The signal went out to all surviving strongholds
Aegis Command Protocol: Beta Release.
Compiled Command Triggers: 042–119.
Status: Operational.
For the first time in years, every surviving lab, military compound, and underground vault ran synchronized field tests.
And Hyperion… recoiled.
Samples ruptured under stress. Gene strands folded. In low-hostile zones, some creatures outright collapsed mid movement, twitching before falling limp like puppets without strings.
Mariel stared in awe as their own active
sample disintegrated under pulse 047.
Across the channel, Dr. M'kebe's voice came through the comms with restrained disbelief. "We might've found the kill switch."
Even the civilians noticed the change.
For three days, no Hyperion assaults breached the stronghold perimeters. Drones stopped vanishing. Sensor alarms stayed quiet. A global breath held.
Maybe, just maybe, they could fight back.
But on Day Four, it stopped working.
Samples no longer folded. They twitched once, then regenerated.
By Day Six, they didn't react at all.
By Day Nine, the first hyper-adapted wave hit the Japanese defense grids. Creatures walked through kill zones. Electrical pulses bounced off them. The Aegis code failed.
Not resisted.
Erased.
"They rewrote the trigger language," Koji said in disbelief, looking over the new genome patterns. "It's not evolving it's editing its genetic code."
"They're countercoding us," Mariel whispered. "The Aegis signals are being absorbed and neutralised."
Reports flooded in.
-Stronghold Bastion – overrun.
-The Basin – last transmission cut off mid-broadcast, static and screaming.
-Kyoto Gridline – fell silent.
Back at Ceryx, the lab descended into a quiet horror.
Dr. Toma sat staring at the last viable sample a translucent slab of Hyperion tissue suspended in nutrient gel. When they pulsed the Aegis sequence through it, it didn't die.
But it didn't ignore it either.
It… responded.
Not like the others. It folded slightly, then split at a seam and began growing again not aggressively, but carefully. Controlled. Structured. Like it was listening.
Mariel leaned in. "Is it… stabilizing?"
Koji pulled up the logs. "It's expressing genes we haven't seen before. They're not aggressive. They resemble early Mirror-Life stabilization codes."
Toma zoomed in on the sequencing: a spiral code, mirrored, flowing without mutation. "It's not resisting the code. It's… accepting it."
Mariel stepped back, her voice trembling. "That could be our salvation."
Outside, the world burned again.
But inside that glass tube, in the back of a ruined world's last lab…
Something changed.