Spring came late to the plateau, but when it arrived, it arrived with violence. Ice cracked like gunshots. Snow melted in torrents that carved new rivers overnight. And with the thaw came their first visitor.
The sensors Leila had placed on the perimeter chimed at dawn. A single heat signature, moving slowly but steadily toward them. Human-sized. Alone.
Kael and Leila went to meet them, climbing to a watchtower that gave a view of the approach. Through binoculars, they saw a figure in a white arctic survival suit, struggling through slush and meltwater.
"No vehicle," Leila noted. "They walked here. From where?"
"Check the satellite," Kael said.
Leila consulted a tablet. "No heat signatures for fifty kilometers. No dropped transport. They really walked."
As the figure drew closer, they saw it was a woman, her face obscured by a frost-covered visor. She moved with the weary determination of someone at the end of their strength. When she was a hundred meters from the outer wall, she stopped, raised empty hands, and collapsed.
Kael was over the wall in a single bound, landing softly in the slush. He approached cautiously, his senses alert for traps. But the woman was genuine—her heartbeat thready, her breathing shallow. Hypothermia, despite the suit.
He carried her back, calling for Aris.
In the infirmary—a room they'd built with salvaged medical equipment—Aris peeled off the woman's suit. She was baseline, early thirties, with the lean build of someone who'd endured long hardship. Her skin was pale, her lips blue.
"Core temperature ninety-three degrees," Aris said, applying heating pads. "Severe dehydration. Exhaustion."
As they worked, the woman's eyes fluttered open. They were a startling green, sharp with intelligence despite her condition. She focused on Kael, studying him with a calm assessment that felt out of place given her circumstances.
"You're real," she whispered, her voice cracked. "They said you were myths."
"Who are you?" Kael asked.
"Dr. Lin Mei. Chinese Academy of Sciences. Formerly." She tried to sit up, failed. "I've been walking for twenty-seven days. From the nearest rail station."
"Why?" Leila asked.
Lin's gaze swept the room—the rough stone walls, the high-tech medical equipment, the people who were clearly more than human. "To deliver a warning. And to ask for asylum."
Aris injected a nutrient solution. "What warning?"
"The Ephemeral League isn't just a fringe group anymore. They've been… legitimized." Lin accepted water, sipping slowly. "Three weeks ago, the United Nations passed Resolution 1447. The 'Human Purity Act.' It declares your mutation a 'biological hazard' and authorizes member states to use 'all necessary measures' to contain it."
The room went still. Leila's tablet, still open to satellite feeds, suddenly made sense—the increased military movements she'd noted but couldn't explain.
"They're coming for us," Thomas said from the doorway.
"Worse," Lin said. "They're coming for everyone like you. Worldwide. Coordinated strikes. They've learned from Gobi. No more nukes—they know that doesn't work. Now it's biological agents. Neurotoxins. Nanotech plagues tailored to your unique biology."
Aris's face paled. "That would require detailed genomic data. How do they—"
"Me," Lin said bitterly. "Or my work. I was part of the Chinese team studying the mutation. We thought we were looking for a cure for aging. A gift for humanity." She looked at her hands. "Instead, we gave them a blueprint for genocide."
Silence, broken only by the hum of medical equipment.
"Why come here?" Kael asked finally. "Why warn us?"
"Because I helped create this," Lin said. "And because I have a daughter. She's eight. And she's… like you."
The words hung in the air.
"Where is she?" Leila asked gently.
"Hidden. With friends. But they'll find her. They're testing all children now, looking for the markers." Lin looked at Kael, her eyes pleading. "I don't ask for forgiveness. I ask for help. Protect her. Protect them all."
Kael looked at Aris, at Leila, at the others gathered in the doorway. He thought of Thomas's daughter, taken. Of Pierre's parents, who betrayed him. Of Leila's family, disappeared. The pattern repeated, across the world.
"We will," he said. And then, to Lin: "But you need to help us. Everything you know. Their plans. Their weaknesses."
Lin nodded, tears cutting tracks through the grime on her face. "Everything."
That night, the Aeon Compact held its most somber council yet. Lin, recovered enough to sit at the table, laid out maps, data files from a waterproof drive she'd carried, intelligence she'd memorized.
"The first wave of attacks is scheduled for next month," she said, pointing to red circles on a world map. "They'll hit the known enclaves simultaneously. Canada, Australia, Patagonia, and you."
