The image was seared onto the back of Eva's eyelids: Maya, her body a canvas of violation, consuming the monstrous fruit of her own womb with the blank-eyed hunger of a beast. It played on a continuous, silent loop, superimposed over the frozen horror on Derek's face, the shattered faith on Jordan's, the visceral revulsion on Leo's. But more than that, it was a premonition. A home movie of her own future. The Symbiote Assimilation Protocol was not just a procedure in a file; it was a destiny, and Maya was its first prophet.
For three days, Eva moved through her duties in the Observation Chamber like an automaton. Her hands, which had once trembled with guilt, were now unnaturally steady as she input data streams, logged vitals, and maintained the facade of the compliant, resilient Subject E-01. The screams from the white room, both audible and psychic, had become a dull roar in the background of her mind, a constant pressure she had learned to compartmentalize. She had built a fortress within herself, a cold, quiet place where the little girl who watched her parents be torn apart could no longer live.
It was in this state of glacial calm that Prime-07 found her. He was one of the senior Architects, his silver mask etched with finer, more intricate lines, his voice possessing a paternal, condescending tone she had come to despise.
"Subject E-01. Your performance metrics remain optimal," he stated, not looking at her, his gaze fixed on a screen showing the metabolic readouts of Project Flame W36T. "Your emotional dampening is particularly impressive. You are learning to transcend your… biological limitations."
Eva did not respond. She simply watched the screen, watching the erratic, powerful heartbeat of the man in the white room. The one they called Project Flame. The one who came back smelling of blood and fire and silent, screaming control.
Prime-07 continued, mistaking her silence for attentive submission. "It expedites the timeline for your own assimilation. Your sister's resilience has given us a valuable template. Your integration will be even more… seamless."
At the mention of her sister, a single, hairline crack appeared in the ice surrounding Eva's heart. A flicker of a memory: a small hand in hers, a shared laugh in a sunlit room that no longer existed, a promise whispered in the dark before the men in silver masks came and took her away.
She turned her head slowly, her movements precise, mechanical. "When will I see her?"
The question was flat, devoid of the desperate hope or tearful begging that had characterized her earlier inquiries. It was a simple request for data.
Prime-07 finally turned to look at her, the dark lenses of his mask regarding her with clinical interest. "Your sister is integral to Phase 4. Her progress is remarkable. You will be reunited when the Architect Prime deems the time optimal for the final convergence."
When it is time.
The phrase was a key, turning in a lock deep inside her. It was the same phrase they had used when they took her parents' bodies for "post-infection analysis." The same phrase they used when they subjected her to the first round of neural re-wiring. The same empty, placating lie they had fed her for three years.
And in that moment, the calculus of her life became brutally simple.
The sum total of her existence—the love for her parents, reduced to the sound of their screams and the wet tearing of teeth on flesh; the three years of agony, of being sliced open and stitched back together, her DNA a playground for their ambitions; the haunting, ghost-like memory of her sister's face, a face she was now told was a "template"; the countless survivors like Derek and Maya, whose trust she had earned only to lead them into this hell; the final, grotesque vision of Maya's transformation—all of it condensed into a single, undeniable equation.
Compliance = Complicity. Existence = Pain. Hope = A Lie.
The only variable left was action.
A strange, serene smile touched Eva's lips. It was not a smile of joy or madness, but of absolute, terrifying clarity. The final shackle of fear, the last vestige of the hope that obedience would lead to salvation, shattered.
"Yes," she said, her voice a soft, agreeable whisper. "I will see her when the time comes."
She took a step closer to Prime-07, her posture still one of a subordinate receiving instruction.
"And your time," she added, her tone not changing, "has also come."
The Architect had less than a second to process the incongruity of her words. His head tilted in a gesture of confusion, a synapse firing to form a question.
It was a second too long.
Eva's body, honed by the Architects themselves into a weapon of speed and precision, uncoiled. There was no telegraphed wind-up, no scream of rage. It was a movement of pure, efficient kinetics. Her fist, reinforced with sub-dermal polymers they had grafted to her bones, shot forward.
It was not a punch of brute force. It was a strike aimed with surgical knowledge. The point of the chin, the angle just so. The force traveled through the mask, not shattering it, but transmitting the kinetic energy directly through the jawbone, into the cranium.
The sound was not a loud crack, but a dampened, internal thud, like a melon hitting the ground from a great height. Prime-07's head snapped back. A short, electronic garble, a aborted system alert, hissed from his mask's vocalizer. His body stiffened, then went limp, collapsing to the polished floor in a heap of white cloth and silver metal.
The humming of the servers was the only sound.
Eva stood over the body, her breathing even. She felt nothing. No triumph, no horror, no adrenaline spike. She had not killed a man; she had decommissioned a piece of faulty machinery. He was simply a variable that had been eliminated.
The next part was executed with the same cold precision. She dragged the body into a supply closet, her enhanced strength making the task effortless. She retrieved a bio-cleanup kit and efficiently neutralized the minimal blood spill—a trickle of crimson from where the mask had cut into his skin. She reset the room's security logs, creating a five-minute loop of empty footage. She was not just hiding a body; she was editing reality, removing a flawed line of code from the Architect's perfect system.
When she returned to the main console, she sat down, her posture once again that of the perfect subject. The entire event had taken less than four minutes. The ice in her veins had not melted; it had crystallized into diamond-hard resolve.
Her eyes moved across the bank of monitors.
Monitor 1: The white room. Maya now sat in a corner, rocking slightly, her blackened eyes staring at nothing. Derek, Leo, and Jordan had withdrawn to the far wall, a gulf of terror and revulsion separating them from the woman they once knew. They were broken, but they were alive. Variables to be preserved.
Monitor 2: Project Flame W36T. He was back in his cell, sitting with his back against the wall. His head was raised, and he was staring directly into the hidden camera, as if he could see her. His eyes, usually glazed with forced compliance or vacant from trauma, were different. They were clear. Focused. When Maya had been devouring the parasite, Eva had watched him. While the others were paralyzed by horror, he had been still, but his stillness was not shock. It was the stillness of a predator assessing new prey. He had watched the entire event with a chilling, analytical intensity. The control they exerted over him was slipping. He was an unknown, a wild card. A potential weapon.
Monitor 3: The facility's population index. 127 souls. 127 prisoners, test subjects, and living incubators scattered throughout the complex.
A plan began to form in her mind, not as a burst of inspiration, but as a cold, logical schematic. It was not a plan of escape. Escape was a fantasy for those who still believed in a world outside. This was a plan for liberation through absolute ruin.
Step One: Secure Assets. Derek, Leo, Jordan. They were fighters, their spirits cracked but not yet pulverized. They could be tools, if properly motivated. Project Flame was a high-risk, high-reward asset. He had to be approached.
Step Two: Neutralize the System. The Architects relied on control, on predictability, on the helplessness of their subjects. She would introduce chaos. She would turn their own protocols against them. She would use the fear they had instilled as a weapon.
Step Three: Free Project Flame W36T. He was the key. She didn't know why, but the certainty was bone-deep. The bloody, ashy scent that clung to him spoke of a power the Architects feared and coveted. Freeing him wouldn't just be releasing a prisoner; it would be unleashing a virus into their sterile system.
But mostly, her gaze returned to Monitor 1. To Maya.
Saving Maya wasn't about restoring the woman she was. That woman was gone, her psyche consumed along with the parasite. Saving Maya was about denying the Architects their prize. It was about reclaiming their creation. It was about taking the Perfect Predator they had forged and turning her loose on her creators.
Eva's fingers began to dance across the console, no longer inputting data for them, but extracting it for herself. Blueprints, security rotations, ventilation schematics, the physiological dossiers of every Architect.
She was no longer Subject E-01. She was the ghost in the machine. The flaw in the design. The architect of their downfall.
And she was smiling.