Light.
Too bright.
Too white.
Too still.
Ava's first thought was that she was dead.
The second was that death shouldn't smell like antiseptic.
She blinked hard, vision swimming into focus.
Sterile ceiling. Low hum of machines. A faint rhythmic beep beside her.
A hospital?
No the walls were reinforced steel, the lights military-grade.
Not a hospital. A bunker.
She tried to sit up, but pain shot through her veins like wildfire. Her hands trembled. Bandages ran from her shoulders to her wrists, and beneath them something pulsed.
Her own heartbeat but not quite human anymore.
The door slid open with a hiss. A woman stepped inside tall, African descent, wearing a gray uniform with a black insignia on her shoulder: "ReGenesis Command."
"You're awake," she said. "Good. The world's been waiting for you."
Ava stared. "Where am I?"
"Somewhere beneath what used to be Geneva," the woman replied. "We found you three days ago in the ruins of Eden Tower. You triggered the Pulse."
Ava's chest tightened. "Adrian?"
The woman's expression softened. "No sign of him. But whatever he did up there it worked. The Pulse neutralized every Eden system on the planet."
Ava exhaled shakily. "Then it's over."
The woman hesitated. "That's complicated."
She handed Ava a tablet. On the screen, news feeds flickered global blackouts, sudden surges in medical recoveries, and something stranger reports of people exhibiting enhanced reflexes, accelerated healing, and shared neural flashes.
Ava's pulse quickened. "No"
"The genetic wave your father designed it spread further than anyone expected," the woman said quietly. "Half the population now carries dormant fragments of the serum. The other half is mutating at the edge of what we understand."
Ava shook her head. "That wasn't the plan."
"Plans ended the moment you pressed that key," the woman said softly. "Now we adapt."
She turned toward the door, pausing. "You should rest. Command will debrief you in the morning. There's someone else who wants to see you."
Before Ava could ask, the woman stepped aside and a figure entered.
A man, scarred, his left arm wrapped in synthetic mesh. His eyes blue and bright, but no longer glowing.
Ava froze. "Adrian?"
He stopped a few feet away, searching her face like he wasn't sure she was real. "You look alive."
Her throat tightened. "You're I thought"
"I know," he murmured. "But the serum it didn't kill me. It rewrote me."
He stepped closer. "And it's not done."
Ava's heart hammered. "What do you mean?"
Adrian glanced at the glass wall beside them. Outside, rows of containment chambers glowed faintly blue men and women inside, asleep, their veins lit with the same light that once burned in his.
"They call it the Genesis Effect," he said. "Eden's legacy didn't die. It multiplied."
Ava stared through the glass, horror and awe colliding. "My father's work"
"changed the world," Adrian finished. "And now they want you to lead it."
She looked at him sharply. "Lead it? No. I destroyed it."
He held her gaze. "Did you?"
Silence stretched between them heavy, electric.
Finally, Adrian said, "The ReGenesis Council thinks you're proof that the serum can be controlled. They want to use you to rebuild to decide who gets to evolve."
Ava turned away, her reflection fractured in the glass. "Then we're right back where we started."
"Not if we stop them first."
Her breath caught. "We?"
Adrian stepped closer, voice low. "You can't undo what's in your blood. But maybe we can decide what it becomes."
The lights dimmed as alarms began to echo through the base muffled at first, then louder.
WARNING: LEVEL-3 BREACH CONTAINMENT FAILURE IN SECTOR FIVE.
Ava looked at him. "What's happening?"
Adrian's eyes darkened. "The mutations are spreading faster than they thought."
Outside the glass, one of the containment pods shattered the figure inside convulsing, eyes snapping open, veins glowing the color of ice.
The woman's voice from before came over the intercom, tight with fear
"Command to all units the evolution wave has gone live."
Ava stared as the chamber lights flickered out one by one, replaced by the pulse of something alive.
She whispered, "What have we done?"
Adrian looked at her and for the first time since the island, there was something almost like hope in his voice.
"Started over."
The alarms wailed. The world above shifted. And the next chapter of human evolution began in ashes.