The facility had never truly known silence—only the illusion of it.
There was always the low hum of ancient machinery groaning through vents, the whir of air recyclers filtering through dust and time, the faint flicker of emergency lights pulsing in the dark. It had become a kind of background noise to Lira. A lullaby born from routine and decay.
But now…
Now something felt different.
She sat alone in the operations room, her back straight, arms resting over a metal desk littered with data pads and coffee stains. A faint blue glow from multiple monitors flickered across her pale face, casting deep shadows under her sleepless eyes. Her long white hair was tied into a lazy braid, frayed at the ends, strands escaping like stubborn thoughts refusing to be tamed.
She hadn't left the lab since her father—no, since Elian—died.
Seven days. Maybe eight. Time blurred.
Lira barely remembered to eat. She drank synthetic coffee to stay alert, though it tasted like bitter ash. Her reflection in the monitor was unkind—hollowed cheeks, dark bags beneath her eyes, a woman frozen in mourning and momentum. The only thing that kept her from breaking was the singular task before her:
Subject 0.
Her father's final project.
His final obsession.
Their only hope.
Lira adjusted her posture and refocused on the schematic blueprints spread across the central screen. Subject 0's neural framework, cellular lattice map, and stasis vitals glowed like a digital constellation. The numbers weren't wrong. Everything read perfectly stable. And yet… something didn't feel right.
Ninety percent complete. No anomalies. No rejections.
So why had her father died before finishing it?
Why hadn't he left more answers?
Lira leaned back in her chair and exhaled quietly. The air tasted stale. Her eyes wandered—unintentionally—toward the far end of the lab, to the thick glass chamber that held Subject 0 in deep stasis.
A humanoid silhouette floated in crimson-blue suspension. Genderless. Hairless. Skin pale as frost. Even from this distance, she could feel it. Something unspoken. A pressure in the air.
It hadn't moved. Not even once.
But lately, the room around it seemed… warmer.
More alive.
Lira rubbed her temple and turned away.
"Focus," she muttered.
Her fingers danced across the console, cycling through recorded data logs. One week's worth of logs since Elian's death—vital monitoring, brainwave scans, cell responses. All were identical.
No errors. No decay. No signs of emergence.
And yet her instincts screamed otherwise.
She stood up suddenly, pushing the chair back with a quiet screech. Her boots tapped against the grated floor as she approached the stasis chamber, arms folded across her chest. The lights flickered overhead. One of the bulbs buzzed with a failing hum.
"Subject 0," she whispered to the glass, "why won't you show me what he saw in you?"
The chamber remained silent.
Unmoved.
Untouched.
But as she stared, her mind betrayed her—flashing back to that night. The last time she saw Elian.
He'd died alone in that corner room, surrounded by old notes, scribbled formulas, diagrams of Subject 0 etched in chaotic ink. Lira found him hunched over the desk, his frail fingers still clutching a stylus, his lifeless eyes fixated on the design he never completed.
She hadn't understood why her chest had felt so tight then. Why her breath hitched. Why moisture blurred her vision.
That was the first time she cried.
Her body had known before her mind did—something had changed.
She was alone now.
But not entirely.
Lira's hand hovered over the control panel on Subject 0's pod. She considered initiating a partial neural scan—but hesitated.
If something was wrong… would she be able to fix it?
She'd been born for battle, trained to fight, created to lead. Not to replace a genius.
And yet here she was. The last one who could carry on his work.
Daughter, the note had called her.
A word she still didn't fully understand.
Suddenly—
A low vibration shivered through the floor beneath her boots.
Lira froze.
Monitors blinked. The emergency lights dimmed… then returned.
Her heart pounded—not from fear, but from anticipation.
She turned sharply and checked the console—nothing. No seismic activity. No malfunctions logged. But she knew what she felt. It wasn't her imagination.
And then—faint, but undeniable—it came again.
A pulse.
She turned toward Subject 0's chamber.
The red fluid inside stirred ever so slightly. Not from the filtration systems. Not from any external force.
From within.
A ripple—gentle, but unnatural—spread across the suspension gel.
Her eyes widened.
She stepped closer, hands pressed to the reinforced glass.
The being inside remained motionless… but the gel rippled once more, this time followed by a soft thump. Like a heartbeat.
Lira's breath caught.
No… not a heartbeat. It wasn't organic.
It was something else.
Something deeper.
A system awakening.
The console beside her flared with a soft glow.
[S.E.E.K. SIGNAL DETECTED — PRE-WAKE STAGE: 3%]
Her lips parted.
"No way…"
She wasn't hallucinating. It was real.
She spun on her heel and ran back to the central terminal, dragging open Elian's archived logs. She filtered everything by keywords:
Pulse. Disturbance. S.E.E.K. interface.
Dozens of files appeared—most of them locked.
Frustration surged.
"Of course you encrypted them," she muttered, furiously typing in known override codes.
After several failed attempts, one file finally opened. A decrypted video log. Elian's voice, rasped and old, poured through the speakers.
"If Subject 0 begins emitting low-frequency pulses before the 95% threshold, do not interrupt. It means S.E.E.K. is responding. It's not rejection… it's synchronization. The system is searching. Reaching."
He coughed violently in the recording, then continued.
"Lira, if you're watching this… it means I'm not there to help you. But don't panic. The awakening isn't dangerous. Not unless it's provoked."
The screen glitched briefly. Then more words.
"If Subject 0 awakens fully, they'll need you. You'll be the first thing it recognizes."
Lira stared.
Her fingers curled into fists.
The air had shifted. The facility no longer felt empty. It felt like something ancient had stirred, and the silence it once offered was now laced with breath—slow, foreign, alert.
Subject 0 wasn't just a sleeping project anymore.
It was becoming.