The three slain Energy Eaters were brought back under maximum quarantine, their twisted carcasses sealed in reinforced containment pods. Two were assigned to Prism's xenobiology wing, the third to the Brotherhood's mobile lab outside the main perimeter.
After the joint battle, the tension between the two factions eased slightly. Mutual survival had carved a fragile bridge between pride and pragmatism.
And for the first time, Evelyn Kane and Major Kailas agreed on something: a joint investigation team.
The Unified Research Taskforce was born.
Dr. Dane and the Brotherhood's Chief Tech-Priest, Otto, would co-lead. Neo would serve as Prism's principal technical advisor—a bridge between science and intuition, between logic and the unknown.
The first analysis shattered expectations.
"This…"
Dr. Dane's voice trembled with awe and revulsion as he gestured toward the dissected specimen on the holo-display.
"Their biology isn't organic in the conventional sense—it's stitched. Forced fusion of living tissue and energy conduits, like something trying to become more than alive."
The holo-graph magnified the beast's internal lattice—organic muscle woven with translucent crystalline filaments that pulsed faintly with residual charge.
"These conduits," Dr. Dane continued, "aren't grown—they were implanted. This isn't evolution. It's emergency adaptation under external influence… or deliberate design."
Tech-Priest Otto—a gaunt old man in Brotherhood robes and a half-mechanical respirator—leaned closer, his artificial eye glowing amber.
"Energy spectrometry confirms it," he rasped.
"The core signature matches Prometheus Flame energy parameters by eighty-seven point three percent."
The room fell silent. Even the background hum of the consoles seemed to fade.
Prometheus Flame.
The forbidden project. The catastrophe that had ignited the Dark Tide.
Neo stared at the projection, his eyes narrowing. The conduit layout—it was familiar. The flow of energy, the angular symmetry—it echoed the fragments of knowledge burned into his mind by the Relic.
But where the Relic's design was elegant and self-sustaining, this was crude—a butcher's imitation of a god's hand.
"No," Neo said softly, shaking his head.
"These aren't direct Prometheus constructs. They're… copies. Imperfect ones. Something tried to recreate the Prometheus energy pathways—but lacked the precision."
He highlighted the beast's cranial cavity on the display.
"Look here—the conversion matrix. It's a mess of repairs and inconsistencies. The energy flow is turbulent, unstable. It's trying to imitate how the Relic absorbs and refines energy—but it only learned how to consume, not balance."
"Imitate?" Otto frowned, metal fingers tapping the console. "What could possibly imitate the Flame?"
Neo and Dr. Dane exchanged a knowing glance. The answer was terrifyingly simple.
"We once encountered something—someone—that could," Neo said slowly.
"A being we called the Dominator. It displayed both human intelligence and the capacity to manipulate Relic-class energy fields. We believe it was once human… until it merged with the Relic during the first collapse."
Otto's eyes went wide. His hand made an involuntary warding gesture.
"Heresy! A man merged with divine technology? That is corruption incarnate—a sin against the order of creation!"
"Maybe," Dr. Dane interjected calmly, "but perhaps not by choice. The Dark Tide transformed everything it touched. If the Dominator was once human, it might have become something between man and Relic—a consciousness trying to survive in chaos."
Neo's expression darkened.
"And if that's true… when it died, it might not have died completely."
That thought changed everything.
The research team cross-referenced every sensor record available—energy readings during the Dominator's fall, the Relic surge, the Void Rift collapse.
What they found chilled the room to its core.
A faint but undeniable energy wave—a pulse—had radiated outward from Prism Base immediately after the Dominator's death.
Its waveform pattern matched, almost perfectly, the resonance frequency inside the Energy Eaters' cores.
"The Dominator didn't just die," Neo whispered.
"It broadcasted. A survival instinct, a final command… a blueprint. A message written in energy."
The beasts weren't random evolutions—they were creations, shaped by that lingering echo.
The Dominator had seeded the wasteland with its dying will.
The implications were staggering.
If one entity could subconsciously guide mutation, even posthumously, then the entire ecology of the wasteland could be shifting under invisible direction.
The monsters might not just be enemies—they could be part of a system, evolving toward an unknown purpose.
And the Energy Eaters were only the beginning.
The discovery forced the Brotherhood's hand. Within twenty-four hours, a direct communication link opened between Evelyn and Major Kailas.
"Commander Kane," Kailas's deep voice rumbled through the channel, colder than steel but edged with respect.
"Your findings redefine the scale of the threat. Directed mutation—biological weaponization through residual energy—this is no longer a local anomaly.
If these patterns spread, we face extinction on every front."
He paused before continuing.
"The Brotherhood recognizes your base's… singular expertise in understanding these phenomena. We propose a formal partnership: joint monitoring, data exchange, and a combined expedition to trace the energy pulse back to its origin."
Evelyn's expression hardened as she listened. A partnership with the Brotherhood meant resources, security… and risk.
The further they walked together, the harder it would be to hide Prism's greatest secret—the Relic.
But refusing meant blindness. And in the wasteland, ignorance was death.
The council's debate raged long into the night. Leighton wanted to fortify and stay put. Dr. Dane argued the pulse must be understood before it spawned another catastrophe. Neo said nothing for most of it—until the end.
"The Dominator left something behind," he said quietly.
"Maybe a weapon. Maybe a warning. Either way, it's calling to us. And if we ignore it, someone—or something—else will answer."
Silence.
Evelyn rose. "Then it's decided."
"We'll join the expedition."
And so, the preparations began.
Prism's engineers reinforced vehicles for long-range travel; Brotherhood technicians calibrated sensor arrays.
Two forces—born from opposite ideologies—would march together into the wasteland.
At the heart of it stood Neo, the reluctant bridge between them.
He knew this wasn't just a mission of discovery.
It was a return to the shadow of the Dominator, to the birthplace of the world's corruption.
And somewhere beyond that horizon, something ancient was still whispering through the static of the earth—
a voice not yet done with him.