"How?" Erika asked.
"Aerosolized agents. Delivered by high-altitude drones. They bypass physical defenses. The compounds bind to your unique cellular receptors, induce apoptosis—programmed cell death."
"Can we develop countermeasures?" Aris asked, already thinking.
"Maybe. If we have time. But…" Lin zoomed in on their location. "You're the priority target. You're the largest settlement. The most organized. They want to make an example."
Kael studied the maps. "Then we don't give them a target."
"What do you mean?" Thomas asked.
"We go underground. Not just hide—build down. Use the mountain. Create a city beneath the stone, where no drone can reach." Kael's mind was racing, seeing possibilities. "We have the strength. We have the time. And we have something they don't."
"What's that?" Pierre asked.
"Each other," Kael said.
And so, as spring turned the plateau to mud, they began their greatest work. Not just walls, but roots. Tunnels delving deep into the mountain's heart. Chambers carved from living rock. A city that would be hidden from the sky, protected by kilometers of stone.
They worked in shifts, never stopping. Kael and Erika led the excavation, their strength turning solid granite to gravel. Thomas and Pierre designed the supports, the ventilation, the water channels. Leila coordinated with other enclaves via encrypted satellite, warning them, sharing Lin's data.
And Aris, with Lin's help, worked on the biological threat. In their lab, they analyzed the toxin formulas Lin had brought, grew cultures of Longevo cells, tested counteragents.
"Your biology adapts," Lin said in wonder, watching cells reject a neurotoxin. "Not just individually, but communally. It's like… like your cells are learning from each other's defenses."
"Genetic communication," Aris theorized. "Maybe through pheromones, or some field we can't measure yet. You adapt, and nearby Longevos start adapting in the same way."
It was a discovery that changed everything. They weren't just individual superhumans. They were a collective organism, evolving together.
One month to the day after Lin's arrival, the drones came. Not the small reconnaissance models, but massive strategic platforms, flying at the edge of space. They released their payloads over New Alexandria—clouds of fine mist that drifted down on the wind.
But the settlement was empty. The Longevos were deep underground, in chambers sealed with airlocks they'd built from salvaged submarine doors.
They watched on monitors as the toxins settled over the abandoned surface structures. Cameras showed birds falling from the sky, a wandering fox collapsing mid-step. The agents were deadly, precise.
And utterly useless against a city buried in stone.
When the drones left, they emerged, wearing filtered suits Aris and Lin had designed. They decontaminated the surface, burning the toxin-laden snow, sealing the residue in containers.
That night, they held a celebration in the deepest chamber—a vast cavern they'd named the Heartstone. For the first time, they had faced extinction and not just survived, but evolved.
Lin stood before the gathered Compact, her daughter's photo projected on the stone wall—a smiling girl with green eyes like her mother's.
"Her name is Elara," Lin said. "It means 'light.' She's in hiding, but now… now I have hope she'll see more than just shadows." She looked at Kael. "Thank you."
Kael nodded, but his mind was already moving forward. They had won a battle, not the war. The world would adjust. New threats would come.
But they would be ready. They had time. They had each other. And they were learning what they truly were.
As the celebration continued around him, Kael slipped away to a viewing chamber that looked out through cleverly angled mirrors to the surface. The aurora was dancing again, green flames across the sky.
He felt a presence beside him. Aris, holding two mugs of something hot.
"You're thinking about the future," she said, handing him a mug.
"Aren't you?" he asked.
"Always." She sipped. "Lin and I were talking. About the children. The next generation."
Kael looked at her. "What about them?"
"If two Longevos have a child… what will they be? More than us? Something entirely new?" She paused. "And if a Longevo and a baseline have a child…"
The implication hung between them. Bridge-Born. Neither one thing nor the other. Belonging to both worlds and neither.
"We'll need to prepare for them," Kael said. "A place in between."
"We will," Aris promised. "We have time."
They stood in silence, watching the aurora. Beneath their feet, the new city spread its roots deeper. Around them, a new people celebrated their existence. Ahead, centuries stretched like uncharted country.
Kael Rodriguez, who had been a construction worker, who had lifted a beam, who had become something else, felt the weight of it all. Not as burden, but as purpose.
They would build. They would endure. They would remember.
They were the Aeon Compact. And their story was just beginning.