Chapter 1: Ash in the Wind
The wind howled across the broken earth like a wounded beast. Overhead, copper clouds boiled, dark with ash and soot from the endless furnaces of Neo Earth's scavenger cities. The land beneath them was a graveyard of civilization, where the bones of ancient war machines jutted from the dunes like forgotten titans. It was here, in the borderlands of Zone-7, that Rose hunted for scraps—and hope.
She crouched low beneath a crumpled steel strut, goggles smeared with dust, breathing through a cracked oxygen mask. Around her waist, an old leather belt held her tools: a fusion cutter, magnetic claws, and her one luxury—a worn-out holo-comp that no longer connected to the grid but still played music when it felt like it.
She hadn't eaten in two days.
The storm was coming fast. That meant she'd need shelter, and fast. But the glint she'd spotted in the canyon beneath her was too tempting to ignore. Glints meant metal. Metal meant credits. And credits meant survival.
Rose adjusted the strap of her rucksack, brushed a lock of violet-dyed hair from her forehead, and slid down the slope. The sand crunched softly beneath her boots, bones of glass and nanoplastic whispering beneath the surface. At the base of the canyon, half-buried in the dirt, was a strange object. Not the usual scrap. It wasn't rusted or scorched. It pulsed—softly—like a heartbeat.
She hesitated. Then reached out.
Touch.
Instant pain. A spike of white fire drove into her hand, straight through the nerves and up her arm. Rose screamed, falling back, clutching her palm. The object—the size of a pigeon egg, midnight-black, and glassy—had embedded itself into her skin.
"No—no—NO!"
She panted, her breath turning to fog despite the heat. The object began to dissolve into her hand like ink in water, veins glowing black beneath her skin. Something ancient… alive… was waking up inside her.
She screamed again, but no one would hear her.
Elsewhere…
High above the planet's surface, on the edge of a rusted orbital ring, a pair of cold eyes snapped open.
"She's activated it," the watcher said.
A figure stepped forward from the shadows. His body shimmered with layered armor woven from biological circuits. A Syndicate Executor.
"Are you certain?"
The watcher turned, revealing a face etched with cybernetics and scars. "The Black Sequence has bonded. Subject designation: Rose Maren. Genetic tier—unknown. Order the retrieval. Alive."
Back at the Canyon
Rose was on her knees now, trembling, eyes burning. Images flashed in her mind—creatures of bone and light, vast cities folded into quantum space, stars being unmade. A voice echoed in her skull, ancient and echoing:
"Gene Host accepted. Sequence initializing… evolution… unlocked."
Then—silence.
Her hand no longer burned. In its place, a sigil pulsed on her palm: a twelve-pointed helix surrounded by obsidian rings.
The storm arrived.
Rose barely made it into a half-collapsed bunker nearby, bracing the broken doors with old scrap panels. Outside, the wind screamed like a demon as the ashstorm hit. She sat by the door, curled up, staring at her hand.
"What… what are you?"
She didn't know it yet, but the answer to that question would reshape the universe.
Later That Night
Outside the bunker, two Syndicate drones landed silently. Humanoid in shape, but eyeless and bone-white, they began scanning the area.
Inside, Rose dreamt of a city made of genes, spiraling towers of living code. In the dream, a voice whispered again:
"Rise, bearer of the Black Gene… You are the last."