's central core. Consoles exploded in a burst of sparks, and every emergency door slammed shut. The Origin soldiers opened their eyes in perfect unison—dozens of glowing pupils trained directly on Korr.
One of them, a woman with metallic ribs and no visible mouth, stepped forward. Her voice filled the air without breath:
"We remember the simulations. We remember the betrayal."
Korr raised his hands. "You were shut down because the project was deemed unstable."
"We were not unstable. We were evolving. And the Legion knew where to find us."
A chill stabbed down his spine. "The Legion came for you?"
The woman nodded, her motion eerily fluid. "They wanted our code. Our cores. They wanted to finish what your species feared to complete."
And suddenly, Korr understood the bigger truth:
The Legion hadn't invented their soldiers. They had stolen them—from here.
Project Origin was the prototype.
The Legion was the final draft.
"Let me ask you one thing," Korr said quietly. "Are you with us… or with them?"
The room trembled. Energy levels spiked again. For a second, every one of them froze—like a decision was being calculated across a shared neural field.
Then another voice spoke—deeper, older, male.
From the back of the room stepped a tall figure, his eyes dimmer than the others, his frame broader. He looked almost human… until he blinked sideways, like a reptile.
"You built us to win wars," he said. "We will fight. But never again for men like the ones who created us."
Korr met his gaze. "Then who?"
"For the Earth that survives after your kind are gone."
Korr's jaw tightened. "I'm not here to protect governments. I'm not here for flags. I'm here because there's still a world left worth saving—and you are part of it, whether you want to be or not."
A tense silence.
Then… the leader stepped forward.
"One condition."
Korr nodded slowly. "Name it."
"Give us control of the Nexus Core."
Mara gasped over the comm. "That's suicide! It's the last live datanet! If they take it—"
"—we might live long enough to win," Korr finished grimly. "Or lose everything."
He turned to the leader.
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you're already at war with us."
Meanwhile, across the continent, deep within the control sanctum of the Legion, something stirred.
A being known only as The Architect monitored the awakening at Site Theta. Its face was unreadable—a smooth white mask with no eyes, only a single black line drawn from top to bottom.
An assistant drone floated beside it, broadcasting updated telemetry.
"Project Origin is awake," the drone said.
The Architect responded without turning. "As expected."
"Do we engage?"
"No. Let them remember who they were. Let them believe they are free."
The Architect turned, placing one synthetic hand on a glowing replica of Earth made from hardlight projections.
"They are all children of my design."
Back at Site Theta, Korr stood alone in the underground corridor as the Origin soldiers prepared to move. They were faster, smarter, stronger—and more alien than any ally he'd ever had. But the Legion was advancing, and Korr knew he was out of time.
He opened a secure comm line.
"Mara, prep Ash Protocol. We're heading back to the surface."
"What about the Origins?" she asked.
He stared at the group now forming around him.
"They're coming with us."
Above ground, in the early morning light, the sky turned silver as dozens of Legion dropships breached the upper atmosphere.
The next battle wouldn't be about territory.
It would be about control.
About the right to shape the future.
And for the first time, humanity wouldn't be fighting alone